The Strait of Hormuz, that slender throat through which the world’s oil supply gargles its black morning phlegm, remains firmly clamped by the fist of geopolitical theatre. The Royal Navy, those proud inheritors of Nelson’s tradition of looking splendid while the world burns, have deployed HMS Duncan and HMS Montrose to escort British-flagged tankers through the chokepoint. It is a scene of high drama: destroyers bristling with missiles, tankers laden with liquid wealth, and a region that has historically treated diplomacy as a prelude to arson.
The blockade, in case you have been living under a rock that is also blockaded, is the latest act in a long-running opera of grievances between Iran and the West. Tehran, in a move that surprised absolutely no one with a working knowledge of 20th-century history, decided that making the world’s petrol stations nervous was a fine way to protest sanctions. The result? Oil prices have shot up like a startled cat, insurance rates for tankers have inflated to the cost of a modest yacht, and the Admiralty has dusted off its finest salt-stained uniforms for some gunboat diplomacy.
But let us not pretend this is anything other than a kabuki dance with extremely high stakes. The Royal Navy’s mission is called “Operation Sentinel” or some such heroic nomenclature. In practice, it involves a lot of steaming back and forth, looking menacing, and hoping that everyone remembers the last time a superpower tried to bully a small country through a narrow waterway. The tankers themselves are rerouted, adding days to their journeys and billions to the global shipping bill. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence’s press office pumps out statements about “freedom of navigation” that sound like they were written by an AI that has only read Horatio Hornblower novels.
I have been telephoning Whitehall sources, though they are about as forthcoming as a clam with a hangover. One anonymous admiral assured me that the situation is “under control,” which is precisely what every naval officer has said before something goes spectacularly wrong. “We have a robust escort plan,” he burbled down the line, “and we are in constant communication with our allies.” Allies who, I note, are all similarly engaged in the time-honoured tradition of looking busy while the oil tankers do the actual work.
What the public is not told is that the real chaos is happening in the boardrooms of BP and Shell. The rerouting means tankers must sail around the Cape of Good Hope, a journey that adds weeks and consumes enough fuel to power a small African nation. The cost will be passed on to you, dear reader, the next time you fill your car with petrol. It is a tax on existence, levied by a world that cannot stop squabbling over who owns the right to pump black gold from the earth.
And what of the politicians? The Prime Minister has called for calm, which is politician-speak for “I have no idea what to do.” The Foreign Secretary is “deeply concerned,” a phrase that has been used so often it ought to be trademarked. The opposition is demanding action, though they would not know action if it bit them on the legislative process. All the while, the ships sail on, the oil flows or does not, and the world holds its breath in a manner that suggests we are all collectively expecting a punchline that has not yet been written.
The Strait of Hormuz is still blocked. The Royal Navy is escorting. The tankers are rerouting. And the only thing certain is that tomorrow will bring another absurd chapter in this never-ending saga of money, power, and the indomitable human capacity for self-inflicted crisis.
