On Friday morning, a series of large blasts erupt in an American military base near Erbil in northern Iraq. The blasts came less than 24 hours after the U.S. Central Command finished a 13th night of military actions against Iran, marking an alarming escalation in a fight to control the vital Strait of Hormuz.
There were at least seven explosions heard by journalists on the ground around 9.30am local time, with several plumes of heavy black smoke rising near the base. The American military said it has confirmed that its overnight bombing was designed to “disrupt the capability of Iran to threaten commercial shipping and civilian mariners in the region.”
Iranian state TV claimed that four people were killed and five injured in the latest American airstrikes in the vicinity of Ahvaz on the Karun River. There were also more explosions in important strategic areas such as Qeshm Island, Isfahan province, Lorestan province and the port of Bandar Abbas in Iran.
In the meantime, Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi went to Tehran to plead for peace and dialogue, assuring Iranian leadership that Iraqi territory would not be used for attacks against its neighbour. Meanwhile, regional sirens rang in Bahrain to alert the populace to incoming attacks as the war front seems to be expanding.
Dual Shipping Chokepoints Fuel Global Energy Crisis
The region is facing a conflict which threatens to paralyze world sea trade as it is striking two important waterways at once. Iran has established a virtual choke point on the Strait of Hormuz, and Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have attacked Saudi oil tankers in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, forging a “double whammy” for international shipping lanes.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is a vital shipping corridor, through which about 12 percent of world trade passes. The Houthis’ attacks in the region endanger Saudi Arabia’s attempt to divert crude oil from the Persian Gulf through the country to its Red Sea port of Yanbu.
In social media posts President Trump announced that the administration plans to use sanctioned Iranian money in the United States to pay for damages to ships and goods. The proposal received instant harsh criticism from Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. which warned on social media that if the assets are confiscated, international financial stability will be at risk.
The two shipping chokepoint crises continue to be closely monitored by international organizations such as the United Nations and the International Energy Agency (IEA), as the disruption of global shipping networks starts to mirror the sharp economic consequences of past global wars.
With regional violence still showing no real signs of abating, the United Nations and even the International Energy Agency keep looking in closely at this dual shipping chokepoint crisis, because disruptions to global supply chains now start to behave kinda like the harsh economic aftershocks we saw during earlier global wars, you know.
