While in the early days of the war in the U.S. the liberals played their confusionist part, to convince the public that the war on Iran comes out of thin air and is launched merely to distract the ballot dropping philistines from Trump’s personal political troubles related to the Epstein files, the ruling bourgeois faction makes no serious effort to justify its war on any real grounds other than that of advancing its own naked profit interest. The reality is that the Iran war is merely the latest development in a years-long conflict of escalating sanctions by the U.S. against foreign oil producing countries and increased use of the U.S. armed forces to regulate and control transportation of competitors’ oil across the world. The connection between the inter-imperialist war in Ukraine and the U.S. quarrel with Russian imperialism, along with the recent attack on Venezuela and Iran are all threaded together under the U.S. quest to cut into these oil producing countries who for years have fueled the growth of Chinese industrial power and now offer to do the same for India. While U.S. imperialism’s industrial power wanes, it intends to leverage itself as the dominant oil producer and military power, to maintain its status as the dominant financial power.

The United States was the only country, along with Germany, to recover and surpass the peak of industrial production before the 2008 crisis. This was thanks to increased oil production. The US manufacturing output index never recovered to its pre-crisis level. Germany, however, which had recovered, saw its industrial and manufacturing power hit by the war in Ukraine.

At the start of Trump’s second term he pushed for cheaper global oil to support consumer purchasing power and offset inflation. Even as U.S. production reached a record 13.6 million barrels per day in 2025, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and as exports fell about 3% to roughly 4.0 million barrels per day, partly because more crude remained in the United States to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. At the same time, oil executives argued that prices above roughly $70–$80 per barrel were necessary to justify expanding shale drilling, reflecting the cyclical structure of the oil industry in which high prices stimulate new drilling that eventually increases supply and pushes prices downward, while low prices trigger bankruptcies and consolidation before the cycle begins again. During 2025, rising exports from Iran and Venezuela increased global supply and competed with U.S. crude in key markets, aided by the expansion of a sanctions-evading “shadow fleet” of tankers and shifting trade patterns linked to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which reshaped global oil flows and encouraged discounted crude sales to Asian buyers, particularly China. At the same time, enforcement of sanctions at sea became more difficult as U.S. naval resources were stretched across multiple theaters, while weaker global demand growth due to tariffs, refinery maintenance cycles, and logistical bottlenecks at Gulf Coast export terminals further limited the expansion of U.S. oil exports despite record domestic production. We can see here the economic incentive of U.S. imperialism’s sudden blitz against its oil competitors in Venezuela and Iran.

The sanctions reimposed by the Trump administration on Iran in 2018, after withdrawing from the nuclear treaty negotiated by Obama, were explicitly directed at the oil sector and introduced at a moment when U.S. officials argued that rising American production gave Washington new freedom to wield economic pressure. Oil had been targeted in earlier sanctions, particularly the U.S. and EU measures imposed in 2012 that cut Iranian exports roughly in half. However, the 2018 campaign marked a renewed effort to choke off Iran’s main source of state revenue. Announcing the sanctions, Donald Trump pledged the “highest level of economic sanctions,” aiming to reduce Iran’s oil exports to “zero.” U.S. officials argued that rising American oil and gas production had changed the strategic landscape, allowing Washington to sanction rival producers without triggering supply crises. Within this framework, the “maximum pressure” campaign sought not only to force concessions over Iran’s nuclear program but also to cut down to size a major exporter from global markets and reinforce the role of U.S. and allied producers in the international energy market.

Iran’s oil exports collapsed after the reimposition of U.S. sanctions in 2018, reaching their lowest levels around 2020-2021 at roughly 200,000-300,000 barrels per day, dropping from 2 million per day or 5% of global oil market share to less than 1%. Over the following years exports slowly recovered, first to around 600,000–800,000 bpd by 2021, and then surged after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, eventually climbing to roughly 1.5–2.0 million bpd in 2024–2025, with some months exceeding 2 million bpd. A key factor enabling this recovery was the rapid expansion of the “shadow fleet”. These same logistical networks that Russia began using to bypass Western oil sanctions after 2022 also created a much larger pool of vessels, intermediaries, and trading structures that Iran could use to move crude outside the traditional maritime and financial system. Because these shipments frequently occur through complex chains involving offshore traders, re-flagged vessels, and blending of crude grades, tracking and proving sanctions violations became significantly more difficult.

Western governments gradually escalated enforcement from financial penalties to direct maritime intervention. The United States and European states sanctioned hundreds of vessels linked to Russia’s energy trade, detained suspect ships in European ports, and carried out interdictions targeting tankers transporting sanctioned crude. For example, European authorities seized several shadow-fleet tankers carrying Russian oil in Baltic and North Sea ports, while the United States pursued and seized vessels linked to Venezuelan and Iranian oil exports in the Caribbean and Atlantic.

Sanctions enforcement increasingly triggered military responses or coercive maritime actions from targeted states. Financial pressure, insurance bans, banking restrictions, and the G7 price cap gradually evolved into a campaign involving naval patrols, and confrontations with rival states’ military forces.

Leading up to the opening of the U.S. and Israeli offensive in Iran in March of 2026, the Persian Gulf saw months of escalating maritime confrontations. On February 5, 2026, Iran seized two foreign oil tankers near Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf, accusing them of smuggling about 1 million liters of fuel, and detained fifteen crew members, an incident that occurred amid rising tensions and just before renewed U.S.-Iran nuclear talks. Earlier, on February 3, 2026, several pairs of Iranian Revolutionary Guard gunboats approached a U.S.-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting the vessel to be escorted away by a U.S. warship. These incidents occurred alongside a series of Iranian military demonstrations aimed at the region’s key energy corridor. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched live-fire naval exercises in the Strait of Hormuz on February 1–2, followed by a larger exercise beginning February 16, during which missiles and drones were tested and parts of the waterway were temporarily closed for security reasons. The Strait, through which roughly 20% of global oil trade passes, was partially shut for several hours on February 17 while Iranian forces conducted drills and missile launches intended to demonstrate their ability to control the chokepoint.

Together with the Iranian ship seizures, naval exercises, and temporary closures of the Strait of Hormuz, this cycle of maritime confrontations, sanctions enforcement, and military maneuvers in one of the world’s most important oil corridors steadily raised the risk of direct conflict, predictably escalating into the current war.