That the current US administration has no use for volumes of history is another matter, but past experience shows imposing ‘crippling sanctions’ to force adversarial nations to fall in line has seldom worked for American presidents. Armed interventions, too, send out dire warnings across the years. Afghanistan and Iraq are two notable examples, where strong-arm tactics had backfired devastatingly, effects of which blight the region still.
As US President Donald Trump and his team of hawkish advisors ratchet up war rhetoric on Iran after the downing of an US surveillance drone by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps—an incident preceded by attacks on several oil tankers from unidentified sources in the Persian Gulf—policy planners across the world are watching the developments with trepidation and a touch of scepticism.
More than one-fifth of the world’s oil passes through the Straits of Hormuz—the 39 km-wide choke point that passes from the Persian Gulf to the Straits of Oman...
