The Strait of Hormuz, Mirror of the World’s Contradictions

The Strait of Hormuz has held the world up to a magnifying mirror of its own contradictions, much as the Covid-19 crisis did, or the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Modern prosperity rests on global stability and the free flow of material exchanges — maritime routes, molecules, cables, ports, interest rates — within a globalisation built on the economy of contemporary reality. Faced with an energy crisis, reactions now follow a familiar pattern: rising oil prices make renewable energy more attractive, soaring gas prices heighten the importance of safer routes, and notions of reclaimed sovereignty reassert themselves in public debate.

This logic is not wrong, but it is simply incomplete. With the Hormuz crisis, globalisation enters a phase of progressive foundering, its liquidity dissolving into the labyrinths of shifting sands. States that simultaneously wish to rearm, decarbonise, protect their social model, fund an ageing population, invest in artificial intelligence, support their industry and reduce their debt find themselves trapped in a context of sluggish growth and shrinking budgetary margins, amid structural collapses that have brought Europe — once hailed as the “heart of the world” — closer to third-world conditions, as the chapter of its cultural progressivism and intellectual authority draws to a close.

To this is added the melancholy disillusionment over the fall of the American dream once proclaimed by the celebrated Declaration of Independence of 1776, while democratic spaces dissolve into voids and political populisms. The private sector and civil society cannot substitute for the state when it comes to bearing political or strategic risks, nor can they alone shoulder the task of returning to a more satisfactory state of affairs.

Stability, in reality, comes only after risk disengagement carried out by the public sector, not in its place. The equation is formidable: the more dangerous the world becomes, the more indispensable investments in sovereignty grow — yet these require states endowed with intellectual, political, financial and social solvency, at the very moment when the multiplication of crises renders those same states more fragile. The global public service is disintegrating — shared debts, trimmed ambitions — the solutions are known, and so are the disagreements. The strait crisis represents not merely a shock to hydrocarbon prices, an inflation of freight costs, disruptions to supply chains and industrial overheads; it also lays bare the shock sustained by modern societies’ capacity to adapt to conflicts and collapses within the “Tower of Babel” of geopolitical fractures, as well as the threat posed by a minority of billionaires who present themselves as superior and all-powerful, capable of bringing the world to heel in pursuit of inordinately cultivated interests, without bearing the slightest moral cost.

Hamlet, Shakespeare’s masterpiece devoted to the mercurial prince, seems to be living through a singularly chosen moment. The fictional tale of loss that inspired the creation of Hamlet — a character at once pragmatic and unattainably ideal — is perfectly suited to our age, where the torrent of bad news ceaselessly fuels existential questionings, and people are exhausted by the relentless cascade of the world’s calamities. How can this man of multiple inner dissonances find his place in a world that persists in misunderstanding him, in recasting his anxieties as simplified narratives, in confronting him with complicity in a failing political system so closely akin to our own that it generates a pervasive, generalised sadness? The world perceives all too clearly that everything Donald Trump wants amounts, in essence, to: “Take this thing and do with it as you please.” Each day he exhibits his facetious gesticulations, addressing his audience directly with a theatrical steadiness that carries considerable weight. And this manner of being instils in the world a persistent unease — a president hyperconnected on his Truth Social platform, posting almost every hour a statement that sets the entire world in motion, things that are difficult to decipher.

The world’s rhythm now turns on the narratives surrounding America and Iran: are they drawing closer to a deal, or perhaps not; the agreement with Iran is largely concluded and will be announced soon, or there is no urgency to announce any deal, and indeed there may be no deal at all. These are but a sample of Trump’s bewildering messages. Yet it does appear that the warring parties are genuinely approaching an understanding, even if it will not be a comprehensive agreement bringing the war to a definitive end. At best, it would likely take the form of a provisional accord around a set of general principles — an extension of the ceasefire for at least sixty days — affording time to negotiate the modalities of implementing those principles, with negotiators still needing to work through the details. Every detail, every word of a declaration of intent will carry weight and be scrutinised closely. But what matters most will depend on what happens thereafter. Iran wants at all costs to avoid the scenario of a provisional and fragile agreement that its adversaries might use to prepare for a war that Trump will in all likelihood not launch again after the end of the World Cup, and just weeks before the midterm elections. But can Iran obtain from the United States a commitment that Israel will also be bound by the agreement? That is far from certain.

The Iranian regime may well have survived the war. The Revolutionary Guards have consolidated their grip on power and demonstrated to the United States, Israel and the Gulf states that a large-scale war was insufficient to make them yield, let alone to bring them down. They have discovered that closing the Strait of Hormuz amounted to a deterrent nearly equivalent to a nuclear weapon, and they now intend to levy tolls on it to compensate for the damage caused by the conflict. But who will verify compliance? And what will become of the existing nuclear installations? These will be long and complex nuclear discussions, bearing notably on Iran’s stockpile of more than four hundred kilograms of enriched uranium. America has long demanded its transfer abroad, while Iran insists on diluting it on its own soil. Mr Trump has hinted that he might accept the latter option, perhaps under the supervision of an “Atomic Energy Commission”, without making clear whether he meant the American body of that name — dissolved in 1974 — or the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog.

The most contentious issue remains Iran’s demand for substantial economic benefits. The regime hopes to recover promptly a portion of its assets, estimated at one hundred billion dollars, frozen in foreign banks. American officials say they are prepared to grant a waiver allowing Iran to export some of its oil, but refuse any direct release of funds until definitive progress has been made. Meanwhile, the theocratic regime is already counting on everything it might hope to obtain, beginning with the reconstruction of its ballistic missile programme and its militias through the billions that will flow into its coffers with the potential lifting of sanctions under a final agreement — which would only complicate an already heavily burdened situation further.

Troubling situations, or at least near-troubling ones: a war partially lost, partially missed, a war for nothing or only in order to gain nothing. A war in which losses and gains prove insufficient to justify the contest, and which above all leaves everything far below the previous status quo. This is the political fear of leaving the Gulf states and the region in a state of shock, with morale at its lowest, threatening political regimes unaccustomed, on one side or the other, to cohabiting with instability — beneath the watchword of “peace through strength”, supposedly extending to an entirely new Middle East.

And if confidence has not disappeared but has simply deserted the Middle East region through the American desire to occupy every space within nautical miles of China, to control every scenario, to reduce everything to a narrative, and where every promise is perceived as designed to be traded — then the world must stop searching for absolute trust. The next two years will be decisive in terms of the capacity to remain in the global game industrially, technologically and geopolitically. Everyone will arrive with their own pressures, fears and national priorities, at the very moment when the world must think collectively to settle the bill of a time that keeps passing.