Strategic Geography
🇮🇷Iran
Transit risk in the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s regional projection capabilities directly shape energy transport costs and Gulf states’ infrastructure investment decisions. This section follows those developments.
5 analyses
The Power to Freeze: How Stablecoins Carry U.S. Financial Sanctions onto the Blockchain
In 2026 Tether froze more than $470 million of USDT at wallets tied to Iran's central bank. Washington's power to freeze comes from dollar clearing, and stablecoins extend it on-chain: the GENIUS Act requires issuers to be able to freeze, burn or block transfers on the order of a court or federal agency, and foreign issuers that cannot comply lose the American market. Immutable code and an adversary's own token lie beyond its reach, but CIPS, mBridge, the digital yuan and the digital euro reach nowhere near as far as the dollar. Taiwan's banks, exporters and life insurers sit inside the system.
The Houthis Push Toward Bab el-Mandeb as the Middle East's Two Shipping Gateways Come Under Pressure at Once
In September the Houthis took Mocha and reached Perim, the island in the middle of the Bab el-Mandeb. The strait is not closed, but with Hormuz traffic down to a handful of ships a day, the Red Sea was the outlet Saudi Arabia was counting on — and its pipeline to Yanbu has just been hit too. Iran has now tied reopening Hormuz to ending the fighting by all its allies, pulling both straits into a single negotiation.
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan Align: The Middle East Builds a Second Security Layer Beyond the United States
The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement treats an armed attack on any one of the three as an attack on all — language that drew immediate comparison to NATO's Article 5. But reading it as another NATO misses the larger shift: regional powers are no longer only choosing among architectures designed elsewhere. Seventy years after the Baghdad Pact traced nearly the same geographic axis, the architects have changed.
How the New Pipeline Empire Bypassing the Strait of Hormuz Redraws Oil Power
On a map, the Strait of Hormuz is a thin strip of water; in practice, it is the energy chokepoint the world finds hardest to avoid. The fighting of 2026 has changed how oil power is measured. This article examines how Saudi Arabia and the UAE use bypass pipelines to gain a resilience other Gulf producers lack, and how that is reshaping regional alignments.
Oil Tankers Bound for India: How the Russia-Ukraine War Turns Energy Sanctions into Great Power Leverage
The Russia-Ukraine war and Western sanctions have redirected global oil flows. By absorbing discounted Russian crude, India transforms an energy crisis into geopolitical leverage. This article analyzes India's energy decisions, refining capabilities, and strategic autonomy.