At one of the world's most consequential chokepoints, the United States and Iran are locked in a quiet but intensifying contest over who controls the flow of energy that sustains the global economy. Vice President JD Vance, speaking Monday, framed American military strikes on Iranian launcher positions near the Strait of Hormuz not as aggression but as the price of keeping a waterway open through which a third of the world's seaborne oil must pass. The episode reflects a recurring tension in the Persian Gulf: that the infrastructure of modern civilization runs through a narrow passage where a