The Strait of Hormuz is closed, the world's oil is squeezing through the eye of a needle, and the American president says it does not particularly matter to him. „We don't attach great significance to it,” Donald Trump said. If that sounds like a man bluffing at a poker table, it is because that is most likely exactly what it is.

Trump then added that he is negotiating with Iran only partially and that Washington is simply watching Tehran drown in inflation with no money. He is confident about the outcome: „It'll all get sorted out. It always does. It's like a game of chess.” Chess, then. Except that in chess both players see all the pieces, and here nobody sees them.

Iran named its price

Iran's Supreme National Security Council left no room for interpretation. To reopen the strait it wants four things: the lifting of the American naval blockade, the withdrawal of US forces from the region, the complete erasure of all sanctions and the unconditional release of frozen Iranian assets.

That is not a negotiating position - it is a wish list written for a domestic audience. No American president would sign it, this one least of all. Which means both sides are currently negotiating mainly with their own voters.

Economic pressure is not the key to every door

The Israeli Iran analyst Danny Citrinowicz noted that Iran's economic situation really is dire, but that economic pressure alone is unlikely to force Tehran to capitulate or give up control of Hormuz. That is an observation worth remembering every time someone says sanctions are the solution. Sanctions impoverish populations far faster than they soften regimes - the Balkans learned that first-hand in the nineties.

And the cost? Around a quarter of the world's oil and petroleum products passes through the Strait of Hormuz. A closed strait is not distant news from another continent - it is a number that slowly works its way through every transport and production chain in Europe. How long can a blockade like this last before „it'll all get sorted out” stops sounding like a plan?