The USA-Iran war is about supply and demand, monopoly and profit, not morals
The television, radio and politicians explain the USA-Iran conflict through the lenses of nuclear weapons, terrorism, democracy, shipping security and self-defence. As such, they are all selling you a product.
Strip away the moral language and what remains is a fight over who controls oil, finance, and the global trade value chain.
Lazarus Kwedhi
The television, radio and politicians explain the USA-Iran conflict through the lenses of nuclear weapons, terrorism, democracy, shipping security and self-defence. As such, they are all selling you a product.
But if we strip away the publicity, it is about the economy: the study of the lack and abundance of factors of production and the market forces that control the global trade value chain.
Both sides are fighting the same fundamental battle: control over the global market value chain. The only difference is that the USA is the old guard, while Iran is a newcomer trying to write its own rules into the existing market.
If the public wants to understand what is actually happening, we must start with a different vocabulary. It is not primarily about ideology or religion. It is not good versus evil.
It is about supply and demand, monopoly and profit. Market protection, market creation, and regaining the lost market.
Because when you understand the economy and markets first, the USA-Iran conflict stops looking like a moral drama. It starts looking like what it is: a fight over who has oil and who wants access to oil in the Middle East.
A fight between two sides trying to control the same global trade value chain. This is not a clash of civilisations. It is a clash of business models.
Hegemony, economics and military power as a market lens
No country in history has attained hegemony or superpower status by accident. Power rests on three pillars.
First, economic sovereignty. The nation-state’s ability to control key resources such as oil, finance and shipping.
Second, military sovereignty. The ability to defend those resources and the routes that carry them. Without a navy, without bases, without alliances, your oil means nothing if someone else can block the port or bomb your infrastructure at will.
Third, deterrence. The guarantee that no one can remove you by force cheaply. In the 21st century, that word has one meaning: nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons sit at the centre of that third pillar. This is why the current international system looks the way it does. Five nation-states sit on the UN Security Council with veto power.
All five, including the USA, have nuclear arsenals. The USA, the only country with a history of dropping a nuclear bomb on a sovereign state, Japan, and getting away with it, now tells other states that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to possess.
From the layman’s perspective, it is about global safety. From another angle, it looks like hypocrisy. But from inside market logic, it is about monopoly protection.
The nuclear club is a monopoly on ultimate escalation, and monopolies do not invite competitors.
Iran knows this. The United States knows this. That is why we are here, paying the price of the war conflict. The USA, as the post-British global police, built its hegemony on controlling the oil market, dollar finance, and sea lanes.
Iran, with the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves and its position on the Strait of Hormuz, is trying to break into the same market.
Protect, regain, create: The American playbook
To understand the USA-Iran conflict, look at how the United States has acted as a global power. There are three consistent objectives.
First, protect the existing market. After 1945, the US built a system where oil was priced in dollars, shipped under US-influenced insurance, and protected by the US Navy.
That system created a monopoly, generated trillions in profit, and gave Washington leverage over every country that needed energy. Protecting that system is not optional. It is survival for a superpower.
Second, regain the lost market. Markets are lost when governments sell to someone else.
In 1953, Iran’s oil industry was largely under Western control. After the 1979 Revolution, it was nationalised. US firms lost access.
In Venezuela, US companies dominated for decades. After Hugo Chávez nationalised oil from 2005 to 2007, that access was cut. Venezuela began selling to China, Russia, and Iran.
In both cases, the US response was the same: war, sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and support for political alternatives, as well as the arrest of Maduro, the sitting president of a sovereign state.
The public reason given was democracy, corruption, or nuclear weapons. The market effect was to try to bring that oil back into the US-led system.
Third, create a new market. War and ideology are market tools. “Democracy promotion” through regime change creates governments that buy US arms, take US loans, and use US legal and financial systems. “Security guarantees” create long-term customers for defence contracts.
From this perspective, war is not a failure of diplomacy. It is a tool of market restructuring. Expensive, risky, but effective when a competitor is gaining ground.
Iran’s move: Enter the market or be crushed
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