When the Spice Stops Flowing

Frank Herbert’s Dune has long been read as an allegory of oil politics, empire, and the Middle East. The analogy most often drawn is straightforward: the all-important spice trade in the novel is oil, the Arrakis is the Persian Gulf, and control of an indispensable resource shapes international politics. There is, however, another parallel that may be more illuminating for the present moment. It concerns not the resource itself, but the strategy of coercion. 

In Dune, the protagonist Paul Atreides does not defeat the emperor by matching imperial power on the battlefield. His decisive leverage comes from his ability to threaten the destruction of the spice trade upon which the Transport Guild, the Great Houses, and the entire imperial order depend. Whether Paul can actually carry out his threat matters less than the credibility of the threat itself. The possibility that the indispensable commodity might become unavailable is enough to compel negotiation. What Paul does possess is a power of influence leading his enemies to worry that his discrete power to inflict harm is much worse than any brute force that could be leveled against them.  We may think about this argument as an application of the distinction between brute force and the power to hurt in Thomas Schelling’s Arms and Influence.  

Something similar may help us think about the confrontation between the United States and Iran. This is not to suggest that history imitates fiction or that Herbert intended to describe twenty-first-century geopolitics in his 1965 book. Rather, the novel illustrates a strategic logic that appears repeatedly in international affairs: a weaker power may coerce stronger ones by threatening the reliability of a system on which everyone depends. 

In Iran’s case, the relevant system is not merely the Strait of Hormuz. It is the broader network of energy production, shipping, insurance, ports, pipelines, and maritime routes extending from the Persian Gulf through the Red Sea and beyond. Disruption need not be total. Persistent uncertainty alone may be sufficient to raise costs, unsettle markets, and alter political calculations in Washington, Europe, Asia, and the Gulf monarchies themselves. One drone that hits a tanker in the Black Sea or the Mediterranean or a menace to disrupt the passage through the Bab al-Mandeb strait of any non-Chinese ship, is sufficient to send the world economy in a downward spiral. 

If this interpretation is correct, the recurring ceasefires resemble Paul’s political victory more than a conventional military settlement. The coercive threat achieved enough to induce negotiation without requiring outright victory on the battlefield. That does not necessarily mean that Iran prevailed in every respect, nor that the United States abandoned its long-term objectives. It suggests only that the immediate costs of continued escalation became unacceptable for multiple actors at once. 

Here the analogy reaches its limits. In Herbert’s fictional universe, Paul ultimately joins the existing political order. The Empire survives, albeit transformed. Real geopolitics is considerably more complicated. Iran’s position cannot be understood in isolation from its relationships with Russia, China, North Korea, and its regional network of proxy organizations. Nor can the calculations of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Turkey, Israel, Europe, or the United States, for that matter, be reduced to a single strategic objective.

Nevertheless, one uncomfortable question remains. If coercion succeeds once, does it become a permanent feature of a “new” regional order? From what I consider common sense, a Middle East in which Iran retains the ability to threaten maritime chokepoints, sustain proxy warfare, and advance its nuclear capabilities would not represent a stable equilibrium. Rather, it would create continuing incentives for accommodation by states that fear the immediate costs of confrontation even while recognizing the long-term dangers of inaction. 

Such an equilibrium would be unstable because it would encourage further coercion. Gulf states might seek temporary accommodation while strengthening their defenses or even reconsidering nuclear options. Israel would remain under constant strategic pressure. Turkey and other opportunistic regional powers could seek to expand their influence wherever American commitments appeared uncertain. Europe and Asia would continue to bear substantial economic risk premiums due to disruptions in energy markets. None of these responses would resolve the underlying problem; they would merely adapt to it in the short term and hope for the best, not exactly a sound strategy to promote peace and prosperity. 

Stable alternatives are therefore difficult. However, they are not impossible. They require restoring credible deterrence (the blockade), reducing the effectiveness of proxy warfare (battle, defeat, and disarm Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis), protecting maritime commerce (by destroying Iran’s military capabilities around the strait of Hormuz and beyond), and reaching verifiable arrangements concerning Iran’s nuclear program (once a reliable partner for peace replaces the religious fanatic regime of the Mullahs in Iran). These objectives are militarily, politically, and diplomatically demanding. They fundamentally require sustained domestic support within the United States. 

This is where American politics matters. Presidential administrations naturally weigh military objectives alongside economic performance, public opinion, and electoral constraints. It is conceivable that a temporary reduction in tensions serves both strategic and political purposes while preserving the possibility of firmer policies later. Whether that proves wise will depend on events rather than intentions. Whether the new Congress that will emerge from the mid-term elections supports the war on Iran or forces the administration to concede to Iran’s Dune-like tactics may result from the calculated refrain in using military force before the elections or not. 

The purpose of this argument is not to advocate immediate military action or to predict that renewed conflict is inevitable (that depends ultimately on who is using coercion, not on whom is being coerced). It is simply to suggest that ceasefires should be judged not only by the fighting they stop but also by the political order that results from them. If the current arrangement merely postpones confrontation while rewarding coercion, it may resemble Paul’s triumph in Dune without offering the relative stability that eventually emerged in Herbert’s fictional empire. Fiction cannot tell us what policymakers should do. It can, however, clarify strategic patterns. Dune reminds us that the greatest leverage sometimes belongs not to the strongest army but to the actor capable of threatening the system upon which everyone else depends. Whether today’s Middle East can escape that logic remains to be seen. The resumption of war before the midterms, if that results in a Congress that will not support the administration’s efforts to contain Iran, will consolidate Iran’s gains in a way that whatever concession they are getting now would not.  

Leonidas Zelmanovitz is a Liberty Fund Senior Fellow and a part-time instructor at Hillsdale College.