The Strait of Hormuz opens, the world breathes. The attacks return, we hold our breath. Again and again. Like a door that does not finish closing and lets in, with each knock, a known, persistent concern. A decisive part of global oil circulates through there. Each shock translates into figures, markets, alerts. Remaining alone in that is an almost derogatory way of not looking at what is essential: the concrete lives of people trapped in decisions on which their present and future lives depend.
I’m not an expert. I have more questions than certainties and from there I share some reflections:
1. What we see is not what is decided. Negotiations seem like a staging: statements, warnings, measured gestures, calculated silences. The decisive thing happens off-camera. This fragmented communication keeps us in suspense, attentive, almost in suspense. It doesn’t help to understand. Wear out. Confuses.
2. Not everything should be made public. There are processes that need time and care. When everything is exposed, positions harden. Nobody wants to appear losing, or give in. So what is reasonable is reduced and what is possible is postponed. Permanent exhibition is not always transparency: sometimes it is blockage, immobility.
3. You don’t always talk to those who have power. Negotiations are made with States, but not always with those who decide. In Iran, ignoring the Revolutionary Guard is ignoring a key part of real, even operational, power. The visible authorities remain as a backdrop. And what is signed is not necessarily fulfilled.
4. The trap of not talking to the enemy. It is repeated that one does not negotiate with “terrorists.” But the reality is more uncomfortable: conflicts almost always end in talking to someone who is considered despicable. Denying it hinders.
5. In every agreement someone gives up more. Sometimes he loses. It is one thing to lose and another to be humiliated, exposed. The humiliation remains, wait. And one day he comes back. An agreement that is rubbed is not peace: it is a truce with latent revenge.
6. The risk of depending on a single person. It is worrying how much is deposited in the state of mind of a president. In his humor, his drive. It is too great a fragility.
We return to Hormuz: it opens, it attacks; it opens, it tenses. And the world is left oscillating between relief and fear, between pause and shock, as if it were breathing hard.
It’s not just the economy that’s faltering. It is a collective wear and tear. Accumulated uncertainty. A humanity that acts as if it were not deeply interconnected, as if what happens far away does not end up passing through us.
However, what happens there impacts us all. Oil prices cut through life as we have organized it: transportation, food, energy, the invisible margins of every daily decision.
The question is no longer just what will happen in Hormuz. But how much longer will we sustain a system that concentrates energy, dispute and violence in the same points on the map.
And if not, the time has finally come to move towards another logic: more open, more accessible, more democratic. As evident as the sun. (EITHER)
