A person takes a picture in front of an oil tanker in Fos-sur-Mer, Southern France, on April 14, 2026. According to US officials, the US is blocking ships from entering or leaving Iranian ports to halt Iran’s energy exports. Fuel prices at the pump increased due to the conflict in the Middle East and have not returned to levels seen before the war. [EPA]
When empires fall apart or shrink, they usually leave behind a vacuum – and all sorts of loose ends that fall on someone else to tidy up. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the British drew up artificial boundaries that created new states, while also making all sorts of contradictory promises to the Jews and the Palestinians. Much of what we are experiencing today can be explained by those decisions, which shaped the future of the Middle East.
Then came the British Empire’s post-World War II decline and its desperate efforts to hang onto what it could of its colonial sphere of influence. In Iran, it tried to maintain control over energy reserves through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in a very heavy-handed manner. It failed to do so on its own, so it got the next great Western empire, the United States, involved. When the British faced the company’s nationalization, they convinced Dwight D. Eisenhower that Iran would come under communist – and, therefore, Moscow’s – control if he didn’t step in.
What followed in this intense Cold War climate of that era was the world’s first major CIA operation, aimed at toppling Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. The Americans did try to hold talks before instigating the coup, but they met a leader who made it clear to their envoys that he had no interest in compromise. He believed that foreign interference always aimed to keep Iran “small,” a pattern he traced all the way back to Alexander the Great’s destruction of Persepolis.
American advisers were shocked when ordinary citizens on the street basically admitted that they didn’t care if they went hungry because no one could extract Iranian oil once the British left. American technocrats chalked these responses up to a mixture of patriotism and the Shiite “martyr syndrome.” Given this heavy historical baggage, we can imagine how plans to “take Iran’s oil” sound to a modern Iranian today.
The map of the Middle East is being redrawn again right now. The Gulf countries are in a state of shock and looking for new alliances because the idea of an “American umbrella” makes them nervous. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants a “total victory,” at any price – both on the battlefield and in the polls. The Chinese, meanwhile, are biding their time. And US President Donald Trump is trying to prove that history is not invincible – that Gaza can become a new Riviera and Iran can be turned into Texas.