PHOTO: USS Tempest transits the Strait of Hormuz, Matthew Riggs on Wikimedia Commons
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On 28 February at 9:45 am IRST, coordinated US-Israeli strikes targeted Iranian military and civilian infrastructure, including a girls’ elementary school in Minab, where over 165 schoolgirls and staff were killed. Not long after, Iran launched retaliatory missile attacks on Israel and US military bases across the Gulf – striking facilities in Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait and beyond – marking an unprecedented escalation in a conflict that has engulfed the region.
This latest confrontation reflects the culmination of decades of tension between Iran and Western powers. From early 20th‑century struggles over oil sovereignty to modern sanctions, proxy wars, and overt military interventions, foreign interference has long shaped Iran’s politics and regional strategy. The spectre of which has sparked yet another war, creating a crisis that now extends far beyond the Middle East.
Iran’s Black Gold and Western Economic and National Security
A driving cause of foreign intervention in Iran has long been the pursuit of Iran’s black gold – Petrol. The earliest instance of foreign involvement in Iran’s oil industry starts in 1901 with the signing of the D’Arcy oil concession, giving British-Australian mining tycoon William Knox D’Arcy and his future company, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC later renamed AIOC), complete control over nearly the entire country’s oil for 60 years. It was Iranian oil that proved pivotal to the British naval efforts in World War I. This inextricably tied Iranian oil to British national security.
When Iran attempted to cancel the oil concession in 1932 due to AIOC not fulfilling its side of the deal, paying oil royalties back to Iran, the British brought their warships to the Persian Gulf and forced the Iranian government to extend its oil concession until 1993.
Less than a decade later, during World War II, British security concerns over the leader of Iran, Reza Shah, and his alleged German sympathies, led to the British-Soviet invasion of Iran. The British then deposed the Shah and placed his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, as monarch – marking the first of many instances of Western intervention in Iran’s domestic affairs.
PHOTO: The 1953 coup that helped Shah Reza Pahlavi seize power. Unknown author on Wikimedia Commons
Following growing Iranian anger at British control over the AIOC, Mohammad Mosaddegh became prime minister in 1951 and swiftly nationalised Iran’s oil industry. A decision to which Britain responded with embargoes and, together with the United States, orchestrated the 1953 Iranian coup d’etat, installing Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his pro-West government.
In the course of this, the US created the conditions necessary for the Islamic Revolution. The 1953 coup d’etat would be burnt into Iranian cultural memory, creating a deep anti-American sentiment and ensuring the Shah would be seen as nothing more than a Western puppet.
Iranian oil would continue to be of vital importance to Western economies over the coming years. During the Suez Crisis in 1956, when France and the UK, with the help of Israel, invaded Egypt after it nationalised the Suez Canal, regional disruptions threatened oil shipments. It was Iranian and Venezuelan oil that prevented postwar Europe from experiencing a major oil shortage.
This dependence became clear again during the 1973 oil crisis, when the OAPEC reduced oil exports, quadrupling the price of oil and inducing a global energy crisis. As Richard Nixon warned in 1973:
“..oil without a market, as Dr. Mossadegh learnt many, many years ago, doesn’t do much good…. We and Europe are the market… if they continue to up the price they will lose the markets”
Iranian oil was again used by the West to avoid the worst of the oil restrictions– this would prove to be the last time Iran would come to the West’s aid. In 1979, mounting unrest against the Shah’s government, widely seen as a violent, Western-backed authoritarian puppet regime, led to its collapse. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled the country amidst the mounting pressure, allowing the return of the then-exiled cleric Ruhollah Khomeini. Shortly after, the Islamic Republic of Iran was declared following a referendum, with Khomeini as its supreme leader.
What does Iran still have to lose?
Now, nearly 40 years after the Islamic Revolution, Iran is at the centre of global economic discourse.
PHOTO: The Strait of Hormuz is a key strategic chokepoint of this current conflict. MODIS Land and Response Team on Wikimedia Commons
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At the heart of the current crisis between the US, Israel, and the broader Arabian Gulf lies the Strait of Hormuz, the region’s narrow yet vital oil chokepoint – and Iran’s remaining lever of major influence. Located between Oman and Iran, the waterway connects the Gulf’s largest oil producers to international markets that rely indispensably on its stability and security.
Roughly 20 per cent of the world’s total oil supply is transported through the strait, meaning any disruption would carry significant and immediate global consequences. Since the outbreak of Iran’s retaliatory attacks, commercial activity has dropped, disproportionately affecting Asian markets — where 84 per cent of shipments passing through the strait are destined —with China, India, South Korea and Japan alone accounting for 69 per cent of the total intake.
Iran has repeatedly threatened to shut down the passageway, with the IRGC even striking oil tankers for “unauthorised passage” and vowing to set “ablaze” any tankers that attempt to transit through.
ran has long threatened the closure of the strait, dating back to the tanker war with Iraq between 1980 and 1988, during which both states targeted each other’s oil exports, striking over 100 oil tankers collectively. Yet, despite renewed and increasingly explicit threats, such as the US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities last year, the strait has never been shut down. Iran’s reluctance to do so reflects the double-edged nature of the decision. A complete shutdown would send oil and gas prices skyrocketing to ‘crisis levels’. A shock likely to trigger a global recession.
The damage, however, would not be confined to international markets and their supply chain in the Gulf. Iran’s oil revenue would also take a hit. Blocking all 1.6 million of its barrels that pass through the Strait could possibly cripple its economy.
PHOTO: Syrians disposing of Assad Regime portraits and banners following the fall of the regime, Ibrahim Hassan on Flickr
If we’ve learnt anything from Nicolas Maduro’s toppling in Venezuela, it’s that the Trump administration has no reluctance in intervening in foreign countries when American interests are at stake. The closure of the strait could therefore provoke a significant escalation of the war with the United States– a confrontation Iran is not favoured to win. Following the collapse of its regional allies, most recently the Assad regime in Syria, Iran remains the only major actor in the region yet to comply with US and Gulf-aligned interests.
The standoff raises the broader question of whether the US is pursuing total control over global oil shipping routes. Venezuela, which holds the largest oil reserves after the Persian Gulf, once supplied significant volumes of crude oil to China. After the deposition of Maduro in January and the tightening of U.S. sanctions, these exports risk being jeopardised, reducing Beijing’s ability to shift its dependence away from the Gulf oil supply chain This isn’t to suggest that the US aims is to block off China from the oil altogether, but rather to force its hand into engaging with the international governance structures shaped by US interests. The elimination of an alternative supply not only diminishes Iran’s leverage but also pressures China into cooperation.
Iranian Aspirations: The Waxing and Waning of Iran’s Influence
The ascension of Khomeini to power in 1979 heralded the start of the first Islamic republic in the Middle East and, with this, came a new set of foreign policy objectives for the young republic. A vital component of Iranian foreign policy is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), which was established with the goal of exporting the Islamic Revolution abroad.
The IRGC has supported Iran’s foreign policy by developing and supporting a web of proxies across the region in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthis), Palestine (Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad) and Iraq (Popular Mobilisation Forces), amongst other groups and regions.Iran uses these groups to exert control within their respective regions and to contest opponents of Iran.
PHOTO: Iran’s proxy network in the Middle East, created by Rahul Deepak Kumar on Mapchart.net
Through its extensive proxy network, Iran has effectively been able to bypass many of its sanctions; Hezbollah, the Popular Mobilisation Force, and the Houthis are used as nexuses through which trade is directed. Not only are these groups used as an economic lifeline for Iran, but they are also used as retaliatory instruments against the West. In response to Israeli aggression, for example, the Houthis threatened shipping routes passing through the Red Sea to put pressure on global trade.
It is by the end of 2025 that Iran’s influence in the Middle East firmly weakened. Iranian influence began waning at the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza due to strikes on its proxies. Israel’s attacks on Hamas and Hezbollah have left both organisations militarily crippled, and with little foreign support after the fall of the Assad regime.
Amid nuclear negotiations, Israel and the US began a regional military build-up that culminated in a joint strike on Iran, killing Khamenei. Hours earlier, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, the foreign minister of Oman, had said that “a peace deal is within our reach … if we just allow diplomacy the space it needs”, raising the question of whether diplomacy was ever truly the preferred option.
Iran’s Gulf Strategy
PHOTO: Alternative pipelines to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wikimedia Commons
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A few producers in the Gulf, like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, have developed limited alternatives that can bypass the Strait of Hormuz. In the UAE, the Habshan-Fujeirah pipeline can transport a small fraction of oil exports while avoiding the Strait of Hormuz, though it is unable to entirely replace the volume typically handled by the chokepoint. Therefore, it is unsurprising that Iran is targeting airports in the United Arab Emirates, as well as oil facilities in Fujeirah, attacks that strategically disrupt operations of the vulnerable alternative pathway.
The expansion of Iranian hostilities into American bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia has thrown the region into uncertainty. The Gulf, a region that has long prided itself on its security, now finds that its alliances with the West and acceptance of their military bases — something that once acted as a security guarantee —have now turned into red targets. The drastic shift in security has come as a significant challenge to the US ‘security umbrella’.
A few states in the region, like Jordan, have chosen to reinforce said security umbrella, intercepting 13 ballistic missiles heading for US facilities such as Muwaffaq al Salti Air Base– a ‘hub of activity’ housing American-made radar systems and missile interceptors– despite this coming at the expense of fallen debris injuring civilians. This reveals an uncomfortable truth of when said security guarantees begin to resemble expendability, where the safety of civilians comes secondary to protecting foreign assets.
The Iranian face-off against the US and Israel, along with their Gulf counterparts, has thrown the region into a bout of instability and unpredictability. The risks that accompany any further escalation are not limited to the Middle East, but are likely to be felt by the broader global community, with oil prices expected to spike to a “1970s-style energy shock”.
The broader cost, however, extends beyond oil markets and economic impacts — if the international rules and norms that exist to regulate such entanglements are treated as inconsequential, and appear conditional or selectively applied in this context, any reason to abide by them will cease to be valid, and other nation-states will increasingly treat them as inconsequential.
The expectations of restraint rely on rules that no longer appear reciprocal. Setting such a precedent may even encourage increasingly erratic behaviour from states already sidelined by Western powers. The question, therefore, is not how the conflict will escalate, but how it’ll reshape the rules of restraint and conduct in future conflicts.
Alejandro José Mariona
Alejandro José Mariona is a third year Law & International relations student, with a specific interest in alternative governance structures, and power relations within the international world order. Outside of his studies, Alejandro spends his time advocating for his community, and identifying structural inequalities that he hopes he can one day resolve.
