Tanaka sees the UAE’s April decision to exit OPEC after 59 years — driven partly by fury at being attacked by Iran, a fellow member, but also by a bet that peak oil demand is arriving faster than other producers acknowledge — as prescient. “They are trying to use their current oil revenues to build a future electrostate,” he says. “That is a very good strategy. But the crisis has put that strategy under enormous stress.”

He warns that Asian economies that had been counting on cheap Gulf LNG to bridge their energy transition must now recognize their vulnerability. Qatar’s damaged LNG infrastructure has set back the anticipated global LNG supply wave by at least two years. That gap has to be filled by something — and Tanaka’s answer, particularly for Japan, is nuclear.

In Tanaka’s account, Japan is a paradox. Before the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011, Japan had 54 reactors providing 30% of its electricity. It now has 15 back online, including — in a milestone freighted with symbolism — the first reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in Niigata, the world’s largest nuclear plant, which entered full commercial operation in April under TEPCO, the same company that ran the stricken Fukushima plant. Public support for nuclear has climbed back to majority levels for the first time since 2011, driven by rising energy costs.

And yet only 2.5% of new car sales in Japan are electric — roughly half the US’ rate, even though the US is considered an EV laggard. Toyota, the world’s largest automaker and the most powerful corporate opponent of the EV transition among major carmakers, has lobbied hard to keep hybrids at the center of Japan’s auto strategy. The Japanese government has obliged.

Meanwhile, TEPCO exemplifies a broader pattern of Japanese utilities clinging to the old model of large centralized power plants — and resisting the shift to distributed renewable energy that would erode their grip on the market.

The Takaichi government, Tanaka argues, has taken the path of least resistance, committing $19 billion to subsidize gasoline prices and keeping pump prices capped at around 170 yen per liter. “Ridiculous,” Tanaka declares. Japan risks becoming, in his phrase, “suicidal” — sleepwalking into the same carbon island trap as the United States, and squandering the instinct for industrial transformation that made it a world leader after the first two shocks.

Tanaka’s advice to CEOs: Don’t confuse the reopening of the strait with a return to normal. The short-term supply picture will stabilize. Prices will ease. The temptation to declare the crisis over and return to business as usual will be powerful — and dangerous.

“CEOs should watch the long-term geopolitics of energy,” he says. “The petrostates versus electrostates battle will impact every business, every supply chain. The companies that understand this transformation now are the ones that will be competitive later. … Japan understood the lesson of the first two oil shocks and became a global leader. Who will understand the lesson this time?”