Seven weeks after it broke out, the conflict in Iran proves that there is something more unpredictable than President Trump: war itself. The Hormuz standoff confirms, almost five centuries later, Machiavelli's warning: “You can start a war when you want, but it doesn't end when you want.”
PHOTO EPA EFE
The global shock is in full swing, with an increasingly serious impact since the strategic area through which a fifth of the world's oil transited was blocked. American military superiority has so far proved insufficient in the face of a dangerous and beyond-death adversary: Ayatollah Khamenei – whose elimination was supposed to be the fatal blow to the Iranian regime on the morning of February 28.
The improvisation imposed by Trump on the US military was answered with the application of the “offensive defense” doctrine, which Ali Khamenei developed since 2012. Its purpose is to combat the enemy beyond Iran's borders, through the complex military network it has created in the region, through drone and missile attacks on neighboring US allied states and, above all, through the use of energy weapons.
Iran has taken the interconnected global economy hostage in the Islamic republic's war for survival. The economic war is costing each of us more and more in our daily lives.
Europe, the big loser?
The way Tehran uses its asymmetric retaliation capabilities is helping to erode the myth of American invincibility. In vain is the American leader venting his frustration on his European NATO partners – whom he did not consult before attacking and whom he has antagonized since last year with threats of tariffs and the annexation of Greenland. Europe risks being the main loser, economically and strategically, of the power games surrounding this war.
And the transatlantic rift deepens to Russia's satisfaction. The temporary easing of U.S. sanctions on Russian oil and the price increase saved Putin just as the volume of Russian oil exports and revenues from this vital sector for Russia had in February hit their lowest level since the invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian economy, on the brink of recession, received an unexpected breath of oxygen. In the first week of April, oil export earnings jumped to the highest level since June 2022. That will reflect on Moscow's ability to continue financing its military campaign.
The war in Iran is a gift for Putin and because the stocks of American weapons are directed to the Middle East, with the risk of depriving Ukraine of support in the coming period.
The race for global supremacy
For its part, China is trying to take advantage of the crisis in Iran, diplomatically, to show itself as a more predictable global partner than the US. But it is starting to feel the economic effects, after initially being cushioned by the safety net of a diversified energy mix, in which oil makes up 18%, according to the International Energy Agency. Before the war, Iran provided 12% of China's oil supply, which bought 80% of Iranian oil.
Perhaps most important, however, is for China to weigh how far Trump's willingness to use military force can go: to defend Taiwan against possible Chinese aggression?
The spectacular operation to capture the president of Venezuela and the US attacks on Iran's infrastructure, including nuclear, probably have more warning value than as a precedent that could be invoked by Beijing in a hypothetical expansionist impulse. A momentum that could be stimulated by a long-term redirection of American forces from the Indo-Pacific space to the Persian Gulf.
In any case, the impact of the blockade of Hormuz is of interest to Beijing, given Taiwan's chronic dependence on energy imports (over 95% of the island's needs) and the suffocating effect of a blockade that China would be able to impose on Taiwanese ports, located 130-180 km from its coasts.
It is clear, for now, that the US actions in Venezuela and Iran have hit two important allies of China. And that Trump's hot spots – Greenland, Venezuela and Iran – have one thing in common: wealth of natural resources. Which resources are essential in the race with China for global supremacy.
Beyond the heady rhetoric of the US president, there is one constant in the actions of the Trump administration: strategic chaos. It remains to be seen who will benefit in the end from this permanent challenge of international disorder.
