Crude back above $110 on Strait stalemate fears

Ezekiel 38 describes a coalition of nations — led by 'Gog of the land of Magog' — that moves against Israel in the latter days. Persia (modern Iran) is explicitly named among the coalition members in verse 5, making this one of the few prophetic texts where a modern nation-state has a near-consensus identification with an ancient name.

The passage does not specify the exact sequence of events leading to that gathering, but it does establish Iran as a nation whose hostility toward Israel and geopolitical ambition are woven into the eschatological fabric of Scripture. A Iran willing to weaponize global energy markets in the context of an active Middle East war fits the profile of the Persia Ezekiel foresaw as an aggressive, coalition-building adversary.

Iran's current posture — blocking the world's most strategic oil passage, refusing American mediation, and pressing terms on a superpower — reflects exactly the kind of emboldened regional aggression Ezekiel 38 ascribes to Persia as part of a latter-day coalition.

This does not fix a date or identify a specific fulfillment, but it does confirm that the geopolitical character of Iran described in Ezekiel 38:5 is visibly present in today's headlines, and the watchman is right to take note.

Elam in Jeremiah 49 refers to the ancient nation occupying southwestern Iran — the very heartland of the Persian empire and the geographic region that today includes Iran's major oil infrastructure and the approaches to the Strait of Hormuz. The oracle announces divine judgment specifically against this power's military preeminence ('I will break the bow of Elam, the mainstay of their might').

The 'bow' was Elam's signature weapon and the symbol of their strategic reach. That God would shatter precisely this instrument of power is a principle directly applicable to any season when the successors of Elam deploy their 'bow' — their chief strategic asset — against the stability of nations.

Iran's chief strategic 'bow' in the twenty-first century is not an archer's weapon but a geographic one: control of the Strait of Hormuz and the leverage that $110-per-barrel oil gives Tehran over every importing nation on earth.

Jeremiah's oracle reminds the church that God has historically refused to allow this particular region's 'mainstay of might' to stand unchallenged forever. The believer watches current events not with despair but with the confidence that the LORD of hosts has already spoken over Elam.

James 4:1-2 locates the root of international conflict not in geopolitical complexity but in human desire — epithumia, the craving for what one does not possess. James wrote to Jewish believers dispersed among the nations, and the principle he states is universal: wars and conflicts among peoples arise from the same disordered desire that tears apart households.

The verse requires no reinterpretation to apply to national actors. The grammar is explicitly plural and communal ('among you'), and James traces the chain directly: desire → inability to obtain → conflict → war.

The U.S.-Iran standoff over the Strait of Hormuz is, at its structural core, exactly what James describes: competing desires — for regional dominance, for energy revenue, for diplomatic leverage — that neither party can satisfy through negotiation, producing a stalemate that costs the entire world economically.

James's pastoral point is not merely diagnostic but redemptive: the answer to wars among nations begins with the same humility before God that he prescribes for quarreling believers. The church prays for peace not naively but theologically, knowing that only grace can redirect the desires that drive nations to the brink.