The US-Israeli attack against Iran, Operation Epic Mistake….sorry, I mean fury….has had numerous consequences across the globe. It is true that some aftershocks were unintended or unforeseen. However, there is one consequence that was entirely predictable, because Tehran warned the international community it would take a specific action.

What am I talking about? The closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Twenty percent of the world’s oil supply passes through this crucial maritime artery. Now it is closed. Tehran kept its word.

The closing of the Strait of Hormuz, choking off the international oil supply, has echoes of the 1956 Suez Canal crisis. In that year, the Egyptian government nationalised the operation of the Suez Canal, a vitally important maritime trade route. Led by London, Paris and Tel Aviv launched a tripartite aggression against that nation, intending to topple the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser, and reverse the Suez nationalisation.

The aggression backfired spectacularly. The US under Eisenhower, who was keen to avoid Egypt slipping into the Soviet orbit, organised a peace agreement. Foreign forces were withdrawn, and the Suez Canal reopened for business. The limits of British imperial power were exposed, and that episode marked the beginning of the end of the British empire.

The United States faces a similarly crucial defeat in the Strait of Hormuz.

Even prior to the official closure of this vitally important waterway, oil companies were already reducing the flow of maritime traffic through the Strait due to fears of military strikes. There is nothing wrong with protecting human life and the lives of the workers on the oil tankers. However, this reduction in oil traffic endangers the supply of oil and liquefied natural gas to numerous nations around the world.

Qatar produces one fifth of the world’s supply of liquefied natural gas, and with its production shut down due to Iranian missile strikes, gas prices have increased exponentially.

In fact, Tehran has repeatedly struck US bases in the Persian Gulf nations. These petro-monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, are hereditary royalist regimes; hardly the paragons of democracy that Washington claims to defend.

These nations, collectively organised as the Gulf Cooperation Council, have invested billions of dollars in the petroleum production sector. Shutting down refineries impacts oil deliveries down the line. Dubai, in the UAE, has the world’s busiest international airport – well, it did, until it was forced to shut down due to Iranian drone strikes.

The Egypt-Israel border crossing at Rafah has been closed for months, helping facilitate the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. Cuba has been struggling to overcome the detrimental effects of the US blockade. None of these devastating actions has moved my fellow citizens in the Anglophone nations to protest.

Okay, okay, there have been regular protests only a tiny minority has demonstrated against Tel Aviv’s genocidal violence. But the vast majority of the Anglophone population remains unmoved. Perhaps inflation and skyrocketing fuel prices will help them understand how global wars affect all of us, even here in faraway Australia.

You know that asparagus you enjoy eating, the food that makes you feel good because it is ecologically friendly? You are reducing your carbon footprint by avoiding red meat consumption, right? That asparagus is imported – flown to Australia in airplanes that rely on fossil fuel. Those jets, and the ships that bring supplies to Australia, have a massive carbon footprint. Guess how much that beloved asparagus will cost when the oil supply runs dry?

David S. D’Amato, researcher and writer for Counterpunch magazine, makes an astute observation which we need to address here. His article is entitled ‘Why we only hear diaspora voice who want war’. He makes the case that whenever there is a regime change war overseas, such as the current but failed attempt to enforce regime change in Iran – the Anglophone nations only hear those from the targeted countries who advocate warfare.

The lifelong failure Reza Pahlavi, Masih Alenijad, and others, feature regularly as expert commentators on our television screens. They are unanimous in their allegedly expert opinions that a US attack will bring freedom and democracy to Iran.

Thankfully, there are those in the Iranian diaspora who are finally rejecting these self-appointed community spokespersons. Reza Pahlavi’s former supporters are turning against him, citing among other things, his failure to condemn the US murder of Iranian schoolchildren. If he cannot even bring himself to support innocent school students, then what kind of conscience, if any, does he have?

For decades, those on the ecosocialist Left have been warning about the economic and ecological dangers of reliance on fossil fuels. It is not surprising to witness a flurry of commentary from the corporate controlled media about how the global community is currently being held hostage by its exclusive and overwhelming reliance on oil to power the capitalist economy.

It is a shame that it took a crisis such as the Strait of Hormuz closure to bring this issue to worldwide attention. I suspect that such commentary, while commendable, is motivated by an anti-Iranian angle. The ecosocialist Left has highlighted the dangers of reliance on fossil fuels because the world population is being held hostage – by the minority billionaire class.

Transitioning to renewable energy sources is no longer being dismissed as the pipe-dream of loony leftie ecosocialist nutters, but being considered as a matter of urgency. In 2022, even the usually conservative staid, blue-ribbon Australia Institute heavily criticised Australia’s reliance on imported fuel as a source of economic vulnerability.

I hope that we now take the time and dedicate ourselves to diversifying our energy sources, and reduce the operation of the profits-first fossil fuel corporations.