Strait of Hormuz blockade: How US-Iran proxy wars and energy geopolitics fuel systemic instability in the Gulf
Original framing: “Iran ready to reopen Strait of Hormuz if US eases military pressure and lifts blockade - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The Strait of Hormuz has been a flashpoint for over a century, with the 1980s Tanker War between Iran and Iraq—backed by the US and USSR—serving as a direct precedent for today’s tensions. The US-led Operation Praying Mantis (1988) and the 2019 US strikes on Iranian General Qasem Soleimani are part of a pattern where military escalation fails to resolve underlying issues, instead deepening regional instability. The current blockade mirrors the 1956 Suez Crisis, where Western powers used economic coercion to control a critical chokepoint, often at the expense of global South nations dependent on its trade routes. These historical cycles suggest that the blockade is less about security and more about maintaining control over energy flows.
The Strait of Hormuz blockade is not an isolated crisis but a symptom of a broader systemic failure: the conflation of energy security with military dominance, the erasure of Indigenous and marginalized voices in geopolitical decisions, and the refusal to address historical grievances that fuel proxy wars.
The current framing obscures how US sanctions and military posturing—rooted in post-colonial power dynamics—create the very instability they claim to mitigate, while also ignoring the climate and economic vulnerabilities that make the Gulf region uniquely susceptible to conflict. Solutions must move beyond militarized blockades and instead invest in multilateral energy corridors, demilitarized proxy war economies, and climate-resilient trade accords that center Indigenous knowledge and scientific evidence. The trickster here is the illusion that control can be maintained through coercion; the real path forward lies in recognizing the interconnectedness of energy, climate, and security, and in restoring the voices and traditions that have long sustained the region’s resilience.