Iran wants to charge a dollar a barrel in cryptocurrency for every ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz and require vessels to coordinate with the Iranian military - conditions that historian Niall Ferguson calls a strategic catastrophe for the United States if accepted.
Ferguson analyzed the Hormuz standoff in a Free Press interview, framing the strait as the single most important unresolved issue of the war, "Hvylya" reports.
"You can't possibly sign an agreement that leaves them in their current position as terrorist tollkeeper of one of the biggest choke points in the global economy," Ferguson said. Iran's ten-point plan is unambiguous: Tehran intends to maintain control of the strait, and the number of ships transiting in the past 24 hours showed no increase since the ceasefire was announced.
The strait's closure represents the largest energy shock in decades - bigger, Ferguson argued, than anything since the 1970s. "This is the biggest energy shock that we've seen in our lifetimes. And I include the 1970s, because I'm old enough to have lived through that," he said. As long as shipping remains restricted, economic pain grows worldwide, and that pain is central to Iran's strategy.
Ferguson drew a historical comparison to the 1973 oil embargo. President Nixon sent Henry Kissinger to convince Saudi Arabia to lift its embargo - an unintended consequence of US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. It took four months of shuttle diplomacy. "This is a tougher assignment for Vice President Vance than Henry Kissinger had in 1973-74. And let's remember that that was Henry Kissinger," Ferguson said.
Trump hinted at a possible resolution: some kind of joint venture in which the US and other nations share revenues from tolls on shipping. Ferguson considered this unlikely to succeed without military pressure. The two-week ceasefire window, he predicted, will prove far too short for negotiations between sides whose positions are diametrically opposed on nearly every point.
Also read: "Hvylya" previously examined how every Tomahawk fired at Iran weakens American deterrence elsewhere.