The Islamabad talks collapsed Sunday after twenty-one hours. Vice President Vance announced the failure. Within hours, President Trump posted on Truth Social that the U.S. Navy would blockade any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz. The commentariat went into meltdown. Greg Ip published in the Wall Street Journal arguing that chokepoints beat tariffs and that Iran used Hormuz to extract a ceasefire from the president.
Ip is right that chokepoints beat tariffs. He is wrong about who holds them now. The Islamabad talks did not collapse because diplomacy failed. They collapsed because Iran showed up holding a card it no longer controls. Over the last eighteen months, Washington has locked down or decisively influenced every major energy chokepoint from the Western Hemisphere to the Persian Gulf. The blockade is not an escalation. It is the final move.
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