The Russia-Ukraine war has been going on for months. The Ukraine war has continued with no sigh of de-escalation. The West, led by the US has so far continued to support Ukraine against Russia.
The West’s support has undoubtedly emboldened Ukraine’s belligerent posturing. The Ukrainian government has reiterated that the Ukraine war will end only after all lost territory, including the Crimean Peninsula, is regained.
However, it is unlikely that this posturing will be possible for Ukraine to maintain as the West now seem to be withdrawing from the war. Ever since the war has begun, the West’s credibility has only tanked and the US dominance on the world has met with growing challenge.
Now, it looks like the US has also grown helpless before Iran and we have reasons to believe so.
Iran seizes second oil tanker in the gulf
Iran has seized an oil tanker named Niovi in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz is the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf and is one of the most strategically important choke points through which a fifth of the world’s crude oil passes.
Read More: It’s official. Russia wins the war. US ready to pull out of Ukraine
More importantly, it is the second such capture by Iran under just a week. This has come after a series of attacks on shipping in the strategic Gulf waters since 2019. Last week Iran seized an oil tanker named Advantage Sweet in the Gulf of Oman.
It shows that Iran is responding to the US in a tit-for-tat manner. Whenever the US has seized Iranian oil shipments, Tehran too has returned the “favour”.
Such a response from its sworn-enemy is bound to alarm the US. This has caused much discomfort to the US and now the US has demanded that Iran should “immediately release the ship and its crew.”
The US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel has stated that Iran’s actions are “contrary to international law,”.
However, it is unlikely that Iran will give in to such pressures from the US and in the aftermath of the US-Ukraine war, it has been observed that the US is increasingly becoming helpless before its arch-nemesis Iran.
Recently we explained to our readers how a Saudi-Iran pact is likely to spell doom for the West.
According to a media report by Reuters, Saudi Arabia, and other OPEC+ oil producers have announced further oil output cuts of around 1.16 million barrels per day, in a surprise move that analysts said would cause an immediate rise in prices.
Read More: The first effect of the Saudi-Iran pact is out and it’s not pretty for Europe
This is particularly worrying for the West as the Western countries depend to varying degrees on OPEC for their oil supply. Now the situation is the West may experience another energy shortage.
This might even bring the EU back to Russia for energy which will be an embarrassing humiliation for the West.
Coming back to the present tensions between Iran and the US over seized oil tankers, it is to be noted here that tensions in the Gulf region began after former US President Donald Trump pulled out of Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran.
This drastically limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium exchange. In a bid to reduce Iran’s energy exports, the harsh sanctions targeted Iranian oil and petrochemical sales.
However, now it looks like it is Iran who is having the last laugh as in the aftermath of the Ukraine conflict, Iran’s geopolitical weight seems to be rising as against the US, whose dominance in the world politics has increasingly been challenged in almost all parts of the world.
It still remains to be seen how the situation will further evolve and how the US-Iran rivalry will pan out in the face of the Russia-Ukraine war.
