There is a temptation in much Western commentary to argue that there is no clear strategic upside for the United States (US), or for Donald Trump personally, in the current approach to Iran. In great part, that is because the Western media so hate the man that they cannot but interpret his every move as reckless and without upside. But that is no basis for sound analysis, and a more serious assessment requires stepping back from personalities and taking a non-partisan view of how each actor understands its position, and where each believes leverage lies, even when those actors are unpopular in the media.

From that perspective, the thinking behind Trump’s blockade threat and Iran’s response is perhaps more considered than legacy media reporting makes it appear.

Trump’s announcement that the US Navy would begin “BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave” the Strait of Hormuz, alongside interdictions of vessels tied to Iran, may move oil prices higher for longer, but it also has a series of strategic implications for which China and Iran may pay a far higher price than America and the West.

Most of the oil moving through Hormuz does not go west. It moves east, primarily into Asian economies and especially China. Chinese purchases of Iranian oil also secured Tehran roughly 40% of its government revenue.

By enforcing a blockade of Iranian-loaded vessels seeking to pass through Hormuz, and arresting those who succeed, the US pressures China to draw more deeply on its finite oil reserves while cutting off the largest single source of Iranian government revenue.

The pain the US experiences in higher oil prices and inflation is relatively less severe than the existential risk the Hormuz blockade presents to China and Iran. Especially considering, as this newspaper has gone on about ad infinitum over the past five weeks, that an oil price of around $100/barrel is not out of line with inflation-adjusted averages. In addition, the US, unlike China, is energy independent, and polling for the Republican Party is holding up strongly despite higher US pump prices.

If that is the objective at play, it might be read against a chain of related prior events.

After decapitating the Maduro regime in Venezuela, the US developed a chokehold over Venezuelan oil, the single-largest buyer of which was China. In the aftermath of the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022, the US supplanted Russia as a primary gas supplier to Europe.

Blockading oil loaded from Iran therefore allows the US to pursue clear strategic objectives with regards to China and Iran without needing to blow up that critical Iranian infrastructure. Once that infrastructure is blown up, then it is blown up, and with it the leverage afforded to the US by the threat of cutting off the oil – as China and Iran are forced to make a plan around that new reality.

Quite likely the US does not want to lose that leverage. Bombing the non-oil infrastructure back “into the Stone Age”, especially where that was water and power infrastructure, would likely trigger a mass exodus to Europe, on a scale even greater than the war in Syria, thereby accelerating the Islamification of Europe, which America would not want.

Hence in the blockade threat it may have found a happy and relatively low-cost middle ground between strategic withdrawal and the wrecking of Persian civilisation.

If Iran seeks to escalate by targeting Gulf ports, there is a sense that US strategists may think that, if that leads to further escalation, the effects will include greater European dependency on America and a firmer squeeze on China.

Quite plausibly, therefore, the thinking here might be that under enough pain China might be relied upon to bring Iran to heel, in so doing lean on it to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, and thereby allow the Trump administration to still achieve the original justifications for the war – to degrade Iran’s missile threat and deny it the ability to develop a nuclear weapon.

For that to occur China and America now need to find common ground on Iran, and – wouldn’t you know it – Trump just happens to have a meeting scheduled with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on 14 May, at which point, this newspaper estimates, China will have burned through more than 50% of its oil reserves.