When U.S. and Israeli forces struck Iran on 28 February, the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed. The IEA reports the Strait carries approximately 20 million barrels of oil per day, around a quarter of the world's seaborne oil trade, with 84 per cent of that volume flowing to Asian markets. Global oil supply fell by 10.1 million barrels per day in March, the largest single disruption in recorded history. North Sea Dated crude traded near $130 per barrel in late March, roughly $60 above pre-conflict levels.

These figures describe something specific: the economic cost of a decision made in Washington and Tel Aviv, distributed across economies from Mumbai to Manila that had no voice in making it. That asymmetry is not a malfunction; it is the system functioning as designed.


 A large billboard on Tehran's Revolution Square reads, "The Strait of Hormuz remains closed." Credits: RFE/RL

Who Decides Which States Get to Feel Safe?

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty rests on a 1968 distinction between states that already possessed weapons and those that did not. What has accumulated since is a second, unwritten layer: states aligned with the United States and its allies are permitted to maintain nuclear arsenals outside the NPT framework, or are managed through cautious diplomacy when they acquire one. States outside that alignment face sanctions, isolation, and, in 2026, military strikes.

Israel, which has never signed the NPT and is widely understood to possess a substantial nuclear arsenal, participated as a co-belligerent in strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. North Korea has conducted multiple nuclear tests and remains a nuclear-armed state. Pakistan and India both tested in 1998 and have since been absorbed into global trade and diplomatic frameworks. None of those cases produced anything like the two-decade campaign of coercive pressure applied to Iran.

Tehran offered to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and indicated a willingness to send part of it abroad in exchange for sanctions relief. Washington held to zero enrichment, demanding that Iran retain no domestic enrichment capacity at all.

That distance was never really about enrichment percentages. It was about whether Iran is entitled to any deterrent capacity within the international system, a question about whose security the system recognises as legitimate. Washington's concern about a nuclear-armed Iran is genuine. A state with that capability would alter the regional balance in ways that carry real risks. Coherent concern and evenhanded enforcement are, however, separate things. A system that extends nuclear deterrence to allied states while using military force against adversarial ones is a hierarchy, not a law.

When Strategic Autonomy Requires a Permit

India's position during the crisis makes the contradictions of the current order unusually visible.

On 26 February, Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Netanyahu announced the elevation of bilateral ties to a Special Strategic Partnership, covering defence, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and regional connectivity. Two days later, the war began. India called for dialogue. Tehran responded by granting Indian-flagged tankers safe passage through the blocked strait, a signal calibrated precisely: New Delhi's ambiguity was worth rewarding, for now, with the understanding that the reward was conditional on the ambiguity continuing.

The economic cost of that ambiguity has been anything but abstract. India imports 60 per cent of its LPG, and 90 per cent of that supply flows through the now-closed strait, according to Moody's. Between 45 and 50 per cent of India's crude oil imports originate from West Asia. Moody's cut India's FY2027 GDP forecast to 6% from 6.8%. MUFG Research estimates that every $10-per-barrel rise in oil prices reduces Indian GDP growth by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points and lifts inflation by approximately 0.2 percentage points. HSBC estimates a potential 25 per cent shortfall in natural gas supply, capable of shaving roughly 25 basis points from GDP growth if the disruption lasts a quarter.

These numbers are not abstractions. They reach Indian households as LPG shortages, petrol pumps as fuel price increases, and supermarket bills as food inflation. Every young Indian working out their first salary against rent and groceries is paying, in small denominations, for choices made in rooms they will never enter.

India's 2026-27 Union Budget carried no allocation for Chabahar port, the first such omission in over a decade. The U.S. sanctions waiver expired on 26 April without renewal. A project presented publicly as a long-term strategic asset linking India to Central Asia proved, at the moment of pressure, conditional on revocable American tolerance. When that tolerance became contingent, the budget line disappeared.

Strategic projects that survive only through another government's permission are not strategic assets. The pattern is not unique to Chabahar: Indian connectivity initiatives that intersect with U.S. sanctions regimes are subject to effective external veto. Pakistan, which India has spent years diplomatically isolating, emerged as a primary back-channel mediator between Iran and the United States, a development The Diplomat described as a stinging strategic setback for New Delhi. India's studied ambiguity did not preserve its options. It narrowed them.

More Poles, Same Hierarchy

The expectation that a multipolar world would distribute power more equitably deserves scrutiny after 2026.

Chinese crude imports fell approximately 20% year-on-year in April, to their lowest level since July 2022. India's March oil imports declined roughly 17% year-on-year. Japan's fell 33%. South Korea's dropped approximately 37%. Together, those four economies account for the bulk of global Hormuz-dependent energy consumption. None of them shaped the decisions that closed the strait.

China's relative resilience resulted from deliberate, two-decade strategic investment. According to Kayrros data cited by Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, China held approximately 1.39 billion barrels in storage as of early March, covering roughly 120 days of net crude imports. Russian pipeline supply, which bypasses the strait entirely, provided a structural buffer. The difference between China's cushioning and India's exposure is not geography. It is the cumulative effect of the strategic investment India deferred.

More poles in the international system do not produce more fairness. It produces more competing hierarchies, each with its own enforcement logic, each with its own calculus of whose insecurity counts. The transition underway is not from a single dominant order to a more equitable one. It is from one hierarchy to several, with less coordination between them and less institutional protection for states caught in between.

Building Without Permission

The IEA's April 2026 Oil Market Report noted that even its optimistic scenario, a resumption of regular Middle East energy deliveries by mid-year, may prove too optimistic. A ceasefire will be formalised. The strait will reopen. The nuclear question will remain structurally unresolved because the foundational disagreement was never about enrichment thresholds. It was about whether Iran's security concerns are treated as legitimate claims rather than threats to be managed.

That question will not be resolved by any arrangement that leaves the fundamental hierarchy intact.

The practical implications for mid-sized powers are specific rather than abstract. Payment infrastructure that survives sanctions exposure must be built before the next crisis demands it. Energy supply chains need diversification at the structural level: storage capacity, refinery flexibility, and long-term supply agreements across geographies that do not share a single chokepoint. Strategic connectivity projects need to be treated as sovereign commitments rather than negotiating chips, because a project that disappears from the budget under external pressure signals to every partner exactly what that commitment is worth. Diplomatic weight that does not require alignment as a precondition takes consistent positions over time, not tactical ambiguity managed crisis by crisis.

The 2026 war has not created these requirements. It has made the cost of ignoring them concrete and calculable.

The architecture that produced this crisis will not fix itself. The question is which states decide to build something more durable while the old structure is visibly under strain. For India, that question is now generational. The room to manoeuvre available to Indian policymakers a decade from now will be determined by what the country builds, or fails to build, in the months ahead. The generation just beginning to think seriously about India's foreign policy has more at stake in that answer than any other group in the room.


About the Author

Debodipta Nandan is an independent public policy professional working at the intersection of policy analysis and strategic communications. She writes on regulatory developments, digital policy, and India-related geopolitical issues. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/debodipta-nandan