For generations, Iran's dominion over the Strait of Hormuz granted it a rare and formidable kind of power — the ability to hold the world's energy arteries hostage to its political will. Now, as American sanctions drain Iran's economic reserves and shrink its oil revenues, that power is quietly hollowing out. A nation under financial siege cannot easily afford the costs of confrontation, and so one of the most consequential chokepoints on earth remains physically unchanged while the leverage it once conferred slips away. What is unfolding in the Persian Gulf is less a military story than a stu