Hormuz: four oil tankers hit as Trump promises the war will end "soon"

According to Al Jazeera, which is running a live feed on the war in Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claims to have hit four oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump, for his part, says the war against Iran will be "wrapped up soon". Here is what we know. We still do not know the identity of the ships, their flags, their owners, the extent of the damage or the fate of the crews. The IRGC's claims, for their part, are not independently verified in the dispatch. What follows is our reading, not an established fact.

Start with cui bono. Hormuz is a bottleneck: through a narrow channel passes a considerable share of the oil the world burns. Whoever holds the bottleneck holds a lever over prices, over the bills of importing economies, over the profits of the majors and the traders. Hitting a tanker is not just damaging a hull. It sends a message to insurers, shipowners and the banks that finance the cargoes. The risk premium climbs, and someone cashes in.

The Leninist reading remains useful here, without turning it into dogma. Monopoly capitalism in its later stage seeks outlets, raw materials and spheres of influence; the great powers fight over them. Sanctions, military alliances, arms contracts: all of this is the political wrapping of economic rivalries (which is, in substance, the thesis summed up in our notes on imperialism and finance capital). Applied to Hormuz, it poses a simple question: which powers want to control the energy routes, and in whose interest, on behalf of which blocs of capital?

Trump's promise deserves the same scrutiny. "Soon": no deadline, no condition in the dispatch. A president who announces the imminent end of a war he is waging first reassures the markets. The language of de-escalation is also a technique for managing prices. And meanwhile, the arms dealers are counting the munitions to be replenished. Rearmament is rarely a burden for everyone.

As for the Iranian state, let us not exempt it from analysis. Lenin reminded us that the state is an instrument serving a class, and that phrases about "defending the homeland" often cover the predatory interests of "its" bourgeoisie (The State and Revolution, our summary of the idea). This holds for Washington as much as for Tehran, and for the military apparatuses that thrive on tension, the IRGC included.

The losers, meanwhile, are identifiable: the sailors first, exposed on ships that do not belong to them, then the populations who will pay more for fuel and bread. The "rules" we are endlessly lectured about mainly protect trade routes, rarely those who work on them.

What to watch: who owns the ships hit, who insures them, who benefits from higher prices, and whether Trump's "soon" translates into a ceasefire or a new delivery of weapons. The answer lies there.