The Trap springs shut

Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Unravelling of American Hegemony in the Gulf

The year had barely begun when the Middle East lurched into open war. The assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — an act that analysts on the hawkish fringe had long fantasised about and sober strategists had long dreaded — detonated across the region with consequences that are now cascading far beyond anything Washington or Tel Aviv appear to have anticipated. The killing of a supreme spiritual authority of a 90-million-strong nation is not a surgical strike. For Shia Islam, it carries the symbolic weight of striking at the papacy itself. Within hours, the acting Supreme Leader had declared jihad against the West, and the streets of Tehran were not burning in revolt — they were consolidating.