India, March 16 -- The Strait of Hormuz has once again emerged as the nerve centre of a conflict that is reshaping the Middle East, rattling global energy markets and testing the limits of American power. In a wide-ranging conversation on Hindustan Times' Point Blank, Executive Editor Shishir Gupta unpacks why this narrow waterway has become the focal point of the ongoing Iran war, why the regime in Tehran is battered but still standing, and how the wider Gulf region has been turned into collateral damage.

Gupta underlines that three principal actors now define the conflict: the US-Israel axis, Iran, and the wider Gulf region - and all three are being directly impacted by the war. The military focus, he says, has unmistakably converged o...