India, July 1 -- The Indian govt chose preparation over panic. It deserves credit for ensuring that a global energy shock did not become an Indian consumer crisis

The world had seen this crisis coming. As tensions deepened between Washington and Tehran, markets had already begun to price in danger, and energy analysts had warned that the Strait of Hormuz could become the fault line of a wider shock. But what few expected was the scale and ferocity of the confrontation once it broke open. This escalation in West Asia carried the old, unsettling echo of the 1980s, when the tanker war turned the Gulf into a theatre of disruption and reminded the world how quickly oil can become a weapon, and how brutally the costs can spread.

That historic...