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The Trump administration's two-track approach to Iran — military action followed by the prospect of a financial deal involving billions of dollars — has revived one of the oldest strategic disputes in American history: whether to pay or fight a Middle Eastern power threatening freedom of navigation through a critical waterway.
With the Strait of Hormuz, described as the world's energy lifeline, at the center of the standoff, the durability of any arrangement carries direct consequences for commodity flows and the geopolitical risk premium embedded in energy markets.
Adams Against Jefferson: A Policy Template from the Mediterranean The parallel traces to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when Barbary pirates from North Africa preyed on American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean, enslaving crews and imperiling the young republic's overseas commerce.
George Washington described the situation to the Marquis de Lafayette as "the highest disgrace," yet the United States lacked the naval power to respond.
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