In 1973, a political decision was enough to unleash a global energy crisis. Today, that same effect can be caused by a swarm of drones or a few naval mines. Meanwhile, the infrastructures that support the world’s supply remain, in many cases, enormous facilities designed for another era, when the greatest danger came from the sky in the form of missiles, not small, cheap and constant threats.
The five-day countdown. Five days leftactually slightly less than four troops, so that a specific threat can change the global energy balance, and it all starts with a tactical move: the United States has gone from a 48-hour ultimatum to bomb Iranian power plants to a five day break supported by diplomatic contacts that are still very weak.
We are talking about a maneuver that does not imply real de-escalation but time gained to avoid a step that could trigger immediate retaliation throughout the region and, above all, convert the energy infrastructure in priority objective of open war.
The real fear. The key to these hours is not only in the military fronts, but in the possibility that the conflict begins to knock down energy nodes systematically. The United States has come to put the attack on the table to electrical installations Iranians. For its part, Iran has responded by threatening to mine the gulf routes Persian and turn the area into an almost blocked space.
Between one thing and the other, the message is more or less clear, because the war no longer revolves only around bases, scientists or arsenals, but around cables, terminals, pumping stations, along with oil ports and maritime corridors without which the entire planet begins to tremble.
Kharg, Hormuz and the heart of the industry. The Kharg island appears in this story like a lot more than a point on the map. It is the great exit center for Iranian crude oil. It is also one of the places where a military offensive would a direct effect on global oil flows.
Plus: it adds to the other decisive name of this war, the Strait of Hormuzthrough which a gigantic part of the world’s crude oil trade passes. When both places enter the equation at the same time, what is at stake stops being a one-off retaliation and becomes the real possibility of a prolonged shock to the global energy industry.
Ukraine, again. That’s why everyone is looking at Ukraine again. I remembered this morning the new york times that the planet does not do it only because its war turned drones into absolute protagonists of the battlefield. It does so also because it was one of the first places where it was understood that modern energy infrastructure could survive only if it was transformed into a stepped fortress.
Because Russia was hitting refineries, gas plants and critical nodes for years. And Ukraine responded building a shield made of electronic warfare, interceptor drones, physical defenses, dispersion of equipment and hardening works that sought one very simple thing: to continue functioning even under constant attack.
The secret: hold on. From that perspective, the main Ukrainian lesson is not to have found a perfect defense, because that may not exist. Rather, it consists of having assumed that the enemy will hit again again, and in reducing damage, protecting the most expensive components, bury part of the facilitieserect concrete barriers and add layers of jamming and interception to complicate each attack.
In short, it consists of moving from the old logic of protecting large infrastructures as if they only had to resist a major bombing from the last century, to a new logic in which you have to resist repeated waves of small, cheap and constant threats.
The Gulf discovers the Ukrainian problem. Because the Gulf countries had thought above all about missiles. Ukraine it took time adding to the equation the drone swarms cheap. This difference is decisive because taking down low-cost threats with very expensive systems is not sustainable for a long time.
And that is where the Ukrainian experience becomes valuable for the Middle East: not because of a miraculous technology, but because it has developed a layered defense. more flexible and cheaperadapted to an enemy that can saturate the sky with relatively simple but devastating devices for gigantic and very vulnerable installations.
Few days to understand where the war is going. If you like, the central idea of these hours is brutally simple. There are few left less than four days to check if the pause announced by the United States It serves to cool down the war or only to bring it closer to its most dangerous phase.
If it fails, the focus will no longer be just on who bombs who, but on whether the region’s energy industry can continue standing. And in that scenario, Ukraine reappears as an unexpected reference one more time. First It was the laboratory of drone warfare, and now aims to also become the emergency manual to protect power plants, plants and terminals in an era in which energy has become one of the most delicate and decisive targets on the board.
Image | Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
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