DE-HORMUZIZATION

Among those watching, commenting on, and predicting the course of the US-Iran conflict, there are plenty who claim that the United States has lost the war, Trump screwed up, Iran got what it wanted and, in a word, this is nothing less than a victory for the Ayatollah regime. If not a tactical or operational victory, then a strategic one – one hundred percent.

To us, such statements bring to mind a viewer of some particularly lousy Soviet movie about four tankmen and a dog who, by the end of the film, feels like a military expert qualified to teach at any NATO military academy.

We, on the other hand, always look at the numbers, look at the cards in both hands, and understand that war is not a football match where the numbers on the scoreboard after 90 minutes announce the winner. Especially when we are talking about an armed conflict in which military, energy, economic and geopolitical questions are being decided simultaneously.

Therefore, we do not pay too much attention to the scoreboard, nor do we roar with joy or grief alongside one crowd or another. We ask not who “won?”, but who gains strategically from this war, who loses what, and what impact it will have on the world and its security architecture in the future.

First of all, we need to understand that this is not a one-player war, and that the US-Iran conflict is not a classic conventional war over the seizure of territory. For Washington, this is a war over strategic influence, regional security and energy geopolitics.

The situation of the other actor – Israel – is different. Israel is fighting a war for survival and national security, in which Iran and its regional network are a direct national threat. Therefore, Israel's logic of war is more straightforward and far more conventional.

This distinction matters, because it determines how we assess “victory” in the first place. The United States does not need to occupy Iran. Quite the opposite – an invasion of a hostile, mountainous country of almost 90 million people would be an enormous military, political and economic burden. Paying such a price for control of the Strait of Hormuz would simply be absurd.

Why occupy Iran if you can change the region's strategic structure in such a way that Iran gradually loses its leverage?

For now, the average American certainly sees no money jingling in their pocket from a closed strait. Rising oil and fuel prices hit US consumers just as hard as they hit Europeans or Asians. Yet America's energy giants are making fantastic profits out of this chaos.

Chevron earned $12.1 billion in the second quarter of 2026. ExxonMobil earned $14.5 billion, with adjusted earnings of $14.7 billion. Exxon alone made around $4.1 billion from its downstream operations.

According to Reuters, the combined second-quarter profits of Chevron and Exxon amounted to around $27 billion. By comparison, Lithuania's planned budget revenues for this year amount to €21 billion, or roughly $24 billion. Higher oil prices and increased refining margins were directly linked to market disruptions caused by the war.

Yes, these are American companies, not the US government. Americans are paying more for gasoline. For Trump, especially with the midterm elections approaching, no matter how nicely his team tries to present it, this is hardly an economic victory.

In the short term the war is bad for the American consumer. That is a fact, plain and simple. But in the strategic, long-term perspective, the picture emerging is considerably more colorful. The old energy map is falling apart, and US power is becoming increasingly visible in the contours of the new one.

The Strait of Hormuz has long been one of the world's most important energy chokepoints. In the first half of 2025, around 20.9 million barrels of oil and petroleum products passed through it every day – roughly one-fifth of global liquid hydrocarbon consumption and more than a quarter of global seaborne oil trade.

Pay attention to the word “was.” War has very quickly changed the economic logic. What seemed too expensive in peacetime has become necessary in wartime. Saudi Arabia has opened the East-West oil pipeline at full capacity, allowing oil from the Persian Gulf region to be transported to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea, bypassing Hormuz. The UAE, on the other side of the Persian Gulf, is doing the same – opening the valves and sending oil through pipelines to Fujairah, beyond Hormuz.

According to the EIA, the existing Saudi and UAE pipelines together can provide around 4.7 million barrels per day of bypass capacity. In addition, the UAE is building another pipeline with a capacity of 1.5 million barrels per day, scheduled for completion in 2027.

In other words, war is forcing investment in things that, in peacetime, nobody wanted to spend that much money on.

The importance of Hormuz is declining not because some increasingly senile narcissist draws it as US territory on his social media, but because the world will learn to live without it.

If, over the next five to ten years, the global energy system manages to reduce its dependence on Hormuz from roughly 20 percent of global oil liquids consumption to just a few percent, we will no longer be talking about yet another US-Iran war, but about a new map of global energy geopolitics.

On that map, US energy strategists are not looking only at the Persian Gulf. They see the United States. Canada. Brazil, Guyana, Venezuela. West Africa. And, of course, alternative export routes from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The more oil that can reach global markets without passing through Hormuz, the less ability Iran has to use the strait as a strategic weapon.

Iran, having lost one of its most important geopolitical levers, will become even more isolated – one of the few friends of North Korea and Russia. And it does not matter what numbers are burning on the scoreboard at the end of a football match. It makes no difference who won one battle. We are talking about who will have more power five or ten years from now.

The numbers make it very clear who: the US Navy has just signed a seven-year, $22.9 billion contract with Raytheon, under which Tomahawk production is expected to increase from around 60 to more than 1,000 missiles per year. Reuters points to the need to replenish stocks following their use in the Iran conflict and to supply allies as one of the reasons. Production of Patriot and THAAD components is also being expanded.

This means more than just more missiles. It means production lines, investment, jobs, technology, export contracts and a long-term order book for the US defense industry.

US allies also understand that they will need – more precisely, already need – air defense, missile defense, counter-drone systems and long-range weapons.

That is very good news for the US defense industry.

And what about Ukraine?

Ukraine enters this game in a place where, just a few years ago, almost nobody would have expected it to be. Drones. Counter-drone systems. Electronic warfare and air defense capabilities. And, most importantly, something most Western allies do not have – combat experience.

Ukraine has already concluded long-term defense cooperation agreements with Gulf states. In March, agreements with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar covered precisely air defense, counter-drone capabilities, and the transfer of Ukrainian technology and experience.

This is a very important development. Ukraine is gradually moving from being a recipient of weapons to becoming an exporter of defense technology.

Russia's war against Ukraine has created something that cannot be produced in an office – real-world experience in testing and adapting military technology under the conditions of actual war. That experience is already making its way to the Persian Gulf.

Meanwhile, the aggressor and tool of the axis of evil, Russia, is being pushed deeper and deeper into the margins of this geopolitical game, toward a critical point beyond which there is no way back.

Although Russia remains one of the world's largest oil producers, extracting oil and producing petroleum products – let alone controlling energy geopolitics – are not the same thing.

Ukraine's strikes on Russian seaports are disrupting Russia's oil exports. In the first half of August, exports from Russia's main western ports were around 15 percent below plan. In July, Russia's seaborne exports of petroleum products fell by 33.3 percent in a single month and by as much as 54.7 percent compared with July 2025.

Even worse for the Russians, Moscow has begun restricting fuel exports, while strikes on oil refineries have forced it to start importing gasoline from India. According to Reuters, around 68,000 tonnes of gasoline arrived in Russia in early August, with further shipments planned.

These are not the musings of a YouTube-Facebook-Patreon knight, nor the ramblings of some political pathologist about what might happen if this or that. These are, as we like to say, actions on the ground – actions that no longer look like the behavior of an energy superpower.

It looks like the behavior of a state that has plenty of oil but is finding it increasingly difficult to control its refining, exports and logistics. Russia has oil, but its strategic value is declining at precisely the moment when the world is restructuring its energy routes.

So who is actually winning?

Israel gains more strategic room to put pressure on Iran and its regional network. The United States, as a state, gains new geopolitical leverage, strengthens its allies' dependence on American security technologies, and at the same time reshapes the region's security architecture. The US energy and defense industries gain enormous economic opportunities. Ukraine gains a new and highly promising defense technology market. Saudi Arabia and the UAE gain additional incentives to invest in energy bypass routes and reduce their dependence on Hormuz.

And who pays?

US consumers. All of Europe. Energy-importing Asia. And, of course, the states of the Middle East, which pay for the war with human lives and destroyed infrastructure.

Now, looking at the whole picture, we can formulate the right question. Not the naive one – how much will a tank of fuel cost me tomorrow? The strategic one – what will the world look like when this latest, ordinary war is over?

If current trends continue, we will see more energy bypass routes, more production outside the Persian Gulf, more oil from the United States and other suppliers, greater demand for air defense and counter-drone systems, and less global dependence on a single strait.

This will, without a doubt, mean less ability for Iran to use Hormuz as a strategic weapon, less Iranian influence in the region, and a weaker network of groups it supports.

And, very likely, less Russian energy and geopolitical influence.

Therefore, to say that “America lost the war and Iran won” is, to put it mildly, a very superficial assessment. It is entirely possible that Trump made decisions that historians will later judge much more critically. It is possible that US citizens will pay a very high price. All of that is possible.

But in geopolitics, what matters is not who raised a flag over one city today.

What matters is who will have more leverage ten or fifty years from now.

More cards. (Smile.)

And if the current energy and security transformation continues, Iran and Russia will have fewer of them.

And the United States will have more.

Photo: Thick smoke and flames rise from an oil refinery following a Ukrainian drone attack in Moscow, Russia, on June 18, 2026. Photo obtained from social media.(Source: reuters.com)

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Salva M., Titas N., our regular supporter in Panevėžys, and to all of you for your support and understanding.