Nine days ago, the President of the United States launched another war of choice, this time against Iran.

And since then, the unintended consequences of American military action have been piling up.

Over the past few days, the Strait of Hormuz, through which the greatest flows of oil in the world move,

which accounts for about 20 to 25 percent of the world's oil flows.

The greatest in the world, has been

effectively shut down. Iran has launched military strikes on the energy and oil infrastructure

of many of its neighbors, including U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,

Qatar, and Bahrain. The U.S. administration seems to have been wrong-footed by these moves.

In the days and weeks leading up to the attack on February 28th, the U.S. had reportedly been reassuring its allies that Iran would not attack their oil infrastructure and that key energy flows would continue to flow.

But with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz over the past few days, it seems that these

rosy projections have not panned out. My name is Evan Sanky, and I'm joined here today by Colin

Grabo, the associate director of the Herbert A. Steefell Center for Trade Policy

Studies at the Cato Institute. And we're going to talk about what has happened and what some

of the implications for U.S. and allied policy might be moving forward. Colin, welcome.

Evan, thanks for having me.

So to set the stage, I want to talk about

the numbers here. The Strait of Hormuz on a normal year accounts for 20 to 25 percent

of global oil flows, which is the largest single waterway in that regard in the world.

Most of that, 80% goes to Asia and 35% goes to China.

The U.S., since the mid-2010s, has become more insulated in some ways from energy developments in the Middle East because we have grown

our domestic oil output in places like the Permian Basin and in Pennsylvania. And so unlike

during the Second Iraq War, for example, the U.S. is a net energy exporter.

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