The news that Iran is signalling a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz comes as a welcome respite for the chattering classes, who have spent the past fortnight wringing their hands over oil prices and the spectre of a new Gulf War. But let us not mistake a tactical retreat for a strategic surrender. The mullahs in Tehran are not suddenly converts to the gospel of free navigation. They have simply encountered something they did not expect: a resolute UK-led naval coalition that refused to blink.
This is a moment that ought to provoke some sober reflection, though I suspect it will instead inspire a great deal of self-congratulatory claptrap. The British press will trumpet the Royal Navy's steely resolve, the Americans will dust off their 'leading from behind' narrative, and the Europeans will mutter something about diplomacy. All of this misses the point. What has actually happened is a microcosm of a larger, more disturbing pattern: the decline of Western credibility and the simultaneous rise of a gangster state that respects only force.
Recall, if you will, the glorious era of gunboat diplomacy. In the nineteenth century, a British admiral could steam into the Persian Gulf, fire a few warning shots, and secure a treaty with the local potentate before tea. That world is dead, buried under the weight of our own moral ambiguity and strategic ineptitude. The current crisis is a direct result of the Obama administration's catastrophic nuclear deal, which handed Tehran billions of dollars and a veneer of respectability, without extracting any meaningful concessions on their malign regional behaviour. Europe, ever the useful idiot, cheered this on, while Britain dithered on the sidelines.
Now, we find ourselves in the absurd position of having to refight the Tanker War of the 1980s, with a coalition that is less coherent and a navy that is smaller. The fact that Iran has blinked does not mean they have accepted the rules-based order. It means they miscalculated and will now regroup. They will wait for the coalition to tire, for the headlines to fade, and for the next tanker to stray into their waters.
Let us not pretend this is a triumph of international law. It is a triumph of the implicit threat of superior firepower. And a very thin triumph at that. The Iranian regime is playing a long game, one in which the West's attention span is its greatest ally. We should expect more harassment, more brinkmanship, and more tests of our resolve. The only question is whether we have the patience and the nerve to maintain a permanent naval presence in the Gulf, or whether we will slink away as we did from Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving behind a vacuum that Iran will eagerly fill.
This is the lesson of the Fall of Rome, which I never tire of repeating. Barbarians are not defeated by a single battle. They are contained by a permanent military infrastructure and an unshakeable cultural will. The Roman Empire did not collapse because of a single defeat; it collapsed because it lost the conviction that its way of life was worth defending. We are perilously close to that same decadence.
The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is a tactical victory. But it is a strategic warning. If we continue to treat the Iranians as rational actors who can be placated with negotiation and goodwill, we will soon find ourselves in a world where the Hormuz strait is permanently closed, not by Iranian mines, but by our own timidity.
