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The United States (US) has largely succeeded through its Operation Freedom in opening a viable route through the Strait of Hormuz to relieve pressure on global oil supplies. The operation is a US naval effort to clear mines, fend off missile threats and drone attacks, and escort commercial vessels through the strait to restore freedom of navigation through one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints. US forces have reportedly begun guiding the first merchant ships through the waterway, while destroying Iranian attack boats and intercepting missiles and drones that threatened the operation.

For the US, Operation Freedom is designed to relieve global oil supply constraints and head off the risk that energy prices trigger a sharp global economic contraction. For Tehran, however, the reopening of the strait under US naval protection would amount to a major strategic setback, eroding the leverage it needs to remain a regional hegemon and thereby complete its acquisition of nuclear weapons.

For this reason, Iranian forces responded to the near-opening of the strait by firing on commercial ships and regional oil infrastructure, including the Fujairah pipeline, on which this newspaper reported last week.

The consequence was to rattle oil markets, keeping prices above $110 per barrel. At around $100, this newspaper has argued that the effects on the global economy may initially be relatively muted, but nearer $110, the effects may be much more serious. The reason is that at $100 the price is still in touch with its inflation-adjusted moving average of the past 15 years. Above that it forces economies to confront unprecedented cost challenges.

The Iranian objective is both to spike energy prices and to provoke the US into resuming its bombing campaign and even commit to ground operations in Iran, in the hope that the resulting further spike in energy prices creates the kind of global economic crisis and domestic American political crisis that would force Washington into a climbdown and exit from the Iranian theatre. American officials are aware of that, of course, and have resisted, over the past 48 hours, making statements to the effect that the ceasefire has broken down.

In one sense, what the US and Iranian actions of the past few days again demonstrate is that what is still described as a war in the narrow sense now turns less on battlefield developments than on economic and political pressure. In that respect, the current Iran conflict is unlike the quagmires that sucked American forces into Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades, as troops on the ground engaged in traditional warfare are not at play.

Instead, the more useful economic and political horizons to watch now in getting a sense of how the conflict plays out and later resolves itself, which include the Trump meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing in just over a week. China is under pressure because of limited oil reserves that exacerbate existing debt-induced vulnerabilities in its economy. The Trump administration has its own political deadline, with the November midterm elections bearing down. Republican strategists have sounded the warning that success in those elections requires reducing pressure on US consumers who, despite the record stock market and very low rates of unemployment, perceive their standards of living to be under great pressure.

On current estimates, the Republicans are set to lose the House of Representatives while retaining the Senate. Losing both would be an ignominious beginning of the end of the political career of Donald Trump.

What are the timelines on the Chinese oil squeeze and the US midterms?

China has some immunity to the oil threat, given how many of its cars and vehicles are now electric and how much of its power is generated through coal, the supply of which is not at issue. However, its oil reserves will most likely come under acute pressure within the next 60 days.

In the US, there is a sense that Trump must look to enter the July 4th Independence Day weekend with a compelling story of success in Iran and sharply reduced energy prices in order not to risk a midterms humiliation, and perhaps even to secure the House of Representatives.

Sixty days, therefore, is starting to look like a very hard horizon by which stage both of the world’s great powers would see their interests align in oil prices coming off substantially.