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Iran Does Not Need to Close Hormuz. It Only Needs to Make Oil Expensive Enough

  Seven Ships Through Hormuz I looked at the shipping numbers from Karachi on Thursday morning and stopped at one figure: seven. Only seven vessels were recorded passing through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, 9 September. Four sailed out and three entered. Some ships may have crossed with their transponders switched off, so the number cannot tell us everything. Yet it tells us enough to ask a different question about Iran. For years, analysts have debated whether Tehran can close the Strait of Hormuz. The question usually produces maps, naval inventories and estimates of how quickly the United States could clear mines or destroy Iranian missile batteries. I think the events of September 2026 expose a weakness in that debate. Iran does not need to seal the waterway with an iron gate. It needs to make passage frightening and expensive. Brent crude was trading around $101 a barrel early on 10 September, nearly 30 percent above its early-August lows. Oil flows through Hormuz ...
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Who Actually Has the Power to Stop You Leaving Pakistan?

  Pakistan's Courts Are Testing the Legal Limits of FIA Airport Offloading I have travelled abroad often enough to know the tension that appears at a Pakistani airport just before immigration. The visa is in the passport. The airline has accepted the ticket, but another decision still lies ahead at the FIA counter, where officers routinely examine the purpose of travel and a passenger's arrangements. Financial capacity can become another issue. For years, many passengers have treated the interview as another airport formality. Pakistani courts are now repeatedly being asked to define how far that screening power extends. The question is moving beyond whether a traveller carried the right papers and toward something harder: what legal authority allows the state to stop a citizen from boarding? On 9 September 2026, the issue returned to the Lahore High Court. Justice Munawar Iqbal Duggal heard a petition filed by Naila Kiran challenging FIA's practice of offloading passen...
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UBL Has Overtaken HBL. But Pakistan May Be Measuring the Wrong Banking Champion

  UBL has overtaken HBL in deposits, but deposit size alone cannot tell us how effectively Pakistan’s banks channel money into lending and productive activity. The League Table That Made Me Stop A banking league table stopped me while I was scrolling through LinkedIn in Karachi. UBL occupied the first position with deposits of Rs 6.12 trillion, while HBL stood just behind it at about Rs 5.92 trillion. I have spent enough time around banking and cross-border payments to know that a balance-sheet number rarely tells its full story. The headline claim survives scrutiny. UBL reported deposits and other accounts of Rs 6.1186 trillion at 30 June 2026, up from Rs 5.1684 trillion at the end of December 2025. HBL's half-year report says its total deposits reached Rs 5.9 trillion, with domestic deposits alone rising to Rs 5.1 trillion.  On the numbers used in the LinkedIn graphic, UBL led HBL by roughly Rs 200 billion. That sounds huge when viewed from a household account, but the diffe...
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Iran Has Learned America’s Favourite War Argument

  Iran and the United States use different doctrines to defend military escalation, while the consequences travel through Gulf oil routes to economies such as Pakistan. A Reader Asked the Question I Could Not Ignore Early one Karachi morning, I was reading the comments under my post when one sentence stopped me. The reader was not arguing about missile range or the price of Brent crude. He was accusing me of something more uncomfortable. “آپ کی لاجک ویسی ہی ہے جیسے کسی زمانے میں عراق اور افغانستان پر امریکی حملے کو جسٹیفائی کرنے والے دیتے تھے۔ حوثیوں اور ایرانیوں کیلئے آپ بھی وہی لاجک استعمال کر رہے ہیں۔” “Your logic is similar to the arguments once used to justify the American attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan. You are now using the same logic for the Houthis and the Iranians.” My first instinct was to reject the comparison. Iran in 2026 does not possess the military reach America enjoyed in 2003, and the Houthis certainly do not command anything resembling the Pentagon. Then I...
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America Exports Fuel While Americans Pay Record Prices. Should Washington Stop It?

  U.S. refiners are shipping fuel abroad during an energy shock. Keeping more at home sounds simple until refinery geography reveals where the real constraint lies. American refiners continue sending fuel into global markets even as domestic gasoline prices rise, exposing the tension between export power and consumer relief. A reader looked past the price board A reader left a comment under my article about America's record fuel prices that kept bothering me. Why, he asked, should the United States continue exporting gasoline and diesel while Americans struggle at home? Washington could keep more fuel inside the country until oil moves normally through the Persian Gulf again. Labor Day gave his argument more force. AAA recorded a national average of $4.1505 a gallon on September 7 , putting regular gasoline above four dollars on Labor Day for the first time and breaking the previous holiday record from 2012. The problem did not ease when the long weekend ended. By September 8, Bren...
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Why Genuine Umrah Pilgrims Are Now Paying the Price for Pakistan’s Human-Smuggling Networks

  Pakistani Umrah pilgrims face immigration screening as FIA tightens checks against human-smuggling networks using religious travel routes. At a Pakistani airport, an Umrah passenger hardly looks unusual. An older man may be checking his passport while his wife keeps the hotel papers inside a plastic folder, and somewhere beyond immigration the departure board shows Jeddah or Madinah. Yet an Umrah visa now triggers questions that had little to do with pilgrimage a few years ago because human smugglers have learned to hide the first stage of an illegal journey inside a lawful religious trip. I find the change troubling for reasons that go beyond immigration statistics. Umrah occupies a familiar place in Pakistani family life, especially among people who have never travelled abroad before and may depend on their children to arrange tickets or accommodation. Once criminal networks exploit that route, genuine pilgrims inherit suspicion they did nothing to create. The problem became...
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Pakistan Has Created a Second Visa System at Its Airports

  At Karachi airport, I have learned not to treat the immigration counter as a routine stamp before departure. I hand over my passport, watch the officer move through its pages, answer his questions, then wait while a computer screen somewhere behind the glass decides nothing and everything at once. Most journeys continue without drama, but Pakistan's growing offloading system has added a second uncertainty: the country that issued the visa may accept my visit, yet my own government can still stop me from leaving. I understand why that possibility unsettles travellers. A visa answers whether a foreign state will allow a person to seek entry under stated conditions; it does not cancel Pakistan's lawful power to regulate departure. My objection begins elsewhere, when suspicion becomes an unpublished test and a passenger cannot tell which rule he has failed. Muhammad Abbas discovered the distinction at Sialkot International Airport on January 31, 2026. He held a valid Nigerian ...
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