Mines in the Strait of Hormuz: the Iran war is also being fought on the oil routes

According to Al Jazeera, which reports the claim in its live coverage of the war in Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, the ideological army of the Iranian state) says four oil tankers struck naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz. According to the same source, these ships had used "unauthorised" routes. The dispatch says nothing about casualties, damage, the nationality of the vessels or their owners. It also offers no way to verify Tehran's version. What we do not yet know weighs heavily. What follows is our reading, not an established fact.

First, the word: "unauthorised". Authorised by whom? The IRGC behaves like a police authority over a maritime corridor that is not its own alone. It tells ships where they may go, and reminds them what happens to those who don't listen. This is sovereignty exercised with mines. If the report is confirmed, the message is simple: the route for crude is negotiated with Tehran, or it is not negotiated at all.

Cui bono? Not the crews, who are the first exposed, and to whom we owe, first of all, restraint: until we know whether there are wounded or dead, we do not speculate. The beneficiaries, by contrast, are easy to guess. Every incident pushes up insurance premiums and freight costs. Shipowners and insurers bill for the risk. Foreign navies gain the dream justification for a lasting presence in the area. And makers of weapons, minesweepers and surveillance systems see orders coming in. A mined strait is an excellent budgetary argument.

The underlying picture is well known. Gulf oil is not just another commodity: it is a lever of power. Whoever holds the bottleneck can strangle their rivals, or threaten to. In the Leninist reading, competition between blocs of financial capital, each backed by its state, drives them to carve up routes, resources and spheres of influence. Sanctions, alliances and arms sales are the political wrapping. Hormuz is a textbook case: the right of passage is worth billions, and the navy that escorts it is first of all defending portfolios.

We will be told about "freedom of navigation" and an "order based on rules". Lovely vocabulary. That order has always been enforced with far more zeal when the rules protect the capital flows of those doing the enforcing. Tehran, for its part, is no victim: mining a trade route means making the world economy pay, and above all those who bear the brunt of higher energy prices, far from the boardrooms of the shipowners.

Watch for: the identity of the ships hit, the reaction of the naval powers present in the region, and the response of the insurers. They will say, better than any communiqué, who really controls the strait.