“US Israel Iran War”

The world’s attention is now fixed on a narrow but strategically essential stretch of water: the Strait of Hormuz.

Following the US-Israeli decision to obliterate Iran’s leadership and its offensive and nuclear capabilities, Tehran has responded in its typical asymmetric fashion. With their air defences destroyed and missile reserves depleted, the mullahs of the theocracy have once again sought to weaponise the oil price by reducing the flow of oil through the Strait. Nothing weakens Western resolve like an economic crisis.

U.S. forces continue to degrade Iranian combat capabilities by striking military targets deep inside Iran. pic.twitter.com/mKWs2G6SEx

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 20, 2026

When the history of the war in Iran is written, it will undoubtedly include a chapter on its effect on the MAGA movement.

The conflict may also be viewed as a seminal event in the relationship between Israel and America.

The war has opened up an ugly feud among many of the loudest and most influential voices on the U.S. right. On one side are those who believe Israel has become a strategic liability, leading the U.S. into conflicts it had no business getting involved in. On the other are those who say Israel is a crucial ally of the U.S. in a strategically vital part of the world. Those involved in the debate have been, at times, accused of antisemitism.

‘Strait of Hormuz will have to be policed by nations who use it – US does not’, says Trump

Saudi Arabia has threatened to strike back at Iran after attacks on oil and gas sites across the Gulf caused prices to surge across the globe.

Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, warned on Thursday night that patience with Tehran was running out after an oil refinery was hit and eight Iranian ballistic missiles targeted Riyadh.

“This pressure from Iran will backfire politically and morally and certainly we reserve the right to take military actions if deemed necessary,” he said.

The U.S. and its allies have intensified the battle to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, sending low-flying attack jets over the sea lanes to blast Iranian naval vessels and Apache helicopters to shoot down Iran’s deadly drones, American military officials said.

The stepped-up operation is part of a multistage Pentagon plan to reduce the danger from Iranian armed boats, mines and cruise missiles, which have halted ship traffic through the waterway since early March. If the danger can be reduced, the U.S. could send U.S. warships through the strait and eventually escort vessels in and out of the Persian Gulf.

U.S. forces are destroying Iranian naval targets that threaten international shipping in and near the Strait of Hormuz. pic.twitter.com/qR6FJyI5ZS

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 19, 2026

US President Donald Trump has issued a typically strongly worded statement in the wake of attacks on a major gas field shared by Iran and Qatar on Wednesday.

Israel hit Iran’s South Pars – part of the world’s largest natural gas field – and Tehran retaliated by striking an energy complex in Qatar. The attacks led to a spike in energy prices, and fuelled Trump’s wrath.

On his Truth Social media platform, Trump threatened Iran again and said he didn’t know about Israel’s plans for the attack.

Netanyahu dismisses suggestion US and Israel are out of sync

Prime Minister Netanyahu was seeking to pour cold water on any suggestion that Israel had influence over Donald Trump’s decision to launch Operation Epic Fury in Iran.

In the US, there has been considerable domestic debate over the reasons why the US entered this war, and the role Israel played.

Anti-Trump voices on the left, and some anti-war voices on the right, are already calling the Iran War a “quagmire”— after less than three weeks of fighting. Whether you opposed or supported the U.S.–Israeli war against Iran when it was launched on Feb. 28, 2026, to contend that it has descended into a quagmire after 18 days of mostly overwhelming U.S. and Israeli military success betrays advanced stages of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Ironically, some of these same voices — intellectuals like William Kristol and Robert Kagan — served as cheerleaders for the Iraq War, an actual quagmire that they supported year after year despite its seemingly endless nature. 

IRANIAN NAVAL INFRASTRUCTURE STRUCK IN THE CASPIAN SEA.

Targets included:
• Iranian Navy vessels, including missile ships, support vessels boats, & guard ships.
• A port command center from which Iranian Navy forces controlled naval operations
• Central infrastructure used… pic.twitter.com/8sNiWJzf9k

— Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) March 19, 2026

Canada is ready to “contribute to appropriate efforts” to resume safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, a significant artery in international shipping undergoing a “de facto closure” amid the war in Iran.

That’s according to a joint statement released Thursday, co-signed by Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan. The countries demanded that Iran halt its “threats, laying of mines, drone and missile attacks and other attempts to block the strait to commercial shipping.”

US President Donald Trump has threatened to blow up a major gas field in Iran if it attacks the US’s Gulf Arab ally Qatar again.

Trump’s threat came after a day in which Israel hit Iran’s South Pars – part of the world’s largest natural gas field. Tehran retaliated by striking an energy complex in Qatar, causing “extensive damage” and leading to a spike in energy prices.

While Israel has not officially confirmed its attack on the gas field, the US president said the US “knew nothing” about its ally, which had “violently lashed out” at Iran “out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle East”.

U.S. forces are destroying Iranian naval targets that threaten international shipping in and near the Strait of Hormuz. pic.twitter.com/qR6FJyI5ZS

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 19, 2026

Tehran’s infamous “doomsday clock” was designed to count down to the annihilation of Israel in the year 2040. Instead, it appears finally to have ceased operating at the 2026 mark, along with many leaders of Iran’s extremist Islamic regime.

The irony of Iran’s rout by its two most-hated enemies — the “Great Satan” United States and the “Little Satan” Israel — must be seismic in Iran’s major centers, where much of the civilian population openly celebrates, not the end of Israel as intended by Shia clerics, but, instead, the hoped-for final days of an apparently much-hated regime.

As is the norm when political events in uncivilized places become violent, stock and related commodity prices become volatile and usually overreact. This has certainly occurred with oil prices responding to developments in the Iran war. The U.S. administration has already waived the Jones Act to facilitate the delivery of foreign oil in foreign ships to U.S. ports and announced increased supply from the Naval oil reserve.

The United States is now an energy self-sufficient country, so concerns within the United States itself about the oil price are unfounded. The current spike in California is entirely the responsibility of successive state governments conducting an unholy war on the oil industry that has caused a drastic reduction of California’s oil refining capacity. However, even California will not long be troubled by this burden.