TANVI RATNA: How the war in Iran realigned Europe's energy future around America
President Donald Trump is negotiating over the Strait of Hormuz this week. The Middle East will get the headlines. But one of the most consequential shifts in this war did not happen in Tehran or Tel Aviv. It happened in the gas terminals of Rotterdam, Wilhelmshaven and Dunkirk, where Europe’s post-Russia energy system has become increasingly American.
In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe woke up to its first great energy shock of the century. Roughly 40-45% of the continent’s gas imports came from the country that had just launched a land war on its doorstep. The promise that followed was sincere: never again. No single supplier. No pipeline dependence. Diversify, build, escape.
Europe delivered. Russian pipeline gas fell from 137 billion cubic meters in 2021 to just 18 billion cubic meters by 2025 — an 87% collapse. Russia's share of EU gas imports fell from 45% to 12%.
In December 2025, the European Parliament voted 500 to 120 to make the break permanent law — a full ban on Russian LNG by end-2026 and all Russian pipeline gas by late 2027, with €40 million penalties for circumvention.
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Europe had not just reduced Russian energy, but voted to make it illegal. It also appeared Europe had a plan to replace that energy.
The plan was a web — Norway for pipelines, Algeria and Azerbaijan from the south, Qatar and the Gulf for LNG, renewables cutting demand over time, American LNG as one pillar among several. No single country would ever again hold the leverage Russia had.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz took that mission personally. On February 4, 2026, he flew to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE with a large business delegation to "diversify oil and gas supply chains" and lock in Gulf energy partnerships. He met Mohammed bin Salman, signed investment frameworks, pledged to loosen Germany's arms export rules as a gesture of good faith, and came home describing the foundations of a genuinely plural European energy future.
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It was Europe's last serious attempt to build something independent of any single power. It lasted four weeks.
U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February and early March 2026 escalated into a full regional conflict. Iran struck back. The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly 20% of the world's oil and LNG flows, including the bulk of Qatar's LNG exports, shut down. Shipping insurers pulled out or quoted war-risk premiums that made Gulf routes uneconomical. European gas prices surged roughly 25% in a single trading day. Oil more than doubled from pre-war levels, hitting $126 per barrel by late April. European gas storage, already at just 35-40% of capacity, kept drawing down. Equinor told Reuters in May that one to three more months of Hormuz disruption could push European storage to critical levels before winter.
Merz had just been in Doha negotiating Qatari supply. Qatar was willing to sell. That was never the problem. The problem was the water between Qatar and Europe. Qatar can produce LNG. No Qatari official can keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
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This is the part that confuses people watching from the outside. Trump's moves — strikes, pauses, negotiations, more strikes, a deal that is "largely negotiated" and then not quite — look erratic if you think the goal was purely military. They make more sense if you understand that Hormuz is a lever, not just a waterway. Every week it stayed disrupted, Europe had one fewer alternative to call.
Every week Qatar's LNG sat behind a war zone, American supply contracts looked more necessary. Every week European storage ticked lower, the pressure to lock in long-term American supply grew. The war didn't just disrupt markets but all the planning of Europe's post-2022 energy architecture. Here is what that looks like in numbers.
Before the Ukraine war, the United States supplied just 24% of EU LNG imports. By Q4 2025, before a single shot was fired in the Iran war, that share had already reached 56% according to Eurostat, more than tripling the share the US had before 2021. IEEFA's Q1 2026 update put the U.S. share at 63% of European LNG and climbing.
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European buyers, facing a disrupted Gulf and storage levels that Equinor called potentially critical, extended and signed new long-term American supply agreements through the spring under the worst possible negotiating conditions — high prices, scarce alternatives, winter approaching.
IEEFA now projects EU imports of U.S. LNG reaching 115 billion cubic meters per year by 2030 — 80% of all EU LNG imports, with 40% of all EU gas, pipeline and LNG combined, flowing from the United States.
Germany, the country that built its industrial model on Russian pipeline gas, now imports overwhelmingly American LNG through the terminals it built in the name of independence.
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Had Trump already priced this before the war started? Were the delays in coming to a settlement the grounds for locking in long term contracts?
However the deals plays out, it may put a close to the crisis chapter. But the structural chapter does not close with it.
The contracts signed under wartime pressure are signed. The Russian ban is law. The terminals are built and running on American supply. There is no alternative at scale. There is no exit clause. There is no Merz trip that changes the arithmetic now.
Trump's Iran deal would close a war. It also closes a decade-long process of European energy realignment that now points, unmistakably and by law and by contract, in one direction.
Toward America.
This article is a Fox News Digital exclusive from the Tanvi Ratna’s Substack series on different theaters President Trump is realigning with the Iran War.
