SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: THE IRANIANS HAVE quietly made their country into a world power, a top military professor argues in the New York Times today.

THE IRANIANS HAVE quietly made their country into a world power, a top military professor argues in the New York Times today. And the US has forced Iran to align with China and Russia in the new world order. “Its newfound power derives from its control over the most important energy choke point in the global economy, the Strait of Hormuz,” writes Professor Robert A. Pape, a specialist in military strategy. . STRATEGY, NOT GUNS Up to now, conventional wisdom has said that power is “derived primarily from economic scale and military capability” but Iran has shown that smart strategy can achieve the same thing, he writes in an op-ed today. Countless reports have already said that one-fifth of the world’s supply of oil and liquefied natural gas has to travel through the strait. But Pape adds an important insight into the long-term implications: “If Iranian control over the strait persists for months or years, as I believe it may, it will drastically reshape the global order to the detriment of the United States.” . SURPRISINGLY EASY And the Iranians did it so easily. Creating or threatening a sea blockade sounds like a massive physical undertaking, the sort of thing that the US spends billions of dollars doing with warships around Cuba or along the coast of China. But the Iranians simply announced that the Strait was closed, and then occasionally slapped down ships that tried to break the blockade with drones. “Traffic has dropped by over 90 percent since the war began, though, not because Iran has been sinking every vessel that entered the strait but because, given the credible threat of an attack, insurers withdrew or repriced war-risk coverage,” Pape writes. . CHINA, RUSSIA, IRAN, PUSHED TOGETHER On a big-picture scale, China, Russia and Iran have been forced to co-operate by multiple factors. “The structure of the system pushes them in the same direction. This is how a new order emerges — not through a formal alliance (at least not at first) but through converging incentives that reinforce one another over time,” Pape writes. Pape cannot be dismissed with the usual labelling trick (He’s pro-Beijing! He’s pro-Kremlin! He’s a commie!) because he is the opposite: he has the same west-must-win stance as virtually all international mainstream media commentators. He warns about a “dark” scenario, in which non-westerners become more powerful. “Imagine Iran with control of about 20 percent of the world’s oil, Russia with about 11 percent and China able to soak up much of that supply. They would form a cartel to deny the West 30 percent of the world’s oil. You don’t need sophisticated analysis to recognize the catastrophic consequences: precipitously declining power for the United States and Europe, and a global shift toward China, Russia and Iran.” . REASON FOR ATTACK The downside of Pape’s analysis is that it will undoubtably be interpreted by many in the United States as a concrete reason for a full-scale military invasion of Iran via the Strait—with ghastly consequences for everyone, from the long-suffering Iranians to the final destruction of the west’s final shreds of moral credibility. But in doing so, they will skip his conclusion, in which he says that the US is better off withdrawing from the fight, even though this means it will have to make “a new accommodation” with Iran. This will be a heavy price to pay, but is necessary to keep the west on top of the global order, he says: “This is a transformational war, and if these changes continue for even a few years, the global order will change irrevocably.” . [This is a review of an article that appears in the New York Times today. Robert A. Pape is professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and a specialist in military strategy and international security. A link to the full article is provided.]

9:46 AM · Apr 7, 2026