February 28th, 2026, A day many Americans have seen coming for so many years but couldn’t have predicted would have gone down on this day at 6:35 am, where Tomahawk missiles and Israeli bombers hit Iran with a conjoined effort in a coordinated campaign from the US. This campaign included intense bombing of nuclear facilities, as the main purpose in President Trump’s words was, “to annihilate any chance of the development of a nuclear warhead.” This resulted in the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But the most poignant question now is the nuance of it all and how this sequence of events causes hundreds of dominoes to fall, leading to a mass energy crisis today.
Domino 1: The years of escalation
The pathway to the event on February 28th is paved with escalation, with some notable ones being failed nuclear negotiations, a twelve-day air conflict in 2025, and a catastrophic crackdown on Iranian protesters in January of 2026, which deteriorated what was left of diplomatic channels.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff had warned President Trump explicitly that an attack could prompt Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz. Trump dismissed the concern, telling his team Iran would capitulate rather than risk its own economic lifeline. He was wrong. Within hours of the strikes killing Khamenei, Iran unleashed barrages of missiles and drones on Israeli cities, U.S. bases in the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain, and commercial shipping in the Gulf. The conflict pulled Lebanon back into open war as Hezbollah launched rockets into northern Israel. By March 4th, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) made it official: the Strait of Hormuz was closed.
Domino 2:
To fully understand the significance of the closure of the 34 km wide channel between Iran and Oman and why it has shaken every economy on earth, you would have to understand what flows through it on a daily basis. The Strait of Hormuz is not simply a highway of goods, but the single most crucial energy chokepoint of the global economy. Before the war, roughly 20% of global petroleum and 20% of the world’s liquefied natural gas passed through the strait each year, with around 3,000 vessels making the transit monthly. The oil flowing through it supplies the bulk of energy needs for countries across Asia, Japan, South Korea, India, and China, chief among them, as well as significant portions of European supply through LNG from Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility, the world’s largest gas export terminal.
Domino 3:
The closure cascaded into an almost immediate effect worldwide. Even before Iran’s official declaration, the shipping industry had begun its retreat. Maersk, CMA CGM, and Hapag-Lloyd, three of the world’s largest container lines, suspended transits. War-risk protection and indemnity insurance was pulled for ships attempting the route. The economics became insurmountable. By March 2nd, no tankers in the strait were broadcasting Automatic Identification System signals. The vital artery of our modern human world had gone silent.
What followed, the International Energy Agency would call the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.” Brent crude surged 10 to 13% within days. By March 31st, U.S. gas prices hit $4 a gallon, up 30% since the opening salvos. Jet fuel spiked 95%. Airlines added baggage surcharges. So did Amazon, FedEx, and the U.S. Postal Service.
The cascade hit every corner of the globe, though not at the same speed. In India, where 60% of LPG demand moves through Hormuz, cooking fuel lines formed within weeks. Restaurants across Mumbai went dark. The Philippines declared a national energy emergency on March 24th. European gas storage, worn down to 30% capacity after a brutal winter, watched Dutch TTF benchmarks nearly double past €60/MWh by mid-March. The European Central Bank shelved its planned rate cuts and slashed growth forecasts. Germany and Italy were on recession watch.
Iran’s IRGC had also laid sea mines in the strait, fewer than ten by most accounts, but enough to complicate any future reopening. An IRGC advisor warned publicly that he would “set fire to any ship coming through.” The U.S.-flagged tanker Stena Imperative was struck twice at the port of Bahrain. A port worker was killed.
Domino 4:
The three pivotal countries:
The United States went in with clear objectives: neutralize Iran’s nuclear program and, implicitly, topple the government. What it did not anticipate was that killing Khamenei would harden Iranian resolve rather than break it. Trump escalated anyway, threatening civilian energy infrastructure, setting an April 7th deadline, and launching a counter-blockade on Iranian ports on April 13th that cut off all maritime access to Iranian coastal areas. On May 4th, the U.S. launched “Operation Project Freedom,” a Navy escort mission to push merchant ships through the strait, then paused it two days later, citing progress in negotiations. As a major energy exporter, the U.S. has quietly profited from surging oil prices while its allies and its own consumers absorbed the damage.
Iran, ground down by years of sanctions and internal repression, and still absorbing the shock of losing its supreme leader, has run the strait with strategic patience. Tehran has selectively allowed passage for countries that negotiated bilateral deals and for ships willing to pay substantial tolls, which shipping analysts now call a toll booth at the world’s most important chokepoint. The ceasefire talks have stalled on a basic incompatibility: Washington demands a complete halt to uranium enrichment; Tehran insists on the right to continue and on keeping the strait as a permanent card to play.
China has the most to lose and has done the least. As the world’s largest buyer of Gulf oil and the destination for at least 90% of Iran’s annual oil exports, Beijing’s exposure to a prolonged blockade is enormous. Wang Yi met his Iranian counterpart in Beijing on May 6th, calling for a ceasefire and the reopening of the strait. China has also been sanctioned by the U.S. for continuing to buy Iranian oil throughout the crisis. Beijing-affiliated analysts have privately told reporters that China lacks both the will and the means to genuinely pressure either side. When Bahrain drafted a UN Security Council resolution calling for an end to Iranian attacks and coordinated ship escorts, China and Russia vetoed it, then China called for freedom of navigation to be guaranteed as a shared international obligation. The Trump-Xi summit on May 14th and 15th in Beijing is now the most-watched diplomatic event of the crisis. U.S. advisors have urged Beijing to use it to press Iran directly on access to shipping. That Iran’s foreign minister visited Beijing in the days before the summit read to most analysts as Tehran making sure it remained visible to its most important partner before any deals got made without it.
Lastly, domino 5:
A conditional ceasefire was announced on April 7th and 8th, brokered by Pakistan with China pushing it over the line. It did not reopen the strait. Commercial traffic through Hormuz currently sits at roughly 5% of pre-war levels. Some 230 loaded oil tankers remain stranded inside the Persian Gulf, waiting. Vitol CEO Russell Hardy estimated in late April that 1 billion barrels of oil production would ultimately be lost due to the conflict, with current losses already between 600 and 700 million barrels.
Three negotiations are running in parallel, all unresolved. The nuclear question: U.S. demands for a complete halt to enrichment clash with Iran’s insistence on the right to enrich as a matter of sovereignty. The blockade deadlock: Iran has argued that the U.S. counter-blockade of Iranian ports violates the ceasefire and has reimposed strait restrictions in response, and neither side has fully backed down. The toll booth problem: Iran’s parliament reportedly drafted legislation in mid-April to formally codify charging non-hostile nations for passage, a legal framework that would permanently transform the strait into a political instrument.
The IEA’s 32 member nations have released 400 million barrels of emergency reserves. Europe is racing to lock down alternative LNG sources. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the only Gulf states with overland pipeline alternatives to Hormuz, are running at capacity. Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility, struck by Iranian drones in early March, has been assessed as largely undamaged but remains shut pending security guarantees. Gulf economists warn that if the blockade holds through the summer, oil could hit $150 a barrel and gas $40 per million thermal units.
The world built a global economy on the assumption that the Strait of Hormuz would always be open. That assumption is gone. The question now is not just when the strait reopens, but what gets rebuilt around the knowledge that it can be closed, and that one nation, cornered and badly damaged, chose to close it.
