KISUMU, 6th March -In my previous reflection on Trump 2.0 and the escalating confrontation with Iran, I argued that we were witnessing one of the most consequential presidencies in the history of American power projection.
I located the crisis within the long arc of US–Iran hostility: from the 1979 Revolution that dethroned Washington’s ally in Tehran, to decades of sanctions, proxy confrontations, nuclear negotiations, and Israel’s deep anxiety about Iran’s regional reach.
The reported killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, in a joint U.S.–Israeli strike does not simply represent a tactical escalation; it symbolises a structural rupture.
On one side stands a U.S.–Israel strategic axis committed to neutralising what it calls an ‘existential threat’.
On the other hand stands a revolutionary state that has built its legitimacy around resistance to Western domination. In this particular piece, I argue that beyond nuclear files and ideological antagonism lies a more material question: who ultimately controls the energy arteries that sustain the global economy?
If we read US interventions comparatively, a recurring geopolitical underpinning becomes visible. One in which strategic resources and supply chains occupy a central, though often under-declared, place. In Ukraine, beyond NATO expansion narratives, the war has unfolded over territory rich in rare earth elements, titanium, lithium, and agricultural capacity that feed into high-tech and defence industries.
In Venezuela, home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves, sanctions and political pressure cannot be divorced from global energy market calculations, especially in moments of supply instability.
Even in Afghanistan, discussions of lithium, copper, and rare earth deposits surfaced repeatedly in strategic assessments during and after the US occupation. This does not reduce every intervention to crude resource plunder; rather, it suggests that in a global capitalist system structured around industrial inputs and energy security, geography and mineral endowments shape the hierarchy of attention. States that sit atop chokepoints or strategic commodities inevitably attract sustained strategic engagement.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the politics of the Strait of Hormuz.
This narrow maritime corridor between Iran and Oman is arguably the most important energy chokepoint in the world. Roughly one-fifth of globally traded oil — and a substantial share of liquefied natural gas — passes through it daily.
The economies of East Asia, parts of Europe, and even the United States, despite its own production, remain structurally exposed to price shocks emanating from this passage.
Seen this way, the Strait is not simply a transit route, but a pressure valve for the global oil value chain. Tanker flows, insurance rates, futures markets, refinery margins, and consumer prices from Nairobi to New York respond almost instantly to any hint of disruption there. In structural terms, control or credible threat over Hormuz confers disproportionate geopolitical leverage.
Iran’s geography gives it precisely that leverage. Its coastline hugs the northern edge of the Strait, and its naval doctrine has long centred on asymmetric capabilities — fast attack craft, mines, missile batteries — designed to deny or disrupt access in the event of existential confrontation.
Tehran has repeatedly signalled that if it is strangled economically or attacked militarily, the Strait could become a bargaining chip. For Washington, this is intolerable.
The US grand strategic tradition in the Gulf, dating back to the Carter Doctrine, has treated the uninterrupted flow of Persian Gulf oil as a vital interest. Ensuring that no regional power can unilaterally close or weaponise Hormuz has justified decades of naval presence, arms sales to Gulf monarchies, and security guarantees.
In this light, the recent strike on Iranian leadership can be read not only as retaliation or nuclear preemption, but as a move to degrade a state whose control over a chokepoint grants it systemic leverage over the global economy. When Iranian threats toward shipping intensified, markets trembled. And when markets tremble, great powers move.
Seen through a resource-political lens, therefore, the confrontation is less about agency and more about structure.
The United States seeks to preserve a maritime order in which strategic waterways remain open under its naval umbrella and allied control.
Iran, excluded from that order and sanctioned within it, sees the same waterway as its ultimate deterrent — the equaliser that compensates for conventional inferiority.
The clash over the Strait of Hormuz is thus a clash over who defines the rules of energy circulation in the twenty-first century. Ideology, security narratives, and alliance politics matter, but beneath them runs the harder logic of political economy: whoever controls the chokepoints of oil controls, in significant measure, the tempo of global power. GRAPHICS COURTESY OF ORF
Okombo Odhiambo Kasera is a political scientist and adjunct lecturer at Maseno, Rongo and the University of Kabianga
