Sixty Days In: The Iran War and the Hormuz Stranglehold

The Iran war is a conflict that began with a decapitation strike, escalated through a regional barrage, and now sits frozen in a brittle ceasefire that neither side seems quite ready to break or to keep. On 28 February 2026, U.S. and Israeli aircraft launched a coordinated wave of strikes across Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei alongside members of his family and triggering the most serious Middle Eastern war in a generation. Sixty-two days on, the shooting has slowed but the world economy is paying for the standoff one tanker at a time.

What began as a campaign Israeli officials describe as the product of months of strategic deception — empty hangars and decoy car pools photographed for satellite reconnaissance — has metastasised into a multi-front conflict. Iran retaliated with hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles aimed at Israel and at U.S. bases across Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. A drone reached the British base at Akrotiri in Cyprus. A missile crossed into Turkish airspace and was intercepted by NATO defences. Iranian frigate IRIS Dena was sunk by a U.S. submarine south of Sri Lanka. The fighting between Hezbollah and Israel reignited into what is now being called the 2026 Lebanon war, with civilian and combatant deaths surpassing 2,000.

01 / SUCCESSIONA new Khamenei, a harder line

The death of the elder Khamenei did not produce the regime collapse the Trump administration was reportedly hoping for. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has been installed as Supreme Leader and has used his Persian Gulf Day address to vow that Iran will protect what he called its core military programs — its nuclear and missile capabilities — and to declare that the only proper place for the U.S. military in the Gulf is on its seabed. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, working alongside Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, has condemned the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports as an extension of the war by other means.

Tehran has also begun walking back its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. In February the Iranian government informed the IAEA that normal safeguards had become, in its phrasing, legally and materially impossible after the strikes; the agency now reports that it cannot verify whether enrichment has been suspended or what remains of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Iran has confirmed that some material was moved to a deep underground site that survived the 2025 American bombing campaign.

02 / HORMUZThe dual blockade

If the ground war is paused, the maritime war is not. The Strait of Hormuz — the 21-mile-wide artery through which roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and liquefied natural gas flows in peacetime — has become the single most consequential piece of water on the planet. Iran shut the strait to “unfriendly” shipping in early March, mined the channel, and used the IRGC Navy to enforce a selective passage system in which vessels from China, India, Pakistan and Turkey were permitted through, sometimes after paying tolls reportedly above one million dollars per ship.

Washington responded in stages. On 19 March a U.S. aerial campaign began trying to force the strait open from the air. Israel killed Iran’s senior naval commander, Alireza Tangsiri, on 26 March. After a Pakistan-mediated ceasefire on 8 April briefly raised hopes of reopening the waterway, the failure of the Islamabad talks in mid-April prompted President Trump to reverse the logic entirely: rather than fight to open Hormuz, the U.S. Navy would shut Iranian ports. By 15 April Admiral Brad Cooper described the U.S. blockade as fully in effect. Iran answered on 18 April by re-closing the strait, and a series of attacks followed — gunfire on the Indian-flagged VLCC Sanmar Herald, a rocket strike that damaged the container ship CMA CGM Everglade off Oman, a near miss on the cruise vessel Mein Schiff 4, and a serious gunboat-and-RPG attack on the Greek-owned Epaminondas on 22 April.

Until the United States restores full freedom of navigation for vessels travelling from Iran, the status of the Strait of Hormuz will remain tightly controlled.
— IRGC statement, 18 April 2026

The result is what diplomats and analysts now openly call a dual blockade: the United States preventing ships from reaching Iranian ports, Iran preventing nearly anyone else from leaving the Gulf. According to the UK House of Commons Library, monthly transit through the strait has collapsed to roughly five percent of its pre-war level. Several Arab Gulf producers have had to suspend or cut output because their export route is closed. The U.S. military estimates it will need six months to clear the mines Iran has laid — and senior U.S. officers have suggested Iran itself may have lost track of where some of those mines are.

03 / MARKETSA world economy held by the throat

The economic shockwaves are visible at every petrol pump. Brent crude touched 126 dollars a barrel intraday on 30 April, its highest level since the early weeks of the Ukraine war, before slipping back near 110 on news that Iran had returned a counter-draft to the United States via Pakistani mediators. The U.S. national average for a gallon of gasoline is now 4.30 dollars. Gulf-state production for April is on course to come in roughly 13 million barrels a day below pre-war norms, according to industry analysts cited by CNBC. Maritime insurers are quoting premiums said to be twenty times higher than peacetime rates, meaning that even a political reopening of the strait would not immediately restore commercial traffic.

The structural fallout has begun. The United Arab Emirates announced its withdrawal from OPEC and OPEC+ this week, citing the need to prioritise national interest in a market it can no longer shape from inside the cartel. The U.S. Army has reportedly requested deployment of its Dark Eagle hypersonic missile to the region for the first time. And Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, in a ceremony for an incoming air force chief, suggested openly that Israel may resume offensive operations against Iran regardless of the ceasefire’s formal status.

04 / DIPLOMACYA peace plan in pieces

Diplomatic activity has been continuous but inconclusive. The U.S. opening 15-point proposal — demanding the end of Iran’s nuclear program, ceilings on its missile arsenal, the reopening of Hormuz, an end to support for armed groups, and offering sanctions relief in return — was rejected. Iran’s five-point counter-proposal asked for an end to U.S. and Israeli attacks across the region, security guarantees, war reparations, and international recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. A China-Pakistan five-point initiative, a Bahraini-drafted UN Security Council resolution vetoed by Russia and China, two UK-French conferences that produced a 38-state declaration on safe navigation — all have failed to bridge the central gap. Iran will not reopen the strait while the U.S. blockades its ports; the U.S. will not lift the blockade until the strait reopens.

The two-week ceasefire agreed on 8 April has now been extended at least twice. President Trump has explicitly refused to rule out resuming strikes, while also predicting publicly that an agreement remains within reach. CENTCOM has reportedly drafted plans for what officials describe as a short, powerful follow-up campaign should talks collapse, and a senior IRGC official has promised long and painful retaliation if it does.

05 / WASHINGTONThe 60-day clock

Layered on top of the foreign crisis is a domestic one. The 1973 War Powers Resolution requires the president to withdraw forces from hostilities within sixty days of notifying Congress, absent an authorisation for use of military force. That clock, by most readings, runs out today. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the administration considers the clock paused by the ceasefire. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia disagrees and has flagged what he calls serious constitutional concerns. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has announced she will introduce a measure forcing a formal authorisation vote within a week if the White House cannot produce what she calls a credible plan. A small bloc of House Republicans is arguing that the president can unilaterally extend the deadline to ninety days; others argue the clock began with the strikes themselves on 28 February, which would mean it expired earlier this week. The legal question is unresolved. The political question is whether Congress will assert itself.

06 / OUTLOOKWhat to watch next

Three near-term variables will determine whether the next sixty days look like the last sixty. First, the Pakistan-mediated text: Axios reports that Iran has now sent a response to U.S. amendments, which is the first substantive movement in two weeks and is the proximate cause of today’s modest decline in oil prices. Second, the constitutional standoff in Washington: a forced War Powers vote could either constrain the administration or, paradoxically, give it the authorisation it has so far avoided seeking. Third, the strait itself: a credible mine-clearing operation and a reciprocal lifting of both blockades could begin restoring traffic within weeks, but insurance markets, not navies, will decide when commercial shipping actually returns.

For now, the war is paused and the world is waiting. The unusual and uncomfortable truth of this moment is that a ceasefire signed three weeks ago is producing many of the consequences of an active war — soaring energy prices, structural realignment in the Gulf, a fraying NATO consensus, and a creeping legitimacy crisis for the use of American force abroad — without the political clarity that an open war would normally provide. Whether that ambiguity persists, breaks toward a deal, or collapses back into combat is a question that, as of this morning, no one in Washington, Tehran, Tel Aviv or Islamabad can confidently answer.

↳ Timeline of the conflict