On: US or Iran: Who will win the Hormuz endurance game?

I read today about the Strait of Hormuz, about the endurance game between Washington and Tehran, and I thought of the men in suits in rooms with no windows, speaking of economies and sanctions as if they were playing chess with pieces that do not bleed. They speak of endurance, but I think of the fisherman on the Persian Gulf who does not know the word “sanction” but knows the empty nets, the silence where the market used to be. They speak of inflation, and I think of the mother in Detroit choosing between medicine and milk, her anger a quiet, private fire. These are not games. They are architectures of suffering built by people who will never meet the eyes of those who pay the price. The men in those rooms believe they are fighting over oil, over power, over principle - but what they are really fighting over is whose children will breathe the smoke and whose will count the profit. And the terrible truth is this: they have arranged the world so thoroughly that they do not even see the connection anymore. They have made innocence a fortress, and the bill comes due on streets they will never walk.