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In the wake of the United States’ imposition of a naval blockade against Iranian ports, hard-line political and media voices within Iran have drawn up aggressive proposals to counter the move, including seizing international vessels in the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz and pushing Yemen’s Houthi movement to shut down the equally vital Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

These calls came just hours after former US President Donald Trump made a Wednesday announcement of a unilateral extension to a ceasefire on offensive operations targeting Iran. On that same day, Tehran-based conservative newspaper Kayhan dedicated its front page to the provocative headline “The response to the US naval blockade is to close the Bab al-Mandeb Strait,” and ran a full editorial written by its editor-in-chief Hossein Shariatmadari, a political figure long known to have close ties to Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

In his editorial, Shariatmadari argued that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s elite paramilitary force, should maintain a continuous blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supplies pass daily. He further called for Iran to seize cargo from international shipping to collect what he framed as rightful compensation for war damages caused by the US and Israel.

“Given the inaction of the UN Security Council and the United Nations’ clear dependence on arrogant global powers, it is our legal right to collect the compensation we demand through seized assets,” Shariatmadari wrote. He added, “We should seize US-owned vessels currently located in the Strait of Hormuz, and confiscate US-owned oil and goods transported even on non-US flagged vessels as compensation for our losses.”

Hard-line principlist lawmaker Seyyed Mahmoud Nabavyan echoed Shariatmadari’s aggressive tone, dismissing any suggestion that the US naval blockade could be addressed through ongoing diplomatic negotiations. “Talking with the Washington is pure harm,” Nabavyan stated, adding, “Lifting the naval blockade is our undeniable right, and we will achieve that by force regardless. This matter has no connection to negotiations.”

Concurrent with these statements, the IRGC confirmed it had intercepted three vessels traversing the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, seizing two of the craft that were attempting to pass through the strategic waterway.

Beyond geopolitical tensions with the US and Israel, a separate controversy has been roiling domestic discourse around BBC Persian in recent months, with growing criticism that the outlet’s coverage unfairly favors supporters of Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s deposed former Shah. Critics claim the BBC Persian television channel and its digital platforms have given outsize visibility to monarchist opposition voices, who have publicly backed US and Israeli military action against the Iranian government.

The wave of criticism reached a new peak last week after independent media researcher Mazdak Azar published the results of a study analyzing BBC Persian’s coverage of January’s anti-government protests in Iran, which were violently suppressed by Iranian security forces. Azar examined roughly 4,500 user-generated videos of the protests shared on Persian-language social media platforms, finding that only 17 percent of these clips included pro-Pahlavi slogans. By comparison, nearly 30 percent of protest-focused videos broadcast by BBC Persian featured such pro-monarchist messaging.

Azar noted that his study is limited to social media content, but stressed that many of BBC Persian’s television news and analytical programs have framed Pahlavi as a leading public figure behind the nationwide protest movement. This alleged amplification of Pahlavi aligns with a previous report from Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which revealed that after the 12-day war in June 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government sponsored a covert campaign that used fake Persian-language social media accounts to inflate perceptions of Pahlavi’s popularity among the general Iranian public.

In another development tied to the recent conflict, the targeted assassinations of two senior Iranian establishment figures—Ali Larijani and Kamal Kharrazi—have sparked widespread speculation about Israel’s strategic motives for the killings. Larijani was a central leader in Iran’s national security apparatus and previously led the country’s nuclear negotiations with world powers. Kharrazi served as Iran’s foreign minister between 1997 and 2005, and remained an influential senior foreign policy advisor to the former supreme leader long after leaving cabinet.

Iranian reformist newspaper Etemad published a report highlighting the two men’s longstanding roles in past Iran-US negotiations and their potential influence on any future diplomatic talks. The outlet argued Israel likely targeted the pair, who it described as “diplomatic strategists,” to weaken Iran’s negotiating position and reduce the likelihood of any future nuclear or security agreement between Tehran and Washington.

“Beyond their formal institutional positions, the two men were symbols of ‘wise conservatism’ and ‘strategic realism’ for Iran,” Etemad wrote. The paper described Larijani as a unique “bridge” capable of translating the Iranian government’s policy positions into language more accessible to Western governments, while Kharrazi acted as a “compass” for Iranian foreign policy—a trusted advisor whose backing was critical for any major diplomatic push toward new negotiations. Etemad concluded that the assassinations were deliberately intended to eliminate the core “think tank” that would guide any future Iran-US talks.

For many Iranians, the most searing reminder of the war’s human cost is the death of seven-year-old Makan Nasiri, who was killed on the first day of the conflict in a US double-tap strike targeting the Shajarah Tayyiba school in Minab. Makan has become a national symbol of the dozens of children and school staff killed in the attack.

Due to the extreme intensity of the airstrike, only fragmented body parts were recovered from the rubble for most victims. Makan is the only victim whose remains were never found—all that was recovered from the site was one of his shoes and torn pieces of his favorite blue sweater. In an interview with Sharq daily, Makan’s mother described the 15 hours she and other families spent digging through the debris searching for surviving children.

“Many people were trapped under the rubble, but not a single child came out alive. We stayed there from 11:30 in the morning until 2:30 the next day. Everyone that was pulled out was already dead… most were in pieces,” she said.

Official casualty figures published by Sharq put the total death toll from the strike at 156 people, including 120 school students, 26 female teachers, seven visiting parents, one school bus driver, one local clinic worker, and a six-month-old unborn child. In recent days, Persian-language media outlets have widely shared a personal home video showing gentle moments from Makan’s life with his family, amplifying public grief across the country.

This piece is a compilation of reporting from Iranian press outlets, and has not been independently verified for accuracy by Middle East Eye, the original publisher of this press review.

As the annual spring climbing season on Mount Everest gets underway, a massive, unstable block of glacial ice has brought preparations to a standstill, threatening to spark repeated overcrowding issues that have plagued the world’s highest peak in recent years. The 100-foot (30-meter) serac sits just below Camp 1 on Nepal’s southern route, and the specialized team tasked with securing climbing paths, known as icefall doctors, has been unable to identify a safe detour around the obstruction.

The icefall doctors, employed by the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) which manages route maintenance up to Camp 2 at 8,848.86 meters above sea level, arrived at Base Camp three weeks ago. In a typical April, the team would have already fixed ropes and ladders all the way to Camp 3, but the massive glacial chunk, located roughly 600 meters below Camp 1, has blocked all progress. Team representatives say there is no feasible artificial method to remove the block, leaving only one course of action: waiting for natural melting and collapse to clear the path.

“We haven’t found artificial ways to melt it so far, so we don’t have any options other than waiting for it melting and crumbling itself,” SPCC Base Camp coordinator Tshering Tenzing Sherpa confirmed in an interview with the BBC.

Veteran icefall doctor Ang Sarki Sherpa, who has worked on Everest routes for years, noted that the lower section of the serac is already weakening. The team first reached the obstruction on April 10, and subsequent observations show the crevasse beneath the block has continued melting, bringing the serac closer to collapse. After four days of scouting the surrounding terrain on both sides of the mountain, the team confirmed there is no safe alternate route to Camp 1 this season, and climbing directly over the unstable serac has been ruled out as too high-risk.

Nepal’s Department of Tourism is now evaluating contingency plans, including the possibility of helicopter airlifts for the rope-fixing team and their equipment directly to Camp 2, allowing work to proceed on higher sections of the route while the team waits for the obstruction to clear.

“We are thinking about airlifting the rope-fixing team and their logistics to Camp 2 by helicopter, so they can open the route above that altitude for now,” said Ram Krishna Lamichhane, the department’s director general. “We will wait for the ice to melt at the place where there is an obstruction and work there when everything is safe.”

The narrow window of favorable climbing conditions on Everest only lasts through the end of May. SPCC teams hold cautious optimism that the serac will collapse within days, allowing route fixing to Camp 2 to finish quickly and the first summit attempts to proceed within a week. Still, the weeks-long delay has stoked widespread concern among climbers about a repeat of the dangerous summit “traffic jams” that have led to deaths and injuries in past seasons.

Purnima Shrestha, a prominent Nepali climber and photographer who is currently acclimatizing at Base Camp ahead of her sixth Everest summit attempt, shared her perspective from the mountain. Normally during acclimatization, climbers rotate repeatedly between Base Camp, Camp 1, Camp 2, and Camp 3 to build tolerance to high altitude, but the route delay has already disrupted this process.

“I am not worried that the route won’t open because we still have time for that. But the window could be narrow – with lots of climbers having to make their attempts in a short period of time,” Shrestha explained. Even if the serac clears in the coming days, the reduced climbing window will force hundreds of permitted climbers to compress their summit attempts into a much shorter timeframe, increasing the risk of deadly overcrowding.

Despite ongoing geopolitical instability from the Iran war, which has driven up fuel costs and disrupted international travel, demand for Everest summits remains strong this year. Dambar Parajuli, president of the Expedition Operators’ Association, noted that there has been only a small drop in numbers linked to flight disruptions, with mountaineering far less affected than lower-altitude trekking.

To date, Nepal’s Department of Tourism has issued 367 climbing permits, with the majority going to Chinese climbers. This year, China has not issued permits for foreign climbers accessing Everest from the Tibetan side of the mountain, meaning nearly all summit attempts will follow the Nepali route. In 2025, more than 700 climbers and guides summited from Nepal, compared to just 100 from the Tibetan side.

After viral images of massive summit queues in 2019 sparked global criticism of overcrowding and lax regulation, Nepal implemented strict reforms to its permit system, including sharp increases in climbing fees. This spring, permit costs for foreign climbers have risen to $15,000, up from $11,000, while fees for Nepali climbers have doubled to $1,000, in a bid to reduce overcrowding and fund better route management. Even with the price hikes, however, the unexpected glacial obstruction has put the 2026 season at risk of the same overcrowding issues regulators sought to prevent.

Sri Lankan authorities have launched a full criminal investigation after a sophisticated cyber attack on the nation’s finance ministry computer systems resulted in the theft of $2.5 million, funds that had been allocated for a bilateral debt repayment to Australia, senior government officials confirmed this week.

The stolen sum was marked for a debt settlement scheduled for September 2025, and investigators have traced the unauthorized diversion of the funds to January of this year, though details of the breach have only recently come to light amid ongoing investigative work.

Addressing reporters on Thursday, Harshana Suriyapperuma, secretary of Sri Lanka’s finance ministry, laid out the sequence of events: “Even though Sri Lanka had made the due payments, the cyber criminals had intervened and diverted it to other bank accounts, instead of the intended recipient.”

In response to the breach, four senior officers from the nation’s Public Debt Management Office have been placed on suspension, and Sri Lankan authorities have requested support from international law enforcement agencies to track down the perpetrators and recover the stolen funds. While the full technical details of how hackers accessed the payment system remain unconfirmed, lead investigators believe the attackers altered email-based payment instructions embedded in the sovereign debt payment workflow.

The missing funds went undetected until officials from the Australian creditor reached out to notify Sri Lankan authorities that the scheduled payment had never arrived in their account. Deputy finance minister Anil Jayantha Fernando added that the full scale of the heist only came into focus when the same cyber criminals attempted to alter payment details for a separate upcoming debt payment due to India, triggering internal red flags over the modified bank account information.

This high-profile cyber attack comes as a major new setback for Sri Lanka, which is still in the slow process of recovering from a devastating 2022 economic collapse that pushed the nation to the brink of bankruptcy. During that crisis, Sri Lanka exhausted its foreign exchange reserves, defaulted on $46 billion in outstanding external debt, and was forced to ration critical imports including food, fuel, and pharmaceutical supplies. Widespread public anger over the shortages erupted into mass anti-government protests that forced the resignation and ousting of then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa in July 2022.

Matthew Duckworth, Australian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, confirmed this week that Canberra has been notified of the irregularities in the debt payment process. “Sri Lankan authorities are investigating the matter and are coordinating with Australian officials, who are assisting the investigation,” Duckworth stated in a post on the social platform X.

Notably, the breach comes just months after Sri Lanka’s central bank and finance ministry rolled out a national public awareness campaign in local newspapers, warning citizens and government stakeholders about the growing risk of cyber scams, according to reporting from Agence France-Presse. Investigators are currently conducting a full review of existing financial control mechanisms to identify gaps that allowed the heist to proceed undetected for months, while continuing efforts to trace and recover the stolen $2.5 million.

Just one week after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire was meant to de-escalate cross-border tensions between Israel and Lebanon, a deadly Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon has claimed the life of a veteran Lebanese journalist and left another photojournalist injured, drawing widespread international condemnation for what press freedom advocates and Lebanese officials call a blatant violation of international humanitarian law.

On Wednesday, 43-year-old Amal Khalil, a reporter for Lebanese daily newspaper Al-Akhbar, was documenting the aftermath of earlier Israeli strikes in the border town of al-Tayri when the attack unfolded alongside freelance photographer Zeinab Faraj. According to official accounts from Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health, the sequence of violence began with an initial airstrike targeting a vehicle directly ahead of the two journalists, forcing them to seek immediate shelter in a nearby residential building. Moments later, a second precision strike hit the very building where the pair had taken cover.

Rescue teams initially pulled Faraj from the rubble, who was left with a critical head injury from the blast. However, when first responders returned to the site to extract Khalil, Israeli forces reportedly opened direct fire on the rescue ambulance and deployed a stun grenade, blocking emergency crews from reaching the trapped journalist. It would be several hours before responders could finally access the site, where they confirmed Khalil had been killed.

Khalil’s death was not an isolated incident: official tallies confirm she was one of seven people killed in a wave of Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon on Wednesday, marking the deadliest single day for fatalities since the 10-day ceasefire went into effect last week. That truce is scheduled to expire this coming Sunday, even as Israel has continued to carry out cross-border strikes, demolish civilian homes and conduct ground incursions into southern Lebanese territory in open violation of the ceasefire terms. Amid repeated Israeli breaches of the truce, Lebanese armed group Hezbollah responded earlier this week by launching a volley of rockets and drones targeting Israeli positions.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam swiftly condemned the attack on the journalists, labeling it a deliberate war crime. “We will spare no effort in pursuing these crimes before the relevant international bodies,” Salam said in an official statement following the killing.

Al-Akhbar, Khalil’s employer, released a statement mourning her loss, revealing that the journalist had received unspecified threats from unknown actors earlier this year. Press freedom watchdogs have echoed the condemnation, with the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) saying it was deeply outraged by the attack.

“The repeated strikes on the same location, the targeting of an area where journalists were sheltering, and the obstruction of medical and humanitarian access constitute a grave breach of international humanitarian law,” said CPJ’s regional director Sara Qudah. “CPJ holds Israeli forces responsible for the endangerment of Amal Khalil’s life and the injuries sustained by Zeinab Faraj.”

The killing of Khalil fits into a broader, escalating pattern of journalist targeting by Israeli forces that has accelerated sharply since October 2023. To date, at least 262 journalists have been killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, with an additional 22 media workers killed in Lebanon since the escalation of cross-border conflict began last year. Targeting of journalists by Israeli forces is not a new development, but the sharp rise in fatalities over the past 12 months has prompted growing global alarm over press safety in the region.

For decades, analysts have tracked a gradual shift in global soft power momentum toward East Asia, with South Korea building its cultural influence through intentional strategy and Japan rising to cultural prominence through organic, unexpected growth. This long-running trend has left one major question unanswered: When will China, the region’s largest economy and geopolitical heavyweight, launch its own sustained global cultural wave?

For years, the expected Chinese Wave has been slow to materialize. Previous analysis has argued that China’s closed political system, strict censorship regime, ubiquitous surveillance, and tight control over media and speech have created an environment where only cautious, inoffensive cultural production can thrive, with cutting-edge creativity confined to tiny, underground subcultural pockets. The Great Firewall, which blocks most global cultural content from reaching Chinese audiences, also cuts China’s domestic creators off from the global cultural conversation, leaving their work isolated from the cross-pollination that drives innovative artistic change. While the country has produced high-grossing blockbusters and popular video games, it has yet to push global cultural boundaries in the way South Korea and Japan have done.

Over the past year, however, a new social media trend called “Chinamaxxing” has sparked claims that China’s long-awaited soft power breakthrough has finally arrived. Spreading first among U.S. Gen Z creators on TikTok before gaining global traction, the trend sees Western creators embracing what they frame as stereotypically Chinese habits and aesthetics: drinking hot water and herbal fruit tea for wellness, practicing traditional Chinese exercises and gua sha, wearing Chinese-inspired fashion, eating hot pot, wearing slippers indoors, and even mimicking the daily routines of Chinese retirees in a trend called “uncle core” that pushes back against Western hustle culture.

Despite widespread media coverage of the trend across outlets from Fortune to the BBC, Chinamaxxing bears little resemblance to the organic, product-driven soft power waves that originated from Japan and South Korea. Unlike K-pop, J-dramas, or Japanese anime, Chinamaxxing involves almost no engagement with actual Chinese original cultural products. Western participants are largely not watching Chinese dramas, listening to Chinese music, or playing Chinese video games; the viral Chinese-style Adidas jacket that became a trend staple, for example, is produced by a German brand. Even China’s highest-profile domestic cultural products have failed to gain significant traction outside the country: *Ne Zha 2*, the highest-grossing animated film of all time, earned over 99% of its total revenue inside mainland China, while hit game *Black Myth: Wukong* generated more than three-quarters of its Steam sales domestically, with very few Chinese musicians breaking through to Western mainstream audiences.

Beyond cultural products, the trend also relies heavily on curated content about China’s cutting-edge urban infrastructure, with Western influencers relentlessly posting one-note content praising Chinese cities as superior to Western metropolises. Critics argue this content often feels like a coordinated publicity campaign rather than organic enthusiasm, with influencers almost exclusively showcasing grand, iconic landmarks, new train stations, and shiny new developments instead of capturing everyday, ground-level life. This is no accident: unlike organically grown global cities like Tokyo or Paris, most modern Chinese cities were built rapidly from scratch, dominated by sterile gated microdistricts, wide arterial roads, and massive concrete plazas that are impressive from a distance but lack the walkable, mixed-use streetscapes that give older cities their charm.

Hard data backs up the idea that this new fascination with China remains surface-level. As of 2024, international tourism to China remains far below pre-pandemic levels, while the number of American students studying in China has plummeted even more sharply. By comparison, far smaller Japan and South Korea have not only fully recovered their pre-pandemic tourism levels from the U.S. but have exceeded them, proving that the current social media hype around Chinamaxxing has not translated to tangible, widespread engagement with China among Western audiences.

In reality, the Chinamaxxing trend is far more about disillusionment with the West — and the United States in particular — than it is about authentic attraction to Chinese culture and society. As multiple analysts have noted, the trend’s subtext is rooted in Gen Z frustration with systemic failures in the U.S.: the lack of affordable housing, underfunded and unreliable public transit, widespread gun violence and high crime rates, rising loneliness and social atomization, and soaring costs for education and healthcare that have left the American promise out of reach for many young people. Chinamaxxing romanticizes qualities that young Americans perceive as available in China but out of reach at home, serving as a quiet protest against the failure of U.S. institutions to deliver widespread prosperity.

This dissatisfaction with the U.S. reflects a broader global shift. Since Donald Trump’s first election, Gallup data shows that global confidence in U.S. leadership has fallen below confidence in Chinese leadership for the first time in modern history. While China itself is not broadly popular globally, it is increasingly seen as a credible alternative to U.S. leadership by much of the world, and Trump’s persistent unpopularity among young Americans has directly fueled interest in the Chinamaxxing trend. Compounding this is the very visible breakdown of public order in many major U.S. cities, where progressive policies that have decriminalized homelessness and low-level crime have left many urban areas perceived as dirty and unsafe, a contrast pro-China influencers often highlight to great effect.

It is important to note, however, that the narrative of China as a perfect alternative to the U.S. is largely a myth. As analysts have pointed out, China faces many of the same structural social and economic crises as the U.S., with similar levels of income inequality that grow even worse when accounting for limited social redistribution. The affordability crisis for education is far more severe in China than in the U.S., with the bottom 20% of households spending an extraordinary 57% of their income on their children’s education. Homelessness and extreme poverty remain widespread, but the Chinese government has criminalized unhoused populations and pushed low-income groups out of major city centers, making their hardship invisible to visiting influencers. Age discrimination is legal and rampant, with mass dismissal of workers over 35, and youth unemployment remains far higher than in the U.S. even after government statistical changes to reduce the official numbers.

This gap between hype and reality explains why few Chinamaxxing creators follow through on their stated admiration by moving to or even visiting China: it is far easier to post a TikTok pretending to be a Chinese uncle than to actually build a life in the country. For China’s leadership, however, this hype serves an alternative purpose: it is not aimed at winning over young Western creators, but at convincing Chinese scientists, engineers, and business leaders living abroad to return home. And this strategy has seen some success, with anti-immigration policies in the U.S. and widespread dissatisfaction with urban conditions pushing increasing numbers of high-skilled Chinese expats to return home, a trend that U.S. leaders should be far more concerned about than social media trends among Gen Z.

Despite the forced, superficial nature of the Chinamaxxing trend, there are genuine, organic green shoots of growing Chinese soft power that cannot be ignored.

The first major breakthrough is Chinese micro-dramas (duanju), a new format of 1 to 2-minute vertical episodes designed for mobile scrolling, perfectly suited to the age of short-form social media. Because thousands of new micro-dramas are produced every year, the volume of content is too large for Chinese censors to fully monitor, leading to looser content restrictions that have allowed edgier, more innovative stories to flourish — a parallel to the early development of Japanese manga and anime, which grew under the radar of conservative mainstream media to become a global cultural force. As of 2025, Chinese micro-drama platforms ReelShort and DramaBox have exploded in the U.S. market, with ReelShort hitting 370 million total downloads and generating an estimated $1.3 billion in annual U.S. revenue, making the U.S. the largest overseas market for the format.

The second bright spot is Chinese consumer retail. Popular Chinese drink chains including Chagee, Heytea, Mixue, and Luckin Coffee have gained loyal followings overseas, while variety retailers like Miniso and collectible brands like Popmart now have locations in malls across the globe, and Chinese fashion designers are starting to gain international recognition. Because food, beverage, and consumer design are inherently apolitical, these products have been able to cut through political barriers to gain global traction far more easily than film, television, or music.

Third, the Chinese city of Chongqing has developed a genuine global cult following for its unique urban landscape. Unlike the generic, sterile skylines of newer first-tier cities like Shenzhen, Chongqing’s dramatic urban canyons and layered, cyberpunk-inspired streetscape feel raw, authentic, and one-of-a-kind. Even viral videos complaining about the city’s difficult commutes have captivated global audiences, and the city has become a genuine tourist draw for travelers seeking its unique mix of traditional old streets adjacent to modern downtown development, creating the walkable, mixed-use density that draws visitors to global cities like Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Ultimately, it would be extraordinary for a country of 1.4 billion people with China’s growing economic clout not to develop natural, organic soft power appeal. While coordinated official campaigns and social media fads like Chinamaxxing do not represent a genuine Chinese cultural wave, organic cultural innovation is already finding ways to flow past censorship and state marketing, introducing the world to a more authentic, dynamic China — and that growth is only just beginning.

Against the backdrop of escalating tensions between Iran, the United States, and Israel, conventional military strength has never been Iran’s strong suit. Instead, Tehran has turned to its most potent strategic asset: a critical piece of geography that holds the global economy hostage. The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that carries roughly 20 percent of the world’s total oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, has emerged as Tehran’s game-changing bargaining chip after its closure sent shockwaves through international energy markets.

The disruption has already doubled global crude oil prices, triggering cascading cost increases across nearly every sector of the global economy, from ground transportation and residential heating to global food supply chains and international travel. The crisis has even forced a policy reassessment from former U.S. President Donald Trump, leaving the entire world holding its breath for the next development in this strategically vital chokepoint.

For Iran, the Strait of Hormuz is far more than just a body of water—it is an irreplaceable geopolitical asset that has granted Tehran a far stronger negotiating position than many analysts predicted. This unexpected advantage perfectly illustrates a core principle of game theory, the mathematical study of strategic decision-making during conflicts, known as Rubinstein bargaining. The framework holds that in any standoff, each party’s relative strength depends on two key factors: how severe the consequences of an unresolved conflict are for that party, and how impatient the party is to reach a final resolution.

There is no question that an extended conflict would cause severe harm to Iran: the country would drain its stockpiles of missiles and drones, while sustained bombing would destroy critical civilian and military infrastructure. But as an authoritarian regime, Iran can afford to outwait its adversaries, crushing any domestic dissent that arises from economic hardship or war fatigue. The calculus looks very different for the United States. Continuing the standoff would force Washington to spend billions more in taxpayer funds on military operations, while a closed Strait of Hormuz would push fuel prices even higher for American consumers. With midterm elections scheduled for November, political pressure could erode the White House’s patience far faster than Tehran’s.

This dynamic leaves the U.S. in a far weaker position than initial military assessments suggested, all because of a narrow waterway that the global economy cannot function without. Beyond the immediate Iran crisis, this case study offers a broader lesson for nations seeking to strengthen their own global negotiating power, according to game theory: every region or country needs to develop its own equivalent of the Strait of Hormuz—a critical asset that the rest of the world cannot function without, which can be leveraged to gain strategic advantage.

This asset does not need to be a critical shipping lane. For China, that unique leverage comes from its unrivaled dominance of global manufacturing; most developed and developing economies would struggle to meet core demand for consumer and industrial goods without Chinese production. For sub-Saharan Africa, power comes from its unmatched natural resource reserves—most of the world’s cobalt, a critical mineral for electric vehicle battery production, is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—and its demographic advantage: it is the only major continent with a young, rapidly growing population at a time when much of the rest of the world faces rapid aging.

For the European Union, leverage has historically come from the size of its integrated single market. This large, unified consumer bloc has allowed the EU to negotiate preferential trade terms, protect domestic agricultural and manufacturing sectors, and export its regulatory standards for food and products to markets across the globe. But that advantage is not permanent: as most global economic growth shifts to emerging economies such as China, India, and Indonesia, the EU’s negotiating clout has weakened. Research indicates the bloc can only regain that edge through deeper market integration and further expansion of the union. This dynamic also explains why the United Kingdom will likely eventually rejoin the European single market in one form or another, after Brexit significantly weakened the global negotiating positions of both the UK and the EU.

The importance of holding this type of unique leverage has grown in recent years, as traditional Cold War-era alliances have grown increasingly fluid and lost much of their old meaning. Old security pacts and long-standing diplomatic promises no longer carry the weight they once did: the U.S. has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from NATO, and has even floated claims to annex Canada and Greenland, while both the U.S. and Russia have jointly interfered in Hungarian elections to support the illiberal incumbent Viktor Orban’s re-election bid.

In this new world of uncertain alliances, all nations are deeply interdependent. Global supply chains are so tightly interconnected that even a minor disruption in one corner of the world can ripple across to the opposite side of the globe. Grounded oil tankers off the coast of Iran could ultimately lead to empty shelves and higher prices for pork products in British grocery stores by summer, for example.

In this new geopolitical climate, game theory suggests success depends on two core pillars: avoiding overreliance on any single strategic partner, and holding a critical resource or capability that other nations cannot do without. In an era defined by strategic leverage, power comes from being impossible for the global community to ignore. Over the coming decades, the nations that will thrive are those that can build their own version of the Strait of Hormuz, and ensure they never become dependent on others’ critical assets.