A body of water 21 miles wide at its narrowest point is quietly dictating the terms of the global economy right now. The Strait of Hormuz has always been important, the kind of place that gets a paragraph in geopolitics textbooks. But what is happening there today is not a textbook situation. It is a live crisis, and the United States is at the center of it, not by accident, but by necessity.

Since late February 2026, the conflict involving the US, Israel, and Iran has fundamentally altered how energy moves around the planet. Tanker traffic through the Strait has dropped sharply. A corridor that once saw over a hundred vessels daily is now a contested zone. The consequences have spread fast and they have spread far.

Crude oil crossed $100 per barrel early in the conflict, up more than 40 percent from pre-war levels. Jet fuel has doubled in price along several international corridors. Liquefied natural gas markets have tightened, which is a problem for Europe and parts of Asia that spent years trying to reduce dependence on Russian energy only to find themselves facing a different supply squeeze. These are not numbers in a report. They are costs absorbed by airlines, trucking companies, manufacturers, and ultimately regular people filling up their cars and paying their utility bills.

What follows energy, though, is the part that worries me more. Fertilizer supply chains are beginning to fracture. The Middle East supplies significant quantities of ammonia and sulfur, both critical agricultural inputs. The disruption has not fully hit food prices yet, but it will. These things move with a lag. By the time grocery prices reflect what is happening in the Hormuz corridor today, the conflict will have already done much of its damage quietly and out of sight. The populations most exposed are in Africa and South Asia, places where families spend the majority of their income on food and have no margin to absorb what is coming.

Global inflation, which many central banks had finally seemed to be bringing under control, may now approach 7.7 percent under sustained disruption. The IMF has already revised its 2026 growth outlook downward. If the conflict deepens, some projections point toward near-contraction in global output. Central banks that had started cutting interest rates may be forced to reverse course, which tightens credit, slows investment, and makes the slowdown worse. Stagflation, that ugly combination of rising prices and stagnant growth, is back on the table.

There are people making money from all of this. Defense contractors are expanding. Investment banks are posting higher trading revenues. Certain speculative markets are thriving on the volatility. But none of those gains compensate for the broader erosion happening across the global system.

Here is where the United States' role matters, and I say this not as jingoism but as a practical reading of the situation.

Iran has not come to this conflict from a position of panic. Whatever Western analysts expected, Tehran is not negotiating as a party that believes it is losing. It has maintained its nuclear threshold capability. It has kept its regional alliances intact. And it holds a card that every oil importer on earth is watching: the demonstrated ability to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz. From Tehran's perspective, that leverage is not a chip to trade away in exchange for sanctions relief that could be reversed by the next American administration. It is a long-term survival asset. That asymmetry is why talks remain fragile and why every scheduled diplomatic engagement seems to be shadowed by some parallel act of escalation, a seized vessel, a threatened strike, a naval provocation.

The United States faces a genuine strategic puzzle here. Sanctions designed to limit Iran's oil exports have the side effect of tightening global supply precisely when the Strait is already disrupted. The pressure intended to weaken Iran is also amplifying the leverage Iran gets from market instability. These two things are working against each other, and Washington needs to be honest about that tension rather than pretending the policy toolbox is working exactly as planned.

But acknowledging that tension does not mean stepping back. It means being smarter about how American power is deployed.

The case for American engagement is straightforward. The global trading system, the one that lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the past several decades, depends on freedom of navigation. It depends on the assumption that critical chokepoints will not become instruments of coercion by any single state. When that assumption breaks down, the costs fall on everyone, but they fall hardest on the people who can least afford it. The United States has historically been the guarantor of that system, not out of altruism, but because it benefits from a stable, open global economy. That interest has not changed.

What has changed is the complexity of the moment. Iran's position, its nuclear proximity, its willingness to absorb economic pain, its regional network, requires a response that combines credible military deterrence with genuine diplomatic off-ramps. Pressure without a path to resolution just prolongs the disruption. And prolonging the disruption is not a neutral outcome. Every additional month of elevated energy prices, tightened food supply chains, and suppressed global growth is a month that erodes the foundations the United States and its allies depend on.

The Gulf states, for their part, are not insulated either. Higher oil prices look good on a balance sheet until the shipping lanes their exports depend on become unreliable and the threat of strikes on energy infrastructure starts pricing into every investment calculation. The region's governments understand this. Their private conversations with Washington reflect it.

There is no clean solution here. Anyone telling you there is a quick fix is not paying attention. A comprehensive settlement is unlikely in the near term. The more realistic path is one of partial arrangements and ceasefire structures that reduce the risk of full-scale escalation without resolving the underlying tensions. That is not satisfying, but it is what the situation actually offers.

What matters in the meantime is that the United States remains the country that others look to for stabilization. Not because America is obligated to solve every regional conflict, but because the alternative, a world where the Strait of Hormuz is effectively held hostage and no actor has the capacity or credibility to push back, is worse for everyone, including the American economy.

The war may not end soon. The disruption may persist. Energy markets may stabilize at elevated prices while remaining volatile for years. Supply chains will adjust, but adjustment takes time and carries costs that will be distributed unequally.

What the United States can do is work to prevent the worst outcomes. Keep the channels for diplomacy open even while maintaining pressure. Be honest about the limits of the current strategy and willing to adapt. And demonstrate, consistently, that the global rules which make trade and stability possible are worth defending.

The Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide. What passes through it, oil, gas, food inputs, and the basic functioning of the modern economy, is something the world cannot afford to lose. The United States, whatever its flaws and whatever the difficulty of the moment, remains the only actor with both the reach and the credibility to make a difference. That is not a burden to resent. It is a reason to stay engaged.

Expressed opinion is personal.