Mark Gagnon

A significant share of all liquefied natural gas traded globally also passed through the same corridor.

Some estimates put the annual value of cargo transiting through the Strait of Hormuz at $1.8 trillion.

That's a T. You heard that, Chris.

That's a trillion.

With a T. That's almost what you get paid.

Now, the political landscape was shifting, too.

So in 1971, Britain formally withdraws from the Persian Gulf and basically ends its, you know, over 150 year role as the region's, you know, security and kind of like stability in the waterways and in the region, broadly speaking.

And these small kingdoms along the southern coast banded together to form the UAE.

And the power vacuum left by Britain's departure was filled in large part by two regional heavyweights.

So you have Iran under the Shah.

And then, of course, you have Saudi Arabia with the United States increasingly hovering in the background.

Now, Iran under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was America's closest ally in the Gulf, Washington's basically chosen policeman for the region.

And the Shah invested heavily in his military, purchased enormous quantities of American weapons, and really positioned Iran as the dominant power on the northern shore of the Strait.

The Iranian Revolution toppled the Shah, and it brought Ayatollah Rehola Khomeini to power, and really just transformed Iran from America's best friend of the region to one of its most sworn adversaries,

basically overnight.

And suddenly the fact that Iran sat on the northern shore of the world's most critical oil corridor went from being a massive boon and a strategic asset for the United States to a strategic nightmare.

Now, the first real test of the Strait of Hormuz in the modern era really happens during the Iran-Iraq War, which goes from 1980 to 1988.

And it's one of the deadliest conflicts in the 20th century, but a lot of people in America don't really talk about it, largely because both sides were kind of seen as adversaries of the United States, and the conflict didn't really fit into history.

what was going on with the Cold War.

The war really begins when Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Iran in September of 1980, hoping to exploit the chaos of the revolution that happened the year before.