Against the backdrop of new steps by Washington, an overarching political and economic signal of alarm is growing: many observers link the escalation around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz to the risk of a wider conflict. The focus is not only on military decisions, but also on fears that the administration’s hard line could destabilize the region and hit markets—intensifying anxieties about subsequent consequences for trade and the cost of energy. The emotional tone is fueled as well by talk that the current escalation may pull more and more participants into a spiral of tension, turning a local crisis into a problem with a long echo. This piece is based on publications from www.instagram.com (Venezuela), as well as materials from www.facebook.com (Venezuela).
Venezuela and Cuba see the Middle East crisis through oil and energy
Venezuelan and Cuban media space has responded to the escalation around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz not as a neutral international brief, but as an opportunity for its own political and economic interpretations. In a Venezuelan Instagram reaction, available via this link, the crisis is framed in a sharply anti-American and anti-Israeli tone: the United States, Israel, and Europe are described as the losing side, while Iran is portrayed as a force capable of dealing a serious blow to the global energy system. The author emphasizes that oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz is vital for the global market, and also highlights the United States’ vulnerability due to a shortage of heavy crude.
This perspective fits well with Venezuela’s context, where oil, sanctions, and the struggle for market access have long been part of the political agenda. Here, an appeal to an alternative information environment is especially noticeable: the text says that many assessments can be found “on YouTube in Spanish,” and as cited sources it names not local politicians but international commentators such as Neutrality Studies, Glenn Diesen, and Pepe Escobar. Their position is presented as a critique of U.S. hegemony, NATO, and Israeli policy—something that aligns with the anti-imperialist rhetoric familiar to part of the Venezuelan audience.
For Venezuela, this topic is important both practically and symbolically. Any spike in global oil prices can mean additional budget revenue at the same time as it hits the domestic market, and rising tension around oil supplies reminds the country of its own sanctions constraints. In this reading, the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz becomes not just a news item, but a mirror of Venezuela’s own experience: blockades, energy blackmail, and dependence on external decisions are easy for the local audience to recognize through their own history.
This is clearly reflected in a post by EL IMPARCIAL, which speaks of a sharp rise in oil prices after the escalation around Iran and threats in the area of the Strait of Hormuz. According to the publication, Brent climbed to $83.30 per barrel, up 9.6%, while WTI rose to $78.14, up 9.4%. For Venezuela, these figures mean not only anxiety over instability in the global market, but also a potential chance for a country that has spent years trying to revive its oil revenues. At the same time, Trump’s proposal to charge 20% of the cargo’s value for passage through the strait is seen as another example of how geopolitics turns into a tool for pressuring energy markets and exporting countries.
In Cuba, the tone of the reaction is different, but the logic is largely similar: the energy crisis is also framed as a matter of survival and political stability. In a teleSUR publication at this link, two outages of the National Electric System in a single week are reported, and the emphasis is placed not so much on the technical side of the incidents, but on how they are perceived by President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez. In the Cuban context, such breakdowns are not simply incidents; they are part of everyday social tension: the stability of electricity affects work, transportation, food storage, access to water, and communications.
Cuban official rhetoric usually links energy problems to external pressure, sanctions, and shortages of fuel and financing—and this is precisely how the issue is read in the regional media space. For the local audience, such news is also a test of the state’s ability to provide basic services. That is why the message about outages sounds not like a dry technical report, but like a political signal that reinforces a sense of systemic crisis. Against this backdrop, a Venezuelan reader can easily recognize a familiar pattern: worn infrastructure, a lack of investment, the politicization of коммунal problems, and the authorities’ drive to explain the crisis by external factors.
Taken together, these storylines show that in Venezuela and Cuba the Middle East crisis, the spike in oil prices, and domestic energy troubles are understood through a shared lens of dependence on resources, sanctions pressure, and the struggle for resilience. Here, news stops being just information and becomes part of a broader anti-Western and anti-imperialist narrative, where global politics is read as a continuation of the struggle over oil, energy, and control of economic flows.
