The image that is being peddled to the world is not new. A US President controlling every lever, a belligerent Iran being squeezed into submission, an Israeli PM sitting shotgun and a Strait that is going to be pried open, any day now. Take out the dance and the landscape turns upside down. Eighty days into the most disruptive Middle East war in a generation, it's not Tehran that's running out of road. It is Washington. A man screwing the bolts on the White House isn't sitting in a bunker in Natanz. He's seated in Jerusalem.

The math of the strait of Hormuz is all the evidence anyone needs before hearing a politician's lips move. Before the shooting began Feb. 28, the slender waterway between the countries of Iran and Oman transported about a fifth of the world's seaborne oil and about 20 percent of its LNG. The International Energy Agency now says the crude and fuel flows through the waterway broke down by around four million barrels a day in March and April and the supply losses from the Gulf producers have passed one billion barrels while over 14 million barrels a day of production have been shut in. The Agency has been sounding unusually stark warnings that, even if the war ends next month, the global oil market will still be a materially undersupplied market through October.

The numbers have been consistent as the market reads. Brent, which had been trading at about 70 dollars a barrel before the war, surged past 100 dollars in early March, peaked at 126 and closed Friday at more than 108, up about eight percent for the week. After Trump's two-day meeting in Beijing with Xi Jinping resulted in no specific commitment on the issue of Hormuz, the West Texas Intermediate has surged above 107 on Monday. Goldman Sachs has raised its projection for the price of Brent oil in the fourth quarter to 90 dollars from 80. Citi has offered to pay up to $150 if flows remain stalled after June. The physical benchmark, the North Sea Dated, had a range of only around $50 in April. Not the numbers of a President who holds "all the cards. These are the digits of a President who's caught in the middle of geography.

The Strait of Hormuz, the 33-km (20-mile) 'bottleneck' through which about one-fifth of the world's oil passes.

When you consider where that oil should be and the asymmetry becomes more stark. During 2024 approximately 84 per cent of crude shipments transiting the Strait were headed for Asia. About a third of China's oil imports are from the route. It is the staple food of the refineries of India, Japan and South Korea. Between 12-14% of the LNG imports to Europe come from Qatar, all of it via the Hormuz strait. About one-third of the world's urea and between a fifth and a third of ammonia from which every fertilizer bag from Punjab to Iowa is made is exported from the Persian Gulf. When the IEA tells us that aviation activity is at far less than normal, and that jet fuel prices have increased by nearly 300 per cent at one point, it is telling us that the world economy is quietly moving into recession, due to the inability of two governments to agree terms.

Why Tehran has more leverage than the script suggests - visualization of the dependence

That reliance is exactly why the Iranian negotiating stance has not come to an end. According to the mainstream narrative, Tehran is "cornered," its "proxies" "degraded," its "missiles" "exhausted" and its "navy" is "on the bottom of the Gulf. Under the naval blockade, the regime is being "strangled economically," at the rate of $500 million a day, the White House spokeswoman says. All that might be correct. None of it alters the one number that matters on the global energy scene: zero. Until Hormuz reopens at full capacity, each barrel of Saudi, Emirati, Kuwaiti, Iraqi, Qatari and Iranian crude that doesn't get to the world is a barrel that pushes up prices at American pumps, European factories and Indian gas stations. As a research fellow at the University of South Florida's Global and National Security Institute said earlier this month, while “instability is leverage” for Tehran, “stabilisation” is the name of the game for Washington. Energy prices remain high, and the Strait remains closed and Iran still has one of the most powerful chips remaining in the game.

Iran has been wielding that ploy effectively. Tehran has now offered to allow commercial ships and entities working with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy to pass through what it has termed “Project Freedom”, with costs to be charged for transit through the shipping corridor. Flag of the United States and allied flags are specifically excluded. While China, the biggest single importer of Hormuz crude, has declined to join the toll system, it also has rejected the notion of leaning on Tehran the way Washington has hinted it should. An Iranian state broadcaster put it starkly last week: a new era has started in the Strait of Hormuz since the fastest and easiest way to pass through that waterway is now through coordination with the IRGC Navy. Read the sentence carefully! Is not the language of a power that's been defeated. It's the language of a power that asserts sovereignty over the world's most costly saltwater.

The Israeli border no one dare cross

As Iran continues to harden, Israel is hardening even harder, and in the other direction. The Prime Minister had declared to CBS that "the war is not over" and that there is still uranium to be removed, enrichment sites to be dismantled, proxies to be broken and missiles to be destroyed. He was pressed on how the enriched material will be removed and in four words, you go in and you take it out. As CNN reports, the situation inside Jerusalem is even worse than described. One top Israeli official told the network that the country would be “happy if there will be no deal”, happy if the siege on Hormuz continued, and happy if Iran had a few more strikes. Another spoke was "real concern that Trump will reach a bad deal", which is the status of the two governments' relations as of now.

In fact, the Israeli list of demands has been reduced in secret. In February the Prime Minister established five conditions: complete removal of enriched uranium, dismantling enrichment capacity, dealing with ballistic missiles, break the proxy network, and intrusive inspections. One source close to the negotiations said the missiles and the proxies are "probably off the table" 10 weeks into the talks. All that is left is the uranium struggle, and that is the one that the Israeli leadership has determined is one that it must die on. The call between Jerusalem and Washington on Sunday discussed the possibility of resumption of strikes. By Monday the Israeli press was running screenshots of the “stormy seas” AI-generated image the US President posted on Truth Social, with an Iranian flag and a caption that read “the calm before the storm”, alongside the US Navy admiral he posted. That signal doesn't require a clearance.

The American squeeze (real numbers)

At home the same effect is being felt in areas that American voters do notice. The Pentag has acknowledged that the running cost of the war has reached 29 billion dollars, $4 billion more than it told Congress two weeks ago. The US President suggested a federal gas-tax holiday and admitted out loud that prices will drop "like a rock" once the war ends, thereby showing how vulnerable his political situation is. California gasoline topped the $5 per gallon mark in the March rise. At one stage, Brent was trading within a $50 range for April, the biggest moves in recent oil-market history. The IEA thinks that the observed oil inventories for the world depleted by 250 million barrels in March and April. Goldman expects Brent to average 90 dollars in the fourth quarter. If there's any disruption through June, Citi has whispered 150 dollars. The refiners' margins are at all-time highs. Aviation activity is down. Limited availability of feedstock for production of petrochemicals. The half-acknowledgement of this slow-motion energy shock is what it looks like.

What Beijing has agreed and hasn't to do

The President was flying to China and hoped Xi Jinping would do some of his work for him. He left without it. On both sides there was an agreement in principle to keep "the straits" open. Xi is said to have committed himself to not supply Iran with military equipment. Beyond the photo-op lines, there was no tangible promise on reopening Hormuz from the two-day summit. China is the world's biggest buyer of oil via the Strait, yet China has several months of cushion with its strategic oil reserve of about a billion barrels. It does not necessarily have a compelling need to end Tehran's control and it has a few long-term reasons not to. The market response to the Trump-Xi readout was to push up both Brent and WTI the next week, a sign that the meeting was a bust.

The one thing that doesn't get heard.

The punchline is the one that is being written itself across newsrooms around the world: as long as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy is the one that decides what comes in and out of Hormuz no American administration controls the price of oil, the cost of fertilizer, the airfare to Dubai, or the inflation print in any major economy. In late February, it was launched on the basis of a "quick and effective" degradation of Iranian capability. Eighty days later and the most important capability, the choke hold on the Strait itself, is not impacted. It has been institutionalized, christened and fee-scaled, and is now tacitly accepted in China.

It is not Iran's clock that the President keeps talking about. It's the clock on his own midterm coalition, the clock on gasoline receipts, the clock on a Pentagon comptroller's spreadsheet, the clock on an Israeli ally that would prefer the war start again than the deal close. In almost identical wording, both the President, the Foreign Ministry and the state media of Tehran has indicated that it will not bow. As long as one of those clocks keeps ticking, the world will continue to pay rent on a 33-kilometre section of water which, in any real sense, it doesn't control. That's the truth behind the hype. Well, all the rest is theatre.