Etude de la structure étrange

Now, to summarize the situation.

Since the 28th of February 2026, Trump and Netanyahu have started a war against Iran’s islamist regime for … changing reasons. Regime change and stopping the Iranian nuclear program are the two reasons most often quoted. This has resulted in terrible disruption to trade in the Strait of Hormuz. This is important because the Strait of Hormuz is among the most important waterways in the world. Nearly a third of worldwide oil exports and a fifth of worldwide LNG exports went through this strait. This has enormous consequences, not just in terms of energy price (both electricity and car gas) but also for the entire petro-chemical industries.

Using this war and disruption, Iran started to demand the creation of a Hormuz toll, quickly including Oman (the other coast of the strait) as a potential partner in that toll idea, and recently trying to reframe it as a « fee for services rendered, » because tolls on natural seaways are not compatible with international law.

Now that the context has been presented, lets see what the consequences are.

1 – Political : the regime change

There was a regime change. I know this may surprise some people, but yes, there was one. It’s not a complete overthrow, but rather a transfer of power between two branches of the existing regime. Power moved from the purely religious group (the Shiite clergy, the Mollahs) to the religio-military group (the IRGC). This changes things in ways I am … not educated enough about Shiite extremists to fully understand to be quite honest. What jumps to me first and foremost is that with the IRGC taking more and more power, we risk seeing an increase in the violence of the repressions against the dissidents. Right now, there’s a systematic rape policy against female dissidents to bar them from heaven, and executions don’t care for the age of whoever’s getting hanged or shot. I fear it will get worse.

Worse yet, the IRGC is made up of religiously fanatic military people, which means they think in military terms. I expect even more budget to be diverted to military endeavours, meaning even less for the already horribly deprived Iranians. Tehran ran out of tap water before the war, and I’m not convinced much will be done to remedy that. After all, you now have military leaders high on fanaticism in command, and they have a Holy War to wage.

2 – Political : a reinforced regime

The regime had a great many heads of agencies, high-rank generals and other officials killed, yes. This has hurt the regime, make no mistake, but … it is not dead. They have a hierarchy in place, and methods to transfer power, a chain of succession, for most if not all of these positions. Which means … the dead have now already been replaced a while ago. There IS a loss of institutional knowledge and experience, but not a system collapse.

On the most basic levels of the pyramid however, they have recruited and armed a lot of people, forming religious para-military groups and militias, which allow greater societal control of repression of any dissenting opinion. This means that, for all that the top was hurt, the roots of the regime have dug themselves deeper in.

Considering the regime is more than unlikely to fall without military intervention, as it has shown extensive willingness to slaughter Iranians to remain in power, this increase in manpower has, de facto, reinforced and stabilised the regime on the ground. Trump was never going to order a ground assault, and Israel’s force projection capabilities and local geostrategic position forbid them from trying.

3 – Economic : the toll

Like I said, tolls on natural seaways are not acceptable according to international law. It has, in fact, been that way for a damn long time. A change to the laws of the sea would upend so many established systems that it would drive inflation into the goddamn stratosphere as everyone hikes up prices to cope with the new uncertainty. Pro-tip about the economy : when shit gets uncertain, prices go up. The more uncertain, the higher.

Since Iran realised that this would never go over and might in fact cause an international coalition against them, they are now trying to switch their claim to a fee for « services rendered, » which is the exact same thing, but not openly against international law. Basically, they’re doing the same thing the US are doing with their seizures of ships : hiding in the grey zones.

The main issue here, is that if they do it, others will too. I have an article on it, actually, right here. Feel free to read it and replace « toll » by « fee. » The end result is the same.

4 – Economy : energy exports

Hormuz, as I pointed out, is the corridor for a LOT of energy exports. Energy exports go to specific places, and in this case, a lot of it goes to Africa and East Asia. That means a lot of countries now have to ration their consumption of energy and gas, which translates to government measures in favour of working from home, calls to reduce usage of air conditionning, limits on how much gas you can buy, etc. This is, of course, not good for the economic activity of a lot of these countries, who are still actively fighting poverty. Those countries that ARE developped issue the same orders and policies, but risk seeing vital sectors of their economies suffer, causing social tensions and instability.

And, we get to the first content warning : people will die.

In regions of the globe where summer temperatures now traipse over 50°C on the reg, the point at which sweating doesn’t cool you anymore, use of air conditionning is now restrained, and is likely to remain so for a long time due to market disruption. People will die from heatstroke and dehydration. It will start with the most fragile people, too. Elderly, children, homeless … They will die.

5 – Economy : petro-chemicals

Petro-chemicals are all the chemicals created from oil refining or oil refining by-products. That is … a LOT of stuff. The most obvious is plastics, but petro-chemicals are found in many, many, many fields, from medicine to agriculture. Let’s go over two of the most important products that will be impacted :

Plastics, especially in food industries, are used to ensure a degree of sterile storage. Most bacteria cannot proliferate on it, and unlike metal, it does not oxidise at any significant rate. That means that putting something sterilized in a plastic container that hasn’t been tainted by contaminants significantly extends its shelf life, and thus the food security of the people that consume it. But now, with the oil shortage, plastic production is going to be severely reduced. That means less plastic to keep food safe, which in turn means greater food insecurity across the board.

People will die. Because food gets contaminated and/or improperly stored.

Another important branch of petro-chemicals are fertilisers. Fertilisers are vital to our current population, if we don’t have them, we can’t produce enough to feed everyone. And considering we fail to feed everyone when we actually produce enough to, I am not optimistic on the consequences for humans when a fertilizer shortage suddenly means we don’t produce enough to feed everyone.

You see, a lot of fertilizer production happens in the Gulf States. For instance, Asia, India and China buy roughly 20 % of their fertilizer in the Gulf states. We’re at around a 3rd of Humanity losing access to a fifth of the fertilizers they need. There is not a single cell in my body that is optimistic about this.

Worse, Africa buys a lot of their fertilizer from the Gulf States, and unlike Asia, India and China, many African countries do not benefit from naturally fertile land and lush regions. A lot of African farmland is, in fact, sandy and arid, meaning it is extremely dependant on fertilizers. Fertilizers whose supply … stopped.

People will die, because worldwide fertilizer production cannot replace production lost in the Gulf States, the US has cut international aid, and neither Europe nor China will have the economic and agricultural leeway to compensate with emergency food aid, let alone the political will. There is a very high likelyhood that there WILL be a famine in subsaharan Africa.

And people will die of hunger. Die in conflicts for dwindling ressources. Die along the migrations routes. Disappear in human trafficking, either through the underground Maghrebi slave markets or through the European forced prostitution networks, only to die later of abuse.