The war with Iran has become a war for the American empire | Terry Newman

When the United States attacked Iran at the end of February, it seemed like a «war of choice» from Washington's perspective: an initiated operation designed to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb, not a direct threat to the United States itself. Half a year later, the picture from the United States' perspective has flipped. The war has become a war of no choice, because what is at stake is the very ability of the United States to control the sea, the basic condition for the status of a superpower.

Four waterways reveal this fact clearly. One is the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world's oil flows. It was effectively closed by Iran in response to attacks, sometimes with direct fire on tankers and sometimes with threats that made maritime insurance economically unviable. Bab-el-Mandeb, the southern gate of the Red Sea, became another arena of threat: the Houthis, a focus of the Iranian «axis», declared a blockade on Saudi vessels and attacked oil tankers.

The Suez Canal, the lifeline between Asia and Europe, was also hit: last week, the Egyptian port of Damietta, adjacent to the northern opening of the canal, suffered an unidentified drone attack that Western intelligence sources attribute to Iran or one of its proxies. Saudi tankers were attacked on their way to the canal, which prompted giant shipping companies to avoid arriving in the area and to sail via the Cape of Good Hope, a journey longer by weeks. And Hezbollah, for its part, continues to maintain an Iranian anchor at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, a foothold that also challenges maritime freedom of action at the border of Europe.

This is not a story about oil alone. This is a story about who controls the waves. Britain lost its empire not on the day it gave up this or that colony, but the moment it lost the ability to project power at sea, when its Royal Navy ceased to be the undisputed maritime force that secures imperial supply and trade lines. Maritime power is a condition for global power.

Here enters the deepest economic dimension: the American national debt, which has already reached about 39.8 trillion dollars. Since the abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 and the birth of the «petrodollar» system, an agreement that linked the sale of oil to dollars, Washington can borrow cheaply in an almost unlimited way, because the world needs dollars to buy energy. But this system survives only as long as the United States can guarantee the flow of oil and goods at sea. If the waterways are locked, not only are the energy markets undermined. The logic that holds the dollar as the world's currency and Washington's ability to finance a huge debt at a low interest rate is also undermined.

The author is a geopolitical expert and author of the book «The Jewish Century».