Mark Gagnon

And Iran denied it.

They said that they had no involvement.

Iran shot down an American RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drone.

The United States came within minutes of launching a retaliatory strike before Trump called off the operation.

In July of 2019, Iran seized the British flagged tanker Stena Impero, a direct act of maritime intelligence.

interdiction basically that sends shockwaves throughout the entirety of the shipping industry.

Insurance rates go crazy.

Some companies begin rerouting around Africa because it's just easier to do that and take more time than to risk going through the straight and getting all of your stuff seized.

And through all of this, a basic pattern

still holds.

Iran would threaten or harass shipping.

The United States and its allies would reinforce their naval presence.

Tensions would kind of chill out and eventually the situation would go back to normal.

And for decades, the conventional wisdom amongst defense analysts was that Iran would never actually shut down the strait because doing so would be

such a tremendous act of self-harm, you know, Iran's own oil experts are depending on the same waterway, that they would never do it.

And the conventional wisdom was right.

They threatened to shut it down numerous times, and they didn't.

Until now.

march 2026 and just a note before we continue the events that i'm going to be talking about now are still going on so i mean by the time this is posted it might be completely different so we're going to stick with what has been widely reported but the situation is fluid and it's difficult to really understand what's going on as they say christos the first casualty of war is hope the truth come on ah dude you were you almost had i like your guess i like the swing it's pretty good i like that

So what some analysts are beginning to describe as a regional conflict is not a war yet.