The one winner to emerge from the Iran war might turn out to be electric vehicles.

After British troops had beaten German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s tank forces at the Second Battle of El Alamein in Egypt on Nov. 4, 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.”

The same might now be said about humanity’s struggle to defeat the dire threat of climate change. The war of aggression on Iran, launched on Feb. 28 by the governments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, has provoked a global energy crisis of a unique kind. The Iranians responded by imposing a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz that removed about 11-13 percent of all petroleum from the world market, setting off a cascade of steeply rising prices for diesel fuel, gasoline and natural gas.

The shortages hit first in Asia and Africa, then in Europe. Lufthansa cut 20,000 summer flights. This is a watershed moment globally, heralding the twilight of petroleum.

While American drivers have been complaining about high prices at the pump, in the Netherlands and Denmark, consumers are already paying around $10 a gallon. Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared a national energy emergency, as his country had only a little over a month’s worth of petroleum left. Hundreds of gas stations announced temporary closures, resulting in long lines at those that remained open.

The South Korean government has restricted parking for commuters, where the rise in gas costs has led many consumers to simply stay home. In Bangladesh, the state-owned Eastern Refinery closed due to a lack of crude oil to process.

Oil price crises are hardly new. But the Great Hormuz Fuel Crisis of 2026 has the potential to permanently reduce petroleum demand far more radically.

Demand will remain relatively inelastic as long as owners locked into vehicles with internal combustion engines have to keep on buying gasoline and diesel (no matter how high prices go) to get to work, ensuring that those prices will remain elevated until the supply increases substantially. And yet a world that used roughly 104 million barrels a day of petroleum in 2025 has been limping along this spring with as little as 92 million barrels a day.

A potential turning point: The five countries in the European Union with the most green energy are set to save nearly $10 billion more in costs than fossil-heavy EU countries. In the UK, where electric vehicle sales spiked a record 24 percent in March over the same time last year, the average cost of an EV for the first time fell below that of a similar gas-powered car.

More consumers are likely to purchase EVs, since they’re immune to the periodic price shocks. And their sticker prices continue to fall. However devastating the disaster in the Strait of Hormuz, the latest horrific war is also helping to change the world in positive ways.

Juan Cole is a professor of history at University of Michigan. This story first ran on TomDispatch.com.