Why should the Middle East trust a superpower that breaks its own rules?

A narrow ribbon of water, barely 33 kilometres wide at its tightest point, has once again exposed the fragility of global order. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply flows, has become less a trade corridor and more a theatre of strategic contradiction. What has unfolded in April 2026 is not merely a maritime standoff between Washington and Tehran. It is something deeper, more disquieting: a crisis of credibility in American statecraft that is now reshaping global alignments in ways that will not easily be reversed. The real crisis is not maritime—it is epistemic: the world no longer knows whether American guarantees mean what they claim to mean. The United States’ decision […]