By Georgi Kantchev in London and Jon Emont in Singapore
Iran's move to choke off the Strait of Hormuz and turn crude oil into a weapon of war marks a new phase in the 21st-century competition for global power -- one that will be defined by the control of critical raw materials and energy.
In the face of a withering campaign of airstrikes by the U.S. and Israel, Tehran has launched an asymmetric counterattack, using energy supplies as a cudgel on a scale unseen in decades.
Iran has effectively paralyzed the Strait of Hormuz, a passageway where a fifth of global oil supplies usually transits. On Wednesday, it struck Qatar's Ras Laffan, the site of the world's largest liquefied natural gas plant, in retaliation for a strike on an Iranian gas field.
The war has unleashed havoc in global markets, pushing up oil prices by around 50% since the start of the conflict. European natural gas prices have roughly doubled. The strike on Ras Laffan led President Trump to call for a de-escalation.
It is a stunning reminder of the centrality of energy to the global economy, and further evidence that the roots of military and economic power are shifting from software and information back to hard, physical resources -- from oil to rare-earth metals and industrial capacity.
The risk for nations that don't have them span from soaring inflation and economic downturns to hampering the build-out of artificial intelligence and the militaries of the future.
Last year, China used its control of roughly 90% of the world's supplies of rare-earth magnets to checkmate the U.S. in trade negotiations. By cutting off access to metals used in cars, weapons and electronics, Beijing forced U.S. factories to idle and Washington to soften its demands.
"Great-power competition has returned to basics: who controls the physical resources that modern economies and militaries run on," said Alice Gower, a partner at Azure Strategy, a political-risk advisory firm in London. "Energy, critical minerals and industrial capacity are leverage, not just economic assets."
For decades, Western consensus held that geography was fading as destiny. In this view, the winners of the 21st century would be defined less by control of territory and raw materials than by command of capital, technology and global networks.
Yet the recent weaponization of supply chains has offered a stark reminder that rather than erasing physical geography, the era of hyperconnectivity has turned it into a possibly more potent weapon.
"There is a lot of talk about everything being digital, and software being king, but there are still many physical constraints that drive geopolitics," said Edward Fishman, director of the Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"The most effective use of economic warfare we have seen in recent years was the Chinese rare-earths embargo," said Fishman, who recently wrote the book "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare."
"With Iran we now see the irony that despite unimaginable energy independence, the U.S. is still at the whim of a physical chokepoint," he said.
The Trump administration has touted American energy autonomy, trying to build a fortress immune to economic coercion.
"The United States' energy dominance status, as the world's leading producer and exporter of oil and natural gas, has positioned us to not rely on the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz like other countries," said White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said. "And the ongoing military operations have actually underscored the importance of domestically producing reliable, affordable and secure energy."
Propelled by shale drilling, the U.S. transformed from a large importer into the world's largest oil producer. Yet because crude is priced globally, that domestic bounty can't shield Americans from international supply shocks and soaring prices.
Roughly 90% of seaborne oil passes through eight global chokepoints and routes, including the Strait of Hormuz; Bab el-Mandeb, which the Houthis in Yemen, Iran recently warned, were ready to shut; and the Strait of Malacca near Singapore.
Threatened arteries force shippers into lengthy, costly detours that ultimately hit consumers. And for some, such as the Strait of Hormuz, no maritime detours exist, effectively strangling supply.
American strategists are starting to think more like military planners from World War II or the Cold War, who considered how all of society's resources could be mobilized, and protected, in a war effort. To prevent shortages, the government has acquired ownership stakes in mining companies and is using new tools to expand the production of munitions.
Successive U.S. governments have taken steps to address vulnerabilities. U.S. administrations have prodded global semiconductor companies, like Taiwanese giant TSMC, to build chip factories in the U.S., so that a conflict in Asia wouldn't cripple U.S. industry.
Last month, Trump announced Project Vault, a $12 billion government-backed fund to stockpile critical minerals for industrial use during emergencies. On Monday, Washington struck a preliminary deal with Australian miner Lynas to secure scarce "heavy" rare earths, a market China dominates.
"Because it's a political priority, [the U.S.] is in a better place than it was as far as vulnerability to China," said Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines. Still, he said, rebuilding munition inventories amid conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East will pressure demand for certain minerals.
And with many U.S.-backed metals projects years away, China could still cause disruptions if relations derail.
Beyond natural resources, adversaries have plenty of other levers to pull.
China is the dominant supplier of pharmaceutical ingredients such as ibuprofen, used in painkillers, and certain antibiotics. It leads the world in lithium-ion battery production and mass produces legacy semiconductors. A cutoff of exports would devastate U.S. industries.
Geographical traps offer no quick fixes. Policymakers facing a weaponized chokepoint must either build workarounds or rely on deterrence.
Yet circumventing a route like the Strait of Hormuz requires sweeping defenses and new pipelines that would take years to build. Sourcing crucial minerals sometimes means operating in unstable political environments such as the Democratic Republic of Congo or Mozambique.
In the future, countries might use economic pressure to make the U.S. back off, believing politicians won't tolerate spiking prices and shortages.
"In transparent, more-market economies, the costs become visible more quickly," said Chris Miller, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington public-policy think tank.
Write to Georgi Kantchev at georgi.kantchev@wsj.com and Jon Emont at jonathan.emont@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 22, 2026 07:00 ET (11:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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