Hormuz or Bust: Iran Threatens to Shut the World's Most Important Oil Chokepoint — and Markets Are Already Flinching

Let's set the scene: Iran's Revolutionary Guards are threatening to completely close the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint that handles roughly 20% of global oil supply — if Trump follows through on threats to Iranian energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Bessent casually announced the US has 'plenty' of funds for an Iran war, which is exactly the kind of sentence that sends oil traders reaching for their anxiety meds at 2am.

Then there's the UAE's bombshell: it's leaving OPEC and OPEC+ as of May 1st, pulling roughly 2 million barrels per day out of the cartel's influence. The UAE energy chief insists the timing was chosen to minimize market disruption — which is a very polite way of saying they saw the geopolitical writing on the wall and got out while the getting was good. Saudi Aramco's CEO also pulled out of a major international energy conference, citing the Iran conflict. When the guy running the world's largest oil company skips the industry's biggest party, that's not nothing.

On Bloomberg Surveillance, Goldman's Robert Kaplan flagged that lower-income workers are already seeing effective inflation of 6-8% — and a Hormuz closure sending oil to the moon would make that look quaint. The dollar is surging on haven demand, Asia shares are sliding, and UK PM Starmer has called an emergency economic meeting. This is the kind of week where you find out who was swimming naked.