It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be a short, victorious war—an excursion, if you will—to topple the ayatollahs, or get rid of Iran’s nuclear program, or deplete its missile stockpile—or whatever combination of those goals. It was supposed to end, President Trump said, with Iran’s unconditional surrender. But all that quickly unraveled as a reconstituted, even more hard-line regime discovered a new point of leverage, one just as potent as nukes: the Strait of Hormuz. Withering U.S. and Israeli strikes may have dented Iranian military infrastructure, but they proved powerless to stop Tehran from taking hostage the world’s energy supply.