Within seventy-two hours of Operation Epic Fury, the joint US-Israeli strike on Iran, Tehran had retaliated across the entire Persian Gulf. Drones and missiles hit targets in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman. QatarEnergy shut down parts of its LNG production, a country responsible for roughly a fifth of global liquefied natural gas production. Tanker operators halted shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude surged past levels not seen in over a year, with analysts warning of $100 (€86) per barrel if the disruption persists. On social media, the usual commentators are talking about doom and gloom. But before we surrender to panic, it is worth asking a question that very few people seem to be posing: What, precisely, is the strategic purpose of all this?
The oil price movements, dramatic as they are, remain by historical comparison far from existential. Prices had already been hovering around $70 (€60)) to $80 (€69) per barrel for years, with the markets having long priced in significant geopolitical risk since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Even at a hundred dollars, we are nowhere near the shocks of the nineteen-seventies. Painful, certainly. Catastrophic, no. The difference matters, because it tells us something important about how Washington is calculating.
When Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth speak of regime change in Iran, they do not mean what the phrase meant in 2003. They are not interested in democracy promotion, nation building, or installing a Jeffersonian republic in Tehran. What they mean — and what the Venezuela playbook has already demonstrated — is finding someone at the top of the existing regime who will bend to Washington’s interests. The goal is not to transform the Iranian state but to redirect it. This is the logic of the Donroe doctrine distilled to its essence: Not liberation but leverage.
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