The ink on the ceasefire agreement was barely dry when the next confrontation began. Within weeks of the truce that had seemed to pull the United States and Iran back from the edge of open conflict, both sides were manoeuvring once again — this time for control of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world's traded oil passes every single day. What had looked like a diplomatic off-ramp now looks, to many analysts, like a pause rather than a resolution. The strait has long been a pressure point that Iran uses with precision.

Tehran has previously threatened to close the passage entirely, and its naval forces have harassed commercial tankers and foreign warships in the Gulf with enough regularity to keep insurance premiums — and nerves — permanently elevated. Washington, for its part, has maintained a significant naval presence in the region for decades, viewing freedom of navigation as a strategic and economic imperative that it is not willing to negotiate away. Neither side, in other words, is inclined to blink first. The consequences of miscalculation extend well beyond the two countries directly involved.

A sustained disruption to Hormuz traffic would ripple through energy markets from Tokyo to Frankfurt within days, hitting import-dependent economies in Asia particularly hard. Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which export the overwhelming majority of their oil through the strait, would face an acute crisis of their own even as they attempt to stay formally neutral in the dispute.