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I mean, imagine knowing the exact date by which the other guy has to end the conflict and get petrol prices down, or he faces electoral annihilation. Imagine knowing exactly how long he can hold out. And imagine knowing that he knows you know that! Why, you’d be one happy mullah.

Like all games of chicken, the Hormuz stalemate depends on each side’s ignorance of the other’s endurance. It works if your adversary believes that no matter how long they hold out, you’ll hold out one day longer. Strangely, merely knowing your opponent’s deadline is almost as useful, strategically, as if they surrendered tomorrow. You don’t need to see them blink. You just need to know when they will.

Iran would still endure tremendous hardship in the meantime, of course. But if the regime knew its hand would grow stronger every day until, say, for example, oh, November 4, then why concede much? The final capitulator is known. That’s why we’re so lucky the Iranians don’t know about the midterms.

Right now, all of us are living on borrowed time. Two weeks ago, the last tankers to cross the strait reached their destinations. Shipping through the strait has collapsed by 97 per cent. Hormuz normally carries about a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and one-fifth of its liquefied natural gas. If it stays closed for months, the entire global fuel system is likely to seize up.

“For voters to see lower pump prices by election day, tankers need to be flowing through Hormuz by early September.”

Our region is particularly vulnerable. Asia used to receive 80 per cent of Persian Gulf oil exports. Strategic reserves are running out. Japan’s will be exhausted this month. China has suspended exports of refined products. The Australian budget hasn’t faced this kind of uncertainty since COVID-19. Stagflation, the nastiest double bind in economics, stalks us. Oh, Mr Chalmers, what a mess.

The mess gets worse if it ends in a face-saving deal — if, for example, Iran softens its nuclear demands but quietly keeps the keys to the strait. “The Strait of Hormuz will certainly reopen,” the Iranian parliament commission’s chief, Ebrahim Azizi, has said. “But not for [the US]: It will be open for those who comply with the new laws of Iran.”

Without a genuine mechanism to secure oil and gas traffic, the Islamic Republic could someday coerce Japan, Australia and Europe to lift sanctions in exchange for sweet, sweet crude. That’s a bigger strategic win even than keeping their nuclear program. Nukes aren’t very useful. Holding worldwide energy markets hostage is. It’s a good thing Mr Azizi doesn’t know when Mr Trump’s clock runs out.

When president Obama made a deal with Iran in 2015 to curtail its nuclear program, Trump called it “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into”. Trump hates being bested by Obama. Well, good news, Mr President! Let’s see what Tehran offers you to declare victory and leave as election day approaches. You might out-Obama Obama yet.

Of course, Trump isn’t going to lose a war just to placate a bunch of lah-di-dah foreign allies who whine about petty nonsense like food prices and interest rates and keeping the lights on and not starving. He’s a winner, not a loser like us. The problem is, American motorists are furious. His Republican Party colleagues are pounding on the Oval Office door with their hair on fire. For voters to see lower pump prices by election day, tankers need to be flowing through Hormuz by early September.

Democrats are already favoured to take the House. If they can also pick up four upper-house seats to control the Senate, Trump will face investigations from newly created committees with subpoena powers staffed by his enemies. They will turn over rocks Trump would rather leave unturned. Flipping the Senate is a long shot, but less so if a paralysed global supply chain pushes inflation to COVID-era highs. It sure is a good thing the Iranians don’t know all this!

Of course, Trump has other ways to bully Tehran. He could repeat his threat to kill the Iranian people’s “whole civilisation … never to be brought back again”. But short of genocide, what else can he do? Bomb their nuclear program? Decapitate the leadership? Launch an air war? He’s already done all that. That’s why blockades are most effective at the start of a conflict, when there’s headroom to escalate. Without that, you need time to starve them out. Trump has neither.

The pain of all this, of course, won’t be borne by Trump, or even, mostly, by Americans. It might be borne by schoolchildren in Romania returning to farming because there’s no diesel for irrigation pumps. Or by a surgeon in Greece operating by the light of a phone torch. Or a flower exporter in Nairobi watching her harvest rot on the runway. A family in Karachi queueing for seven hours for cooking gas. A Chilean fishing family with no diesel for their boat. A hospital in Tonga on emergency protocols due to brownouts. Or a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory with no water from their empty diesel water pumps.

See? It sure is a good thing the Iranians don’t know about the midterms. Because if they did, the next six months could look really, really bad.

Originally published May 2, 2026 in the Australian Financial Review

became a rockstar reporter covering Trump’s first election campaign for Rolling Stone. He went on to cover huge stories like Twitter’s pre-Elon censorship regime and the misinformation around Trump’s ties to Russia. Matt joins Josh in New York City for this in-the-flesh livestream about American politics, algorithms and why, despite it all, he’s optimistic about what comes next.

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