Gas prices rose to over $2 per litre in many stations in Montreal on Thursday, April 2, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne MuschiChristinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
What has the Iran War taught us? I have a partial list.
Fossil fuels are still fundamental: Countries with oil and gas have a source of wealth. Countries that need to import oil and gas have a vulnerability. And countries that can interrupt the peaceful exchange of hydrocarbons for cash? They have power.
This won’t be true forever. But it is today, and will be for many years to come.
Fossil fuels are food: Take a look at that bag of plant food in your garage. On the front are three numbers; a container of general purpose plant food might say something like “24-8-16.” Those figures represent the fertilizer’s levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium – three chemicals vital for plant growth in your garden, and on farms around the globe.
Phosphorous and potassium are mined, with Saskatchewan’s potash mines the world’s most important source of potassium fertilizer. But most nitrogen fertilizer is produced through the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch process, which generally uses natural gas as both main ingredient and energy source. (Some countries, notably China, use coal.)
The Persian Gulf region is a leading producer of nitrogen fertilizers because it has lots of cheap and easily accessible gas. A closed Strait of Hormuz means not only lower global fuel supplies and higher fuel prices, but lower global food supplies and higher food prices.
(Who else has lot of cheap natural gas? Canada.)
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You can win every battle and still lose the war: If President Bone Spurs had been drafted to fight in Vietnam instead of finding his way to a medical deferral, this lesson might have been seared into his mind.
In Southeast Asia, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States won every major individual engagement, and imposed enormous losses on the enemy. But a string of tactical successes did not yield strategic success.
The Strait of Hormuz is the new Ho Chi Minh Trail: Despite years of constant bombing, and claims that U.S. air superiority and technological wizardry were always on the verge of finally blocking the flow of men and equipment infiltrating from North Vietnam to South Vietnam, the U.S. was unable to close the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Despite weeks of bombings, and the belief that U.S. air superiority and technological wizardry would surely prevent Iran from blocking the flow of ships and hydrocarbons through the Persian Gulf, the U.S. has been unable to open the Strait of Hormuz.
War is a tactic, not a strategy: Blowing up the other side’s stuff is a means, not an end.
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Wars almost never result in unconditional surrender: In the Second World War, the Allies demanded unconditional surrender, which meant that the war could only end after all of Nazi Germany was occupied, and its government had ceased to exist. This was necessary because of the nature of the regime we were fighting. But most wars cannot and should not end this way.
As the 19th century Prussian philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz put it, war is the continuation of politics by other means. A war started because of a political impasse can only be ended by politics – meaning negotiations.
War can change the relative bargaining power of the parties in negotiations, but not the need for negotiations.
Tehran has spent weeks effectively declining to negotiate, and appears to have offered no concessions, because it has reason to believe it is winning.
It is dangerous to be militarily weak: Military strength does not guarantee victory, but a lack of it puts a country in great peril. That’s why Canada and Western Europe joined with the U.S. 77 years ago to create NATO. There was strength in collective security.
Over time, the lesser members of the alliance, notably Canada, reduced their war-fighting capabilities and defence-industrial bases to almost nothing, on the assumption that war was obsolete, or something that happened to other people. And if it wasn’t, well, the Americans would protect us.
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These illusions have been shattered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. President Donald Trump going rogue and menacing NATO allies, and Iran’s use of asymmetric military force – missiles and especially cheap drones – to impose severe economic costs on its neighbours.
Iran’s neighbours were aware of the danger, and spent tens of billions of dollars preparing to counter it. The United Arab Emirates, for example, has more modern fighter aircraft than Canada, and more of them. It also has anti-missile systems that Canada lacks. It hasn’t been enough.
Canada is psychologically underprepared for this more dangerous world, and under-armed.
Leadership matters: On Monday, President Trump held a press conference to celebrate the rescue of a single American airman. The rescue involved 155 aircraft, worth billions of dollars, and likely thousands of personnel.
It will make a great Hollywood movie. But as Winston Churchill said about Dunkirk, wars are not won by evacuations. The rescue is a happy sideshow – which a reality-TV President used to escape from reality on Monday, even as he issued bombastic threats to annihilate Iran’s civilian electricity plants on Tuesday.
Mr. Trump’s flights of bombast and retreats into escapism have a common source: his frustration over his inability to end the war he started, and to end it without leaving Iran the victor.