The War We Can’t Stop

Events in the Persian Gulf can no longer be framed as a geopolitical event or a temporary supply shock. What’s emerging is a self-sustaining process that no one controls. It behaves like a hurricane—a heat engine with its eye at Hormuz and spiral bands of burning terminals, refineries, and fuel depots. Each action by the U.S., Israel, or Iran adds more energy to the system. Feedback loops amplify it. The storm intensifies. It ends only when its fuel or structure is disrupted. Until then, it spreads laterally through markets and supply chains and is becoming a global system event.

Escalation is the organizing principle. There are no obivious off-ramps, only feedback loops. The U.S. and Israel can’t achieve their objectives without triggering second-order effects that become the next crisis. Iran won’t capitulate because its definition of success is survival and disruption. Military pressure only hardens Iran’s resolve. The pattern is consistent: strike, absorb, adapt, respond asymmetrically, escalate. What began as disruption has crossed into destruction. The “nothing to lose” logic raises Iran’s tolerance for damage and increases the likelihood of widening attacks.

The conflict has shifted phases. Phase one was about trapped supply—Hormuz as a chokepoint. Phase two is about destroying supply—upstream gas fields, export terminals, and bypass routes like the East-West Pipeline. South Pars and Ras Laffan are system nodes, not just assets. This is no longer a logistics problem. It is a structural supply shock. The war now has multiple fronts and many more pathways for failure. Escalation on a expanding front is being felt as a complexity spiral outside the conflict.

Markets are beginning to integrate the shift. The early assumption was mean reversion—a short disruption followed by normalization. That view is fading. Pricing now reflects duration, damage, and uncertainty. The widening Brent-WTI spread, extreme Gulf grade premiums, and stress in products like fuel oil point to segmentation and scarcity. This is moving from a price event to a confidence event.

Policy incoherence is amplifying that loss of confidence. Mixed signals—pressure Iran while hinting at loosening sanctions, seeking allies while others cut side deals for supply—undercut credibility. At the same time, Iran is effectively tolling risk across the Gulf. The result is a perception that no one is in control and that there is no clear endgame.

The initial U.S. strategy for this war was based on a profound misunderstanding and a severe underestimation of Iran. It assumed capitulation under pressure. It treated Hormuz as manageable. The lack of early control over the Strait and limited forward positioning suggest that outcome was not expected as anything but an outlier. That’s a nice way of saying it was bad or at least incomplete scenario planning

At this point, Hormuz is no longer the only story. Infrastructure damage is. Shipping can, in the best case, normalize in months. Destroyed gas fields, refineries, and terminals take years. That changes everything.

The economic consequences are unknowable but likely severe. Energy, food, and industrial supply chains are already under strain. The system is being forced into a kind of induced slowdown without a plan for recovery. The least bad outcome may be a weakened Iran that fragments into a more limited threat. Even that carries significant downside risk. There is no clean resolution here—only different versions of instability.

Our leaders have approached the Iran war like a machine that only needs a few adjustments to run perfectly. But war is a process. Once the fighting begins, only the hard positions created beforehand matter. In this war, that didn’t happen.