War, Sanctions and Oil: How the Hormuz Closure Forced Washington to Quietly Open the Russian Valve
The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced the United States into one of the most unusual energy policy positions of the modern sanctions era: simultaneously tightening pressure on Iranian oil while temporarily loosening restrictions on Russian crude in order to prevent a global supply shock.
The U.S. Treasury’s General License 134, issued on March 12 — the thirteenth day of the expanding Iran war — allows the delivery and sale of Russian crude and petroleum products that were already loaded on vessels before that date and are now stranded at sea. The authorization runs until April 11 and permits the transactions needed to complete those shipments, including docking, insurance, bunkering, vessel management and related maritime services.
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The reason lies in Hormuz. Roughly a fifth of the world’s crude oil normally moves through that narrow corridor between Iran and Oman. Once shipping disruptions began there, the immediate global problem was not theoretical scarcity but logistical paralysis. Tankers could not move normally, insurance costs spiked, ports began rerouting cargoes and refiners suddenly faced uncertainty about deliveries scheduled weeks earlier.
OPERATION EPIC FURY 🇺🇸 One mission. Clear objectives.
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 13, 2026
🎯 Destroy Iran's Missiles pic.twitter.com/LWfLI38XN9
Oil that is already afloat thus becomes the fastest supply that can stabilize markets. New production takes time to reach buyers. Strategic reserves take time to release and distribute. Pipeline flows are geographically constrained. But cargoes already at sea can change destination quickly and reach refiners within days.
That is why the stranded Russian cargoes suddenly mattered. For more than two years Western sanctions have tried to constrain Russia’s oil revenues without removing too much supply from the market. But once the Hormuz crisis deepened, those cargoes — many already loaded before sanctions tightening cycles — became one of the few buffers available to the market.
The United States therefore created a temporary release valve. As IndianRepublic.in earlier reported, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the move as a “temporary authorization to permit countries to purchase Russian oil currently stranded at sea,” and emphasised that the measure is narrowly designed and short term. He also argued that the cargoes will not significantly benefit Moscow because Russia’s energy revenues are largely generated through taxes levied at the point of extraction rather than at sale.
JUST IN: Video shows ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours. pic.twitter.com/8Y8YOHNGJx
— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) March 9, 2026
That explanation reflects a delicate balancing act. Washington must maintain the architecture of sanctions against Russia while simultaneously preventing the war with Iran from triggering an energy crisis that could damage Western economies.
In other words, two different strategic goals are now colliding in the same market. The United States is trying to degrade Iran’s energy infrastructure and restrict Iranian exports as part of the war pressure campaign. At the same time, it must prevent global oil prices from rising sharply enough to destabilize allies, trigger inflation or weaken political support for the war itself.
The result is an energy policy that appears contradictory but is in fact situational: maximum pressure on Iranian oil, temporary flexibility on Russian oil.
🚨🇹🇭🇮🇷 Thailand summoned Iran’s ambassador after a Thai-flagged cargo vessel was hit near the Strait of Hormuz, with Oman rescuing 20 crew members while three remain missing. pic.twitter.com/FrjDxyKco7
— Terror Alarm (@Terror_Alarm) March 12, 2026
The timeline of the licenses illustrates how quickly the crisis evolved. On March 6, only six days into the conflict, the U.S. Treasury issued General License 133, a narrow and highly specific waiver that explicitly named Indian ports and Indian entities. That license authorized deliveries of Russian crude already loaded before March 5 and headed toward India.
It was effectively a bilateral safety valve designed for one major importer whose refineries depend heavily on seaborne crude. By March 12, the strategic picture had changed.
The war has expanded, Hormuz disruptions has deepened and the energy shock risk has become global rather than regional. The Treasury therefore replaced the narrow waiver with General License 134, which removed country-specific language and allowed any buyer to complete transactions involving Russian cargoes already loaded before the cutoff date.
In other words, the policy moved from a targeted exemption to a systemic stabilizer. India still benefits, as one of the world’s largest importers of Russian crude, but so do refiners across Asia, Europe and elsewhere that might be able to take deliveries from tankers already on the water.
This shift tells us something important about the stage the war has reached. The energy crisis is no longer hypothetical. Governments are now actively modifying sanctions frameworks in real time to manage supply risks. The fact that Washington felt compelled to widen the license only thirteen days into the war suggests that policymakers believe shipping disruptions could persist long enough to threaten market stability.
U.S. forces eliminated multiple Iranian naval vessels, March 10, including 16 minelayers near the Strait of Hormuz. pic.twitter.com/371unKYiJs
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 10, 2026
Russia has been quick to highlight the irony. Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, said Russian energy remains indispensable in stabilizing the world’s largest energy crisis and predicted that Europe would eventually have to acknowledge its strategic miscalculations.
But the reality is more complex than Moscow’s narrative suggests. The U.S. license does not represent a broader relaxation of sanctions against Russia. It applies only to cargoes already in transit before March 12 and expires in April. Washington is not reopening Russian supply; it is allowing the completion of shipments that would otherwise be trapped in legal limbo while the market struggles with the Hormuz disruption.
The Hormuz crisis has therefore produced a rare moment where two separate geopolitical confrontations — the West’s sanctions campaign against Russia and its military confrontation with Iran — intersect directly inside the oil market. Washington’s response shows how fragile that intersection is.
For now, stranded Russian cargoes provide a temporary bridge across the supply gap created by Hormuz. They cannot replace Gulf exports indefinitely, but they can buy time for tankers to reroute, for markets to stabilize and for governments to decide whether the war’s next phase will widen or contain the energy shock.
That is why General License 134 matters. It is the first clear acknowledgement by Washington that the Hormuz crisis has already begun to reshape the global sanctions architecture that defined energy politics for the past several years.
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(Saket Suman is Editor at IndianRepublic.in, and the author of The Psychology of a Patriot.)