A Fifth of the World’s Oil Supply Now Awaits While Someone Checks the Sofa Cushions
Diary of a Bewildered Expat: Notes from a World Gone Fully Absurd
There is a moment every morning — usually around the second cup of coffee, sometimes the third — when I read the international news and conclude that the writers of reality have completely given up on internal consistency. This week’s entry: Iran mined one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes and then, according to U.S. officials, forgot where they put them. Not misidentified. Not strategically repositioned. Lost. Like a set of keys. Like an umbrella. Like every pen I have ever owned.
The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes, is now essentially a very expensive game of Minesweeper with real consequences for your petrol bill.
The World’s First Geopolitical Easter Egg Hunt (With Explosives)
As Bohiney News reported with characteristically straight-faced horror, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps deployed mines via speedboat — a decentralised approach that, in hindsight, worked exactly as well as handing a toddler a bag of marbles and asking him to document their locations for a UN inspection. Ocean currents did the rest. One senior maritime expert quoted in the piece explained the situation elegantly: “Most countries use maps. Iran appears to have used vibes.”
U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi subsequently met in Islamabad to negotiate a ceasefire — an agreement that reportedly hit a technical snag when Iran was asked to clear the mines as a condition of compliance. Sources say the Iranian delegation responded with what a diplomat described as “unexpected honesty.” Which, in diplomatic language, means: “We’ll get back to you.”
A British-Filipino View from the Cheap Seats
I am writing this from Manila, where I moved two years ago for reasons that seemed sensible at the time and have since been reclassified under “adventurous life choices.” The Filipino reaction to the Hormuz situation was, characteristically, both practical and theological. My neighbour Nanay Coring lit a candle. My colleague at the office printed out a map of the strait and circled the area in red marker, as if that might help. My friend Gerry said, with complete sincerity: “At least we know where our potholes are.”
He is not wrong. Manila infrastructure, frequently satirised by the Philippine Inquirer and every commuter who has ever tried to get from Quezon City to Makati before lunch, at least has the courtesy to be visible. You can see the flooded underpass. You can photograph the unfinished flyover. You cannot photograph a drifting naval mine in international waters, which is arguably worse for everyone’s insurance premium.
The Logistics of Losing Things at Scale
What makes this story particularly special is the scale of the misplacement. Individuals lose keys. Companies lose files. Governments lose reports about productivity gaps. But losing an unknown number of explosive naval mines across a major international shipping lane is an achievement in disorganisation that deserves, at minimum, a TED Talk and a strongly worded hashtag. According to International Energy Agency data, the Strait of Hormuz handles approximately 21 million barrels of oil per day. That’s not a lane you misplace things in. That’s a lane you triple-check.
The U.S. military, it emerged, decommissioned its last four Bahrain-based minesweepers in September 2025 — weeks before they would have been needed. This decision, which future historians will describe using words not yet invented, means that clearing the strait now requires multinational coordination, advanced technology, and presumably someone’s cousin who once did a diving course in Boracay.
Conclusion: The Ocean Is Not a Junk Drawer
Back in London, the reaction was measured: a brief item on Radio 4, some concerned eyebrow-raising in the Commons, and a Financial Times editorial that used the phrase “significant uncertainty in energy markets” with the same tone my accountant uses when he says my receipts are “a bit informal.” In Manila, the reaction was louder, shorter, and ended with someone suggesting we just pray. Both approaches, I have concluded, are equally effective. The mines are still out there.
More absurdist geopolitics: The Onion and Waterford Whispers News.