The Ticking Clock on the Strait of Hormuz
This report details the escalating military conflict between the U.S. and Iran, focusing on the strategic failure to secure the Strait of Hormuz. It highlights the economic risks of the war and the breakdown of diplomatic efforts.
Why it matters
Provides insight into the geopolitical and economic instability caused by the ongoing conflict in the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump said it himself in June—military force won’t open the waterway, and energy reserves are quickly winding down.
Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty July 25, 2026, 7 AM ET Share Save Back in June, at the closing press conference for the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, Donald Trump explained why he had called a halt to hostilities with Iran. Continued bombing would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and as long as the war went on, commercial ships would stay away while emergency oil supplies dwindled.
“We run out of reserves in about four weeks,” he warned, conjuring up images of shortages, bedlam, surging prices, and a market collapse on the scale of 1929. Trump told the press that he had studied presidents, and “the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover.”
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