The US-Israel war on Iran has choked the Strait of Hormuz and sent Asian oil importers scrambling — creating a rare opening for Malaysia's Maharani Freeport, a deepwater VLCC-capable hub on the Malacca Strait with duty-free status and a 3% oil trading tax that undercuts Singapore. But infrastructure and incentives alone won't secure its future: to become a permanent trading hub rather than a wartime overflow depot, Maharani must attract the global trading houses needed to earn S&P Global Platts' benchmark recognition. The clock is ticking.

The Strait of Hormuz is closed, oil is above $110 and climbing, and a ten-day ultimatum from Trump has done little to break the deadlock — this is the worst energy crisis of the modern era. This brief analyses the military, economic, and geopolitical forces driving the crisis, and sets out three scenarios for how it resolves.

Part 2 of a 2 part series. Even if you accepted Worldcoin's political premise, the economics don't work: a fixed-supply token in a growing economy produces deflation, freezes investment, and cannot respond to crises the way a state-backed currency automatically can. The current WLD distribution is a venture capital subsidy, not a sustainable funding mechanism, and when it runs out or token prices collapse, the safety net doesn't weaken — it vanishes entirely. Real UBI requires taxing productive assets at the point of generation, which only a state has the legal authority to do.