February 9, 2026
Peiman Salehi
“Any war would not be limited to Iran and would set the entire region on fire.”
The remark was delivered not as a slogan or a rhetorical escalation, but as a strategic assessment grounded in geography, energy flows, and global economic interdependence. In Tehran, the statement was widely interpreted not only as a message to Washington, but also as a warning to regional governments whose political stability and economic survival depend on uninterrupted oil exports and the security of maritime routes in the Persian Gulf.
This logic has been echoed consistently by senior Iranian political and military officials. Rather than emphasizing direct battlefield confrontation, Tehran’s messaging has focused on regional spillover and systemic consequences.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that if the US were to attack Iran, Tehran would retaliate against US military bases across the region, making clear that any conflict would immediately expand beyond Iranian territory.
Mohammad Pakpour, commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has similarly emphasized that Iran is prepared for all scenarios, including what he described as an “all-out war,” underscoring that escalation would not remain limited or symbolic.
Ali Shamkhani, a senior advisor to the supreme leader, reinforced this position by warning that any US military action would be treated as an act of war and met with immediate and comprehensive retaliation.
A warning grounded in geography
Taken together, these statements reveal a coherent strategic doctrine rooted in Iran's geography and its role in the global energy system. At its core is the Strait of Hormuz– a chokepoint through which around 20 million barrels of oil passed daily in 2024, accounting for a fifth of global petroleum consumption.
Crucially, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that approximately 84 percent of crude oil and condensate and 83 percent of liquefied natural gas (LNG) moving through the strait were destined for Asian markets, with China, India, Japan, and South Korea identified as the primary recipients.
Reuters has repeatedly described the Strait of Hormuz as “the world’s most important oil artery,” noting that major OPEC producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and the UAE, export the bulk of their crude through this passage, primarily to Asia.
This concentration of energy flows explains why instability in the Persian Gulf cannot be treated as a regional contingency. It represents a structural vulnerability embedded in the global economy.
Oil chokepoint, global pressure valve
The dependence of East Asia on Gulf energy magnifies the stakes considerably. Japan and South Korea lack meaningful overland alternatives and rely almost entirely on maritime imports. China, despite limited pipeline diversification, remains heavily dependent on seaborne crude and LNG from West Asia.
India, whose energy demand continues to rise alongside industrial expansion, is similarly exposed. Together, these economies form the industrial backbone of global manufacturing and export production.
The consequences of disruption, therefore, extend far beyond energy markets themselves. East Asian economies are deeply integrated into global supply chains that feed European and North American markets.
Energy-driven slowdowns in Asia would translate rapidly into higher production costs, delayed shipments, and inflationary pressures across western economies. Even in the absence of a full closure of the Strait of Hormuz, heightened risk perception alone would be sufficient to drive up shipping insurance premiums, reroute maritime traffic, and inject volatility into futures markets.
This dynamic helps explain why Iranian officials consistently frame escalation as systemic rather than bilateral. From Tehran’s perspective, leverage does not require maximal confrontation. Even limited, intermittent disruption or sustained uncertainty in the Persian Gulf would impose disproportionate costs on energy-importing economies.
In this sense, the strait functions less as a binary switch and more as a pressure valve capable of transmitting localized instability into global economic stress.
Washington's fantasy of energy decoupling
Despite this reality, a common assumption in Washington is that instability in the Persian Gulf no longer carries decisive consequences for the US. The argument rests on the belief that US dependence on West Asian oil has declined sharply and that any disruption would primarily harm Asian consumers.
On a narrow reading of US import data, this assumption appears plausible. According to figures compiled by the EIA, the US now imports only a small share of its crude oil from Persian Gulf producers, with most of its petroleum supplies sourced domestically or from partners such as Canada and Mexico.
In recent years, crude oil and condensate imports from the Persian Gulf have accounted for well under 10 percent of total US petroleum imports, reflecting the expansion of US shale production and structural shifts in North American energy supply.
Yet this logic collapses when the integrated nature of the global economy is taken into account. Oil markets operate through global pricing, shipping, insurance, and financial speculation. As the EIA has repeatedly noted, disruptions in major chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz tend to produce global price shocks rather than localized shortages.
Even if Gulf crude is not physically consumed in the US, its price is determined by global supply expectations.
From containment to crisis
More importantly, the US economy is deeply exposed to secondary and tertiary effects transmitted through global supply chains. East Asian economies that rely heavily on Gulf energy are also among the largest exporters of manufactured goods to Europe and North America.
Energy shocks in Asia would therefore reach the US not through fuel pumps, but through factories, ports, and consumer prices. Europe, already strained by energy insecurity since the start of the Ukraine war, would face renewed inflationary pressures, amplifying global economic stress.
According to a June 2025 analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a disruption in the Strait of Hormuz would directly jeopardize roughly 10 percent of Europe’s LNG imports from Qatar and the UAE, with Italy, Belgium, and Poland among the leading buyers. Italy alone accounts for about half of these imports.
This figure reflects only direct LNG exposure. The broader indirect effects on European energy prices, manufacturing supply chains, and inflation would likely be far more significant as energy shocks in Asia and global markets ripple outward.
Taken together, these developments point to something deeper than a series of isolated regional crises. They reflect a broader erosion of global confidence in the so-called rules-based international order. The US, long presented as the standard-bearer of global liberalism, has in recent years acted in ways that have generated growing unease even among its closest partners.
The war in Ukraine, backed unconditionally by Washington and allowed to evolve into a prolonged war of attrition, displaced millions of Ukrainians into Europe and imposed heavy social and economic burdens on European states.
At the same time, US actions toward Venezuela, widely criticized by legal experts as violations of international law and later openly framed in terms of access to energy resources, further undermined claims of rule-bound leadership.
Repeated threats against the sovereignty of countries such as Canada and Greenland, alongside Washington’s direct role in facilitating military action against Iran in June 2025 during ongoing nuclear negotiations, have further damaged the image of a predictable, law-bound international system.
The unraveling order
The cumulative effect of these actions has been a gradual shift in the global order toward a landscape reminiscent of the post–World War I era, in which hard-edged realism supplants cooperation and military power increasingly replaces economic and institutional integration as the organizing principle of international politics.
In this context, the growing visibility of actors such as China and Russia as putative stabilizing forces does not stem from ideological alignment with Iran, but from systemic fatigue with imposed instability and a pragmatic effort to restore a minimum level of predictability to the global economy.
China, whose economic exposure to Gulf instability far exceeds Washington's, would face mounting incentives to intervene diplomatically in any prolonged crisis. During recent regional escalations, Chinese officials have repeatedly framed stability in the Persian Gulf as essential to global economic health, warning that heightened tensions are “not in the interests of any party.”
Western sanctions aimed at curbing Russia’s energy sector have reached a saturation point and shown limited effectiveness in fundamentally disrupting Moscow’s oil and gas exports.
Despite thousands of restrictions, Russia continues to find ways to maintain energy flows through alternative financial systems and buyers, highlighting the limitations of prolonged economic warfare and the resilience of energy exporters in adapting to geopolitical pressure.
Stripped of rhetoric, Iran’s warnings reflect this structural reality. The geography of the Persian Gulf ensures that escalation cannot be neatly contained or selectively managed.
Even without a full closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the economic and political shockwaves generated by sustained tension would be global, persistent, and difficult to reverse. The true danger of war lies not in its opening moves, but in the long-term damage it would inflict on an already fragile international system.
He also rejected any talk of moving enriched uranium out of the country, as the US has demanded.
“This issue depends on whether they lift all sanctions in return,” Eslami said, referring to the dilution of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, which is at 60 percent. “The possibility of reducing the concentration of 60 percent enriched uranium, through the dilution process, is linked to whether or not all sanctions are lifted.”
However, so far, Washington is demanding much more than that, specifically zero enrichment and the transfer of the stockpile to a third country.
Regarding the transfer of enriched uranium outside Iran, he added that “Such a thing was not discussed in the negotiations.”
He also confirmed that Iran has been in touch with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which Tehran has accused of passing along sensitive information to Israel.
“Our relations with the Agency are ongoing, but the Agency has an unfinished task regarding a military attack on facilities under safeguards supervision that it cannot escape from. If we are under the supervision of the Agency and have a certificate of accreditation from the Agency and are part of the Agency's accreditation, the Agency cannot remain silent about what happened,” he added.
Tehran says the IAEA failed to properly condemn Israeli and US strikes on major nuclear facilities last year. One day before Israel launched the US-backed war on Iran in June 2025, the IAEA released a report accusing Tehran of non-compliance with nuclear obligations.
Eslami’s comments come days after Omani-mediated negotiations with the US in Muscat. Right after the first round of talks, Washington imposed new sanctions on Iran’s oil industry.
At the behest of Tel Aviv, Washington is demanding an end to the nuclear program, heavy restrictions on the ballistic missile program, and an end to all Iranian support for resistance groups in the region – namely Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Ansarallah.
Tehran has categorically rejected this. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi recently referred to these demands as “impossible.” On Sunday, Araghchi said uranium enrichment will continue “even at the cost of war.”
Iran agreed to limit enrichment in the 2015 nuclear deal, which was scrapped during US President Donald Trump’s first term, and heavy sanctions were reimposed.
The AEOI chief’s remarks also coincided with a speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “Our people's determination surpasses all forms of military power,” Khamenei said.
The supreme leader had warned recently that a “regional war” will erupt if the US follows through on threats to attack Iran.
The last time Tehran negotiated with Washington, it was attacked by Israel in the middle of the talks.
Trump had pretended to be in favor of diplomacy for months prior to the attack, while secretly plotting the 12-day war with Israel.
The talks coincide with a massive US military buildup across the region, and follow numerous threats against Iran made publicly by Trump. Iran has vowed to confront any attack by striking back at Israel and US bases across West Asia.
Peiman Salehi
More than nuclear escalation, a
western war on Iran could unleash a global economic shock powerful enough to
unravel the fragile fabric of the current world order.
On 1 February 2026, Iranian
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned that any military confrontation involving
Iran would not remain confined to its borders.
“Any war would not be limited to Iran and would set the entire region on fire.”
The remark was delivered not as a slogan or a rhetorical escalation, but as a strategic assessment grounded in geography, energy flows, and global economic interdependence. In Tehran, the statement was widely interpreted not only as a message to Washington, but also as a warning to regional governments whose political stability and economic survival depend on uninterrupted oil exports and the security of maritime routes in the Persian Gulf.
This logic has been echoed consistently by senior Iranian political and military officials. Rather than emphasizing direct battlefield confrontation, Tehran’s messaging has focused on regional spillover and systemic consequences.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that if the US were to attack Iran, Tehran would retaliate against US military bases across the region, making clear that any conflict would immediately expand beyond Iranian territory.
Mohammad Pakpour, commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has similarly emphasized that Iran is prepared for all scenarios, including what he described as an “all-out war,” underscoring that escalation would not remain limited or symbolic.
Ali Shamkhani, a senior advisor to the supreme leader, reinforced this position by warning that any US military action would be treated as an act of war and met with immediate and comprehensive retaliation.
A warning grounded in geography
Taken together, these statements reveal a coherent strategic doctrine rooted in Iran's geography and its role in the global energy system. At its core is the Strait of Hormuz– a chokepoint through which around 20 million barrels of oil passed daily in 2024, accounting for a fifth of global petroleum consumption.
Crucially, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that approximately 84 percent of crude oil and condensate and 83 percent of liquefied natural gas (LNG) moving through the strait were destined for Asian markets, with China, India, Japan, and South Korea identified as the primary recipients.
Reuters has repeatedly described the Strait of Hormuz as “the world’s most important oil artery,” noting that major OPEC producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and the UAE, export the bulk of their crude through this passage, primarily to Asia.
This concentration of energy flows explains why instability in the Persian Gulf cannot be treated as a regional contingency. It represents a structural vulnerability embedded in the global economy.
Oil chokepoint, global pressure valve
The dependence of East Asia on Gulf energy magnifies the stakes considerably. Japan and South Korea lack meaningful overland alternatives and rely almost entirely on maritime imports. China, despite limited pipeline diversification, remains heavily dependent on seaborne crude and LNG from West Asia.
India, whose energy demand continues to rise alongside industrial expansion, is similarly exposed. Together, these economies form the industrial backbone of global manufacturing and export production.
The consequences of disruption, therefore, extend far beyond energy markets themselves. East Asian economies are deeply integrated into global supply chains that feed European and North American markets.
Energy-driven slowdowns in Asia would translate rapidly into higher production costs, delayed shipments, and inflationary pressures across western economies. Even in the absence of a full closure of the Strait of Hormuz, heightened risk perception alone would be sufficient to drive up shipping insurance premiums, reroute maritime traffic, and inject volatility into futures markets.
This dynamic helps explain why Iranian officials consistently frame escalation as systemic rather than bilateral. From Tehran’s perspective, leverage does not require maximal confrontation. Even limited, intermittent disruption or sustained uncertainty in the Persian Gulf would impose disproportionate costs on energy-importing economies.
In this sense, the strait functions less as a binary switch and more as a pressure valve capable of transmitting localized instability into global economic stress.
Washington's fantasy of energy decoupling
Despite this reality, a common assumption in Washington is that instability in the Persian Gulf no longer carries decisive consequences for the US. The argument rests on the belief that US dependence on West Asian oil has declined sharply and that any disruption would primarily harm Asian consumers.
On a narrow reading of US import data, this assumption appears plausible. According to figures compiled by the EIA, the US now imports only a small share of its crude oil from Persian Gulf producers, with most of its petroleum supplies sourced domestically or from partners such as Canada and Mexico.
In recent years, crude oil and condensate imports from the Persian Gulf have accounted for well under 10 percent of total US petroleum imports, reflecting the expansion of US shale production and structural shifts in North American energy supply.
Yet this logic collapses when the integrated nature of the global economy is taken into account. Oil markets operate through global pricing, shipping, insurance, and financial speculation. As the EIA has repeatedly noted, disruptions in major chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz tend to produce global price shocks rather than localized shortages.
Even if Gulf crude is not physically consumed in the US, its price is determined by global supply expectations.
From containment to crisis
More importantly, the US economy is deeply exposed to secondary and tertiary effects transmitted through global supply chains. East Asian economies that rely heavily on Gulf energy are also among the largest exporters of manufactured goods to Europe and North America.
Energy shocks in Asia would therefore reach the US not through fuel pumps, but through factories, ports, and consumer prices. Europe, already strained by energy insecurity since the start of the Ukraine war, would face renewed inflationary pressures, amplifying global economic stress.
According to a June 2025 analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a disruption in the Strait of Hormuz would directly jeopardize roughly 10 percent of Europe’s LNG imports from Qatar and the UAE, with Italy, Belgium, and Poland among the leading buyers. Italy alone accounts for about half of these imports.
This figure reflects only direct LNG exposure. The broader indirect effects on European energy prices, manufacturing supply chains, and inflation would likely be far more significant as energy shocks in Asia and global markets ripple outward.
Taken together, these developments point to something deeper than a series of isolated regional crises. They reflect a broader erosion of global confidence in the so-called rules-based international order. The US, long presented as the standard-bearer of global liberalism, has in recent years acted in ways that have generated growing unease even among its closest partners.
The war in Ukraine, backed unconditionally by Washington and allowed to evolve into a prolonged war of attrition, displaced millions of Ukrainians into Europe and imposed heavy social and economic burdens on European states.
At the same time, US actions toward Venezuela, widely criticized by legal experts as violations of international law and later openly framed in terms of access to energy resources, further undermined claims of rule-bound leadership.
Repeated threats against the sovereignty of countries such as Canada and Greenland, alongside Washington’s direct role in facilitating military action against Iran in June 2025 during ongoing nuclear negotiations, have further damaged the image of a predictable, law-bound international system.
The unraveling order
The cumulative effect of these actions has been a gradual shift in the global order toward a landscape reminiscent of the post–World War I era, in which hard-edged realism supplants cooperation and military power increasingly replaces economic and institutional integration as the organizing principle of international politics.
In this context, the growing visibility of actors such as China and Russia as putative stabilizing forces does not stem from ideological alignment with Iran, but from systemic fatigue with imposed instability and a pragmatic effort to restore a minimum level of predictability to the global economy.
China, whose economic exposure to Gulf instability far exceeds Washington's, would face mounting incentives to intervene diplomatically in any prolonged crisis. During recent regional escalations, Chinese officials have repeatedly framed stability in the Persian Gulf as essential to global economic health, warning that heightened tensions are “not in the interests of any party.”
Western sanctions aimed at curbing Russia’s energy sector have reached a saturation point and shown limited effectiveness in fundamentally disrupting Moscow’s oil and gas exports.
Despite thousands of restrictions, Russia continues to find ways to maintain energy flows through alternative financial systems and buyers, highlighting the limitations of prolonged economic warfare and the resilience of energy exporters in adapting to geopolitical pressure.
Stripped of rhetoric, Iran’s warnings reflect this structural reality. The geography of the Persian Gulf ensures that escalation cannot be neatly contained or selectively managed.
Even without a full closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the economic and political shockwaves generated by sustained tension would be global, persistent, and difficult to reverse. The true danger of war lies not in its opening moves, but in the long-term damage it would inflict on an already fragile international system.
The US and Israel are demanding
that Iran cease enrichment completely, severely restrict its missile program,
and halt support for its allies in the Axis of Resistance
The head of the Atomic Energy
Agency of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami, said on 9 February that the Islamic
Republic will not agree to a cap on uranium enrichment unless all sanctions are
removed.He also rejected any talk of moving enriched uranium out of the country, as the US has demanded.
“This issue depends on whether they lift all sanctions in return,” Eslami said, referring to the dilution of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, which is at 60 percent. “The possibility of reducing the concentration of 60 percent enriched uranium, through the dilution process, is linked to whether or not all sanctions are lifted.”
However, so far, Washington is demanding much more than that, specifically zero enrichment and the transfer of the stockpile to a third country.
Regarding the transfer of enriched uranium outside Iran, he added that “Such a thing was not discussed in the negotiations.”
He also confirmed that Iran has been in touch with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which Tehran has accused of passing along sensitive information to Israel.
“Our relations with the Agency are ongoing, but the Agency has an unfinished task regarding a military attack on facilities under safeguards supervision that it cannot escape from. If we are under the supervision of the Agency and have a certificate of accreditation from the Agency and are part of the Agency's accreditation, the Agency cannot remain silent about what happened,” he added.
Tehran says the IAEA failed to properly condemn Israeli and US strikes on major nuclear facilities last year. One day before Israel launched the US-backed war on Iran in June 2025, the IAEA released a report accusing Tehran of non-compliance with nuclear obligations.
Eslami’s comments come days after Omani-mediated negotiations with the US in Muscat. Right after the first round of talks, Washington imposed new sanctions on Iran’s oil industry.
At the behest of Tel Aviv, Washington is demanding an end to the nuclear program, heavy restrictions on the ballistic missile program, and an end to all Iranian support for resistance groups in the region – namely Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Ansarallah.
Tehran has categorically rejected this. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi recently referred to these demands as “impossible.” On Sunday, Araghchi said uranium enrichment will continue “even at the cost of war.”
Iran agreed to limit enrichment in the 2015 nuclear deal, which was scrapped during US President Donald Trump’s first term, and heavy sanctions were reimposed.
The AEOI chief’s remarks also coincided with a speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “Our people's determination surpasses all forms of military power,” Khamenei said.
The supreme leader had warned recently that a “regional war” will erupt if the US follows through on threats to attack Iran.
The last time Tehran negotiated with Washington, it was attacked by Israel in the middle of the talks.
Trump had pretended to be in favor of diplomacy for months prior to the attack, while secretly plotting the 12-day war with Israel.
The talks coincide with a massive US military buildup across the region, and follow numerous threats against Iran made publicly by Trump. Iran has vowed to confront any attack by striking back at Israel and US bases across West Asia.
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