Imagine a dystopian reality: a world where the most extreme and barbaric terrorist organizations are sustained by astronomical budgets exceeding a billion dollars a month. This windfall is bankrolled entirely by oil revenues and transit tolls extorted by Iran at the Strait of Hormuz.
Reflect on the atrocities of October 7 at the Israel-Gaza border – one of the most savage manifestations of evil in the modern era. If Islamic terrorism could engineer such carnage on a Qatari stipend of $30 million a year, envision the scale of future assaults on Western societies. Picture Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Shi'ite militias in Iraq armed with a budget more than 300 times that size, funneled to them month after month by an Iranian cryptocurrency empire.
These seem to be ordinary spring days; the Sun rises every morning, and life carries on. But in truth, we are standing at a historic precipice. Our collective future hangs by a thread, suspended between liberty and subjugation. If we fail to grasp the gravity of this hour, and if we cannot summon the courage and resolve it demands, the spring of 2026 will be recorded in human history as the moment darkness descended at noon.
We are making a tragic, fundamental error in our assessment of the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz and its implications for the global order. We mistakenly believe that the American blockade on Iranian ports is gradually suffocating Tehran and will ultimately compel its surrender. The reality is exactly the reverse. Iran, conditioned by 47 years of life under sanctions, scoffs at this economic friction. We – the free world entire – are the ones being suffocated, and at a terrifying pace.
The military campaign that erupted in late February was intended to precipitate the rapid collapse of the mullahs' regime – a regime that views itself as a global power and has for decades openly declared its intent to achieve world domination by exporting its Shi'ite revolution.
The campaign to topple the regime has failed. The mullahs not only survived; they seized control of the Strait of Hormuz, transforming a military confrontation into an economic war of attrition. In this new arena, time is the decisive metric. Contrary to Western assumptions, time is firmly on Tehran’s side. Every passing day brings the regime closer to its ultimate objective: forging Iran into an economic juggernaut, accumulating wealth at an unprecedented velocity, and holding the global economy by the throat.
The mechanics of this strategy are brutally simple. Energy is the lifeblood of modern civilization; whoever controls its flow controls the world. With roughly 30% of the globe’s oil and gas traversing the Strait of Hormuz, this narrow waterway serves as the ultimate geopolitical chokepoint. Even a partial blockade of the strait – a vital artery not just for hydrocarbons, but for coal, iron, grain, chemicals, and consumer goods – triggers an immediate spike in shipping costs and fuels global inflation. A total closure would precipitate a logistical collapse, plunging the world into a crippling economic depression unseen since the Great Depression.
We are already witnessing the tremors: Iran's current disruption of the strait is engineering a critical shortfall in essential energy supplies, hitting Asia and Europe with particular severity. Are we blind to the fact that in China, Japan, South Korea, and across the East, domestic industry’s reliance on Hormuz oil is absolute? Are we oblivious to Europe hurtling toward an acute fuel crisis, already manifesting in civilian rationing and the grounding of tens of thousands of flights due to jet fuel shortages?
"It's not clear how the truce between Washington and Tehran will play out," former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev recently observed. "But one thing is certain - Iran has tested its nuclear weapons. It is called the Strait of Hormuz. Its potential is inexhaustible."
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio grasps this reality as well. "The Strait of Hormuz is basically an economic nuclear weapon that they're trying to use against the world - and they're bragging about it," he stated this week.
Holding the world hostage
This new nuclear weapon, which Iran has already test-fired in the Strait of Hormuz, goes by a specific name: the price per barrel. When oil ceases to flow through a blockaded strait, the price per barrel spikes with punishing velocity. The global economy can endure a price of $100. It can survive, albeit barely, at $150. But a prolonged blockade – or worse, a theatrical Iranian detonation of a few tankers hauling millions of barrels – will catapult the price to $200 or even $250 per barrel. The world cannot survive that. Under such conditions, the energy artery is severed, supply chains snap, global stock markets plummet by 30% to 40%, and we plunge into a crisis from which there is no recovery.
Secretary Rubio added: "Imagine if those same people had access to a nuclear weapon. They would hold the whole region hostage." Does Washington not realize that Tehran is already holding the world hostage? Do they not understand that hegemony over Hormuz is the bomb – a weapon far more immediate and devastating than any nuclear arsenal?
If we do not act now, the endgame is certain. Starved for the energy that sustains modern civilization, nations will inevitably succumb to quiet understandings with Iran, accepting an illicit toll for transit through the Strait. Iran will ruthlessly enforce this extortion utilizing tens of thousands of long-range attack drones, naval mines, anti-ship missiles, and suicide fast-boats. This formidable arsenal will pose a credible military threat to any vessel attempting unauthorized passage, rendering defiance impossible.
By establishing this chokehold, Iran will coerce the United States into lifting its sanctions and port blockades – a concession worth half a billion dollars a day, as President Trump has noted. The rest of the world will be forced to submit to the new toll mechanism, yielding another half billion daily through taxes on the hundreds of tankers and cargo ships traversing the strait. Thus, Iran will lock in a perpetual revenue stream of a billion dollars a day, exclusively from energy exports and its domination of Hormuz.
The implications are stark. The mullahs will realize their vision of reviving the ancient Persian Empire as the engine of a global Shi'ite Islamic revolution. First to fall will be the regional states, forced into subjugation under the Middle East’s new dominant politico-military hegemon – a shift that will surely trigger the immediate collapse of the Abraham Accordshttps://www.jpost.com/tags/abraham-accords. Global subjugation will follow.
It is obvious to all how this windfall will be spent. Not a cent will go toward the welfare of the Iranian people; it will be entirely diverted to supercharging the revolution, funneling a billion dollars a month into an exponentially expanding proxy network. This massive influx of capital will dramatically accelerate the armament and technological capabilities of terrorist groups, tightening the noose around Israel with the explicit aim of its destruction.
Yet, paradoxically, herein lies the saving grace. Because an Iranian economic empire guarantees the eradication of Israel and a second Holocaust, the Jewish state – bound by the oath of "Never Again" – will never allow it to materialize.
Israel must declare unequivocally to the world that it will not tolerate any international mechanism that legitimizes Iran's seizure of Hormuz, nor will it allow Tehran to keep its knee on the throat of the global economy. Israel will deploy every asset at its disposal to neutralize this threat and will not yield until the danger is eliminated, even if it requires a direct confrontation with the United States.
We must all hope it does not come to that. But look to the eastern horizon. Do you see the gathering storm? This is the darkness at noon, and it is rapidly eclipsing our skies. The time to act is now.