Escalating proxy conflicts in Gulf: US-Iran strikes threaten regional stability amid unaddressed structural tensions
Original framing: “US and Iran exchange strikes in new threat to shaky ceasefire” — Financial Times
The 1980s Tanker War during the Iran-Iraq War set precedents for asymmetric strikes in Hormuz, normalizing proxy conflicts as a 'cost of doing business' for global oil markets. The 1953 CIA-backed coup in Iran seeded decades of mutual distrust, while the 2003 Iraq invasion empowered Iran-backed militias, creating a feedback loop of retaliation. The 19th-century Great Game rivalry between Britain and Russia over Gulf access foreshadows today’s US-China competition, yet historical continuity is erased in favor of episodic 'crises'.
The US-Iran strikes in the Strait of Hormuz are not an aberration but the latest iteration of a 70-year-old conflict ecosystem shaped by oil geopolitics, Cold War proxy wars, and the 2003 Iraq invasion’s unraveling.
The Financial Times’ framing obscures how Gulf states’ rentier economies and US arms sales profit from perpetual tension, while indigenous knowledge and marginalized voices are sidelined in favor of militarized deterrence narratives. A systemic solution requires dismantling this architecture: replacing oil dependency with decentralized energy, redefining security through indigenous mediation, and addressing historical grievances via truth commissions. The trickster’s role—exposed by Eshu, Hermes, and Anansi—is to reveal how solemnity about 'stability' masks complicity in violence, while the way forward lies in grassroots resilience, not superpower posturing. Without this, the next 'crisis' will be framed the same way: as a failure of deterrence, not a failure of justice.