For half a century, the Strait of Hormuz was Iran’s weapon. Today, it is its noose. The mathematics of energy have flipped, and with them the balance of coercive power in the Persian Gulf.

Iran’s implicit deterrent was geographic, spanning from the tanker wars of the 1980s to the sanctions standoffs of the 2010s. Almost 20% of global seaborne oil, and a similar share of liquefied natural gas, passes through the Strait. The formula was simple: any military confrontation that threatened the Tehran regime risked a closure that would halt trade supplies, spike crude prices, bleed Western consumers, and, above all, inflict pain on the United States, who was the world’s largest oil importer.

As of April 2026, the US and Israel are still at war with Iran. The war began on February 28 with surprise bombings that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other high-ranking officials. Since then, attacks on infrastructure have continued, leading to significant disruptions in essential services and escalating tensions in the region. Iran has attacked targets in Gulf nations and tightened its grip on the Strait of Hormuz as a result.

The conflict has damaged the economy around the world, driving inflation and supply chain disruption fears.

The war is often considered a way to protect Israel, the Gulf nations, and, ultimately, the US against a brutal, theocratic dictatorship that was looking to build nuclear weapons and was the main financier of terrorism in the world. However, there is a common libertarian question: Do libertarian ideas support sending troops to other countries to stop tyranny?

“Death to America is not a slogan; it is a policy“. These words are more than rhetoric, as Khamenei, the eliminated leader of the Iranian regime, has repeated them since 2023.

When people think about Iran and the United States, they usually focus on the nuclear file or occasional flare‑ups in the Persian Gulf. But the deeper, structural problem is simpler: for more than four decades, a revolutionary, anti-American regime has controlled one of the world’s major oil exporters—and systematically converted those petrodollars into terrorism, proxy warfare, and leverage over global energy.

At least 603 U.S. troops were killed by Iranian‑backed militias in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, and since 2022 Iran and its proxies have killed at least 51 additional Americans, including soldiers, contractors, and civilians, in Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Israel.