China Is Paying the Price for the Hormuz Blockade

While the cease-fire with Iran is more or less holding, Tehran has continued to obstruct traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a major chokepoint in the global economy. The U.S. might still be planning to force the Strait open, but for now it has taken a surprising countermeasure: preventing Iranian ships from transiting it. Ryan McBeth argues that the party most hurt by the dueling blockades is China, whose economy depends largely on oil that moves through the waterway. Thus the American strategy seems to be to hope that Beijing will compel Tehran to accept Washington’s terms. (Video, 15 minutes.)