⛽ Iran’s Smartest Move Yet Wasn’t Closing Hormuz — It Was Reopening It. Let Me Explain.

Iran just reopened the strait moments ago. This was not chaos. It was calibrated power, and it reminded the world who can squeeze or release the global economy.

As-Salaam-Alaikum and greetings to each of you.

Today I have to be a little nerdy and wonky to explain a few things OK? But it’s SO important that you understand.

First, I am SOOOOOOOOO glad to be back after 7 weeks of fundraising for Gaza and Lebanon. Thank you for your patience and for your support. It means the world to me. Now to business….

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When Iran and the United States agreed last week to a temporary ceasefire, part of the deal was that Israel also had to stop bombing and destroying Lebanon. But, as always, Israel ignored this - so Iran kept the Strait of Hormuz closed. Opening it was a part of the deal as well, but they closed it to show that they simply would not accept blatant violations of the agreement. Listen - this was a profound move, but what Iran just did, in my opinion, was the smartest move they made yet.

If you did know it, Israel and Lebanon just agreed to a ceasefire. So, to show their integrity, but to also show who is TRULY in charge, Iran reopened the Strait of Hormuz just now.

For those who don’t follow shipping routes and oil markets every day, the Strait of Hormuz is the narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes. It is one of the most important economic choke points on the planet. And today Iran made plain what powerful people in Washington and Tel Aviv never wanted the world to fully absorb: they can tighten that choke point, and they can loosen it.

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This Was Not Symbolic

Iran’s foreign minister did not make a vague statement about peace. He said the passage for commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz was open “in line with the ceasefire in Lebanon.” That wording matters.

It matters because it tells us this was not some unrelated economic gesture. It was not Tehran randomly deciding to calm the waters. It was a deliberate signal that Lebanon was part of the equation. Iran is telling the region, and telling the world, that if Lebanon is included, the Strait opens. If Lebanon is excluded, everything changes.

That is a chess move.

And it is a brilliant one.

Because now the world has seen, in real time, that Iran does not merely talk about the Strait of Hormuz as abstract leverage. It can actually use it. It can disrupt the flow. It can restore the flow. It can create pressure and then relieve it. That means every market analyst, every insurer, every shipping executive, every White House staffer, and every Israeli war planner now has to calculate around a reality they already knew in theory but just watched in practice.

That is what power looks like.

Lebanon Was Never “Separate”

What enrages me is that Lebanon has been treated by the United States and Israel as though it were somehow negotiable collateral damage. As though bombing villages, flattening neighborhoods, displacing over a million people, and killing over 2,000 human beings could all be swept into the category of regional management.

That is evil.

A ten-day ceasefire after that kind of devastation is not justice. It is not accountability. It is not repair. And it is certainly not mercy.

According to reporting on this deal, Israel kept bombing before the ceasefire took effect, and even now Israeli officials are openly saying they intend to remain in positions they have captured inside Lebanon. So let’s be very clear, sisters and brothers: this is not peace. This is a pause imposed on top of ruin, with Israel still trying to preserve military freedom after reducing so much of southern Lebanon to trauma and ash.

That is exactly why Iran’s move matters.

Because Tehran refused the lie that Lebanon could be separated from the wider war. Iran’s deputy foreign minister reportedly said any ceasefire had to include all conflict zones “from Lebanon to the Red Sea,” and described that as a red line. In other words, Iran rejected the imperial trick of fragmenting one crisis from another so that the United States and Israel can bomb across the map and negotiate over each shattered people one by one.

Either there is security for all, or there is security for none.

That is not just a slogan. That is now maritime policy.

The Real Message to Washington

The truly humiliating part for Washington is this: after all the boasting, after all the aircraft carriers, after all the threats, after all the language about strength and deterrence, Iran has just shown that it still holds a hand the United States cannot casually wish away.

And Tehran played that hand with discipline.

That is what makes this so smart.

If Iran had simply kept the Strait closed indefinitely, Western media would have screamed “irrationality,” “extremism,” “madness,” and every other lazy colonial word they use when people outside Washington exercise real leverage. But by reopening it now, and explicitly linking that reopening to Lebanon’s ceasefire, Iran has done something far more sophisticated.

It has shown itself capable of restraint.

It has shown itself capable of calibration.

It has shown that the pressure was political, not random.

And it has shown that if Lebanon is attacked again, the world will know exactly what changed and exactly who changed it.

That is a stronger position than chaos. That is a stronger position than bluster. That is controlled leverage.

Israel Burned Lebanon, Then Wanted Credit for a Pause

This part should make every decent person furious.

Israel devastated Lebanon. Entire families were killed. Children were killed. Medical workers were killed. Homes and bridges and neighborhoods were torn apart. More than a million people were driven from where they lived. Then, after all of that, Israeli officials and their allies wanted to posture as though agreeing to a temporary ceasefire was some kind of noble diplomatic offering.

No. Absolutely not.

An arsonist does not get praise for briefly putting down the gasoline can.

And the fact that outside powers still scramble to preserve open passage through Hormuz tells you everything you need to know. They understand, perhaps better than they admit in public, that the global economy is vulnerable in ways their weapons cannot fully solve. There were already warnings of fuel disruptions. There were already reports of tankers beginning to move again once the Strait reopened. European powers were already staging meetings about secure passage. Why? Because everybody understands the same thing:

Iran’s leverage is real.

Not imagined. Not exaggerated. Real.

I am still angry for Lebanon. I am angry that so many of the world’s most powerful governments watched that country be battered and bled. I am angry that a “ceasefire” comes only after destruction so vast that families are returning not to homes, but to wreckage. I am angry that the same people who call themselves defenders of order keep producing mass disorder and then naming it diplomacy.

But I am also able to recognize a brilliant move when I see one.

Iran just taught the world that the Strait of Hormuz is not merely a map feature. It is not just a headline phrase. It is a live instrument of regional power. And by reopening it now, not in surrender but in linkage to Lebanon, Tehran has forced even its enemies to reckon with that fact.

That is the move.

Not just that Iran can close the gate.

But that Iran can open it, on its own terms, and make the whole world understand why.

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Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun