US blockade fuels Iran's toll booth in the Strait of Hormuz

By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit · September 13, 2026

When the price of diesel hits six dollars a gallon, the people in the Situation Room don’t feel it.

When the price of diesel hits six dollars a gallon, the people in the Situation Room don’t feel it. They don’t feel the panic of a trucker wondering if a single haul will cover the mortgage, or the dread of a family in a place like my hometown of Flint wondering if the heating bill is about to swallow the grocery budget. But for the people playing the great game of geopolitical chicken in the Persian Gulf, those numbers aren't a crisis—they're leverage.

The latest blood-price for this leverage was paid on Sunday, September 13, 2026. As reported by CBC News, an Iranian commercial cargo vessel was struck off Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz, leaving one crew member dead and four wounded. While the Qeshm governor is quick to blame a "terrorist enemy," the reality is that this ship was just another pawn in a war that has been grinding since February. This isn't an isolated tragedy; it is the predictable result of a strategy that treats the global supply chain as a hostage.

The War Tax Paid at the Pump

The violence isn't limited to the water. CNA reports that Saudi Arabia was forced to temporarily close its 1,200-kilometer East-West pipeline on Saturday after a drone attack originating in Iraq sent plumes of black smoke south of Medina. That pipeline carries four to five percent of the world's global oil supply. The immediate reaction was a surge in Brent crude above $100 a barrel and a record-shattering spike in US retail diesel.

To the architects of this conflict, these spikes are "market signals." To the rest of us, it’s a war tax. We are seeing a coordinated strangulation of two critical chokepoints: the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb, where the Houthis seized the strategic island of Perim on Friday. The Houthis, backed by Iran, have been running this playbook since their blockade began in July, echoing the same asymmetric maritime attacks we saw during the 2021-2023 Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

The pattern is clear: hit the infrastructure, spike the price, and wait for the working class of the world to scream loud enough that their governments blink. It is a cynical, extractive cycle where the vulnerability of the consumer is weaponized to force political concessions.

A Blueprint Borrowed from the Eighties

We have been here before. This isn't "unprecedented" chaos; it is a revival of the Tanker War. From 1981 to 1988, Iran and Iraq turned the Persian Gulf into a shooting gallery, targeting hundreds of merchant vessels to exert political pressure and disrupt trade. The mechanism is identical: the deliberate targeting of non-combatant commercial shipping to turn a regional dispute into a global economic emergency. The Tanker War proved that when you turn a maritime chokepoint into a battlefield, the only winners are the arms dealers and the speculators.

We saw the dress rehearsals for this return to form during the 2019 Iranian oil tanker attacks, where tensions flared as a response to US sanctions. We saw it again in the 2023-2024 Red Sea crisis, where naval coalitions were deployed not to bring peace, but to protect the flow of capital while the underlying conflict continued to burn.

The tragedy of the long record is that we never learn that "stability" enforced by warships is a lie. The United States is currently maintaining a blockade of Iranian ports, a move that Iran’s president told India Today TV must be terminated before the waterway can truly reopen. By maintaining this blockade, the United States isn't preventing war; it is providing the justification for Iran to treat the Strait of Hormuz as its own private toll booth.

The High Cost of Intelligence Without Action

The current diplomatic "effort" is a farce. Al Jazeera reports that Iran and Oman are discussing an agreement to govern the Strait, but Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has been blunt: the agreement will not trigger a reopening of the waterway. Instead, Iran is demanding recognition of its control over the Strait so it can collect fees from ships.

This is where the "both sides" framing falls apart. On one side, you have an autocracy demanding a toll on global trade. On the other, you have a US administration that is perfectly happy to let the region bleed as long as it doesn't have to commit boots on the ground. Donald Trump, speaking from a golf tournament in Ireland, stated that Iran was "probably to blame" for the pipeline strikes. He confirmed that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia phoned him on Thursday begging for military help against the Houthis, only to be told that Washington would provide "intelligence" but not direct intervention.

"Intelligence" is the word the powerful use when they want to watch a fire from a safe distance. By refusing to intervene directly while simultaneously maintaining a blockade that chokes Iran, the United States is playing a double game. It is keeping the pressure high enough to maintain a state of war, but not high enough to actually resolve it. This is the same kind of calculated negligence I saw in Flint—the people in charge knew the system was poisoning the people, but they decided the cost of fixing it was too high for their specific budget.

The result is a regional proxy war where the Houthis can seize islands and Iran can threaten the world's energy supply, all while the US maintains a blockade that ensures the tension never truly breaks. The Houthis even phoned the administration to ask that Washington not become directly involved. When both your enemies and your allies are asking you to stay out of the fight, but you keep the blockade in place, you aren't pursuing "strategic interests." You are maintaining a state of managed instability.

The ledger for this conflict is written in the blood of sailors and the empty pockets of drivers. We are told this is about "security and stability," but security for whom? Not for the crew of a cargo ship off Qeshm Island. Not for the people in Jazan where Houthi projectiles are hitting mosques. And certainly not for the American worker paying six dollars for diesel.

The United States is treating the Middle East like a chessboard, but the pieces are human lives and the stakes are the global economy. By clinging to a blockade that fuels Iranian desperation and offering "intelligence" instead of a real diplomatic exit, the Trump administration is ensuring that the Tanker War of the 2020s will be longer and more expensive than the one in the eighties. The only thing that changes is that this time, the cost is being passed directly to a global working class that can no longer afford the bill.

US blockade fuels Iran's toll booth in the Strait of Hormuz

The War Tax Paid at the Pump

A Blueprint Borrowed from the Eighties

The High Cost of Intelligence Without Action

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