For decades, the United States built a sanctions regime designed to strangle Iran's economy and lock it out of the global financial system. Now Iran is using that very exclusion as a weapon - targeting the energy infrastructure, shipping lanes, and financial networks that form the backbone of the US-led regional order.
Narges Bajoghli, an anthropologist at Johns Hopkins SAIS, argued in Foreign Affairs that Iran's economic campaign is not random escalation but a systematic assault on the architecture Washington spent decades constructing, "Hvylya" reports.
The centerpiece is the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil and one-third of its fertilizer travel. Iran cannot fully close the waterway, but the credible threat of disruption is enough to rattle energy markets, spike shipping insurance costs, and force the US to divert enormous military resources to keeping trade lanes open. The analysis described this as holding the petrodollar system hostage.
The logic is brutally simple. A country expelled from the global capitalist system has little stake in preserving it - and significant incentive to threaten it. Iran's strikes on ports, banks, and technology firms across the Gulf all serve this purpose. "Each month that energy markets remain volatile, shipping costs remain elevated, and Gulf investors remain uncertain, the case for dollar-denominated oil settlements weakens at the margins," Bajoghli wrote.
Tehran is already pursuing oil deals in Chinese renminbi, while Beijing, Moscow, and Riyadh hold their own parallel discussions about alternatives to dollar-based trade. For Iran, the cost of this economic campaign is low. For Washington, the cost of defending the system it built is far higher.
"Hvylya" earlier reported on why the US remains vulnerable to energy disruptions despite being the world's largest oil producer.