Rewrote

What happened in late February is still reverberating through global markets. The joint American and Israeli strikes on Iran didn't just become another line in the news feed — they physically reshaped the global energy market. The Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil passes, was effectively closed to normal shipping. This isn't the kind of shock the market can digest in a couple of weeks and forget. It's a tectonic shift whose consequences will be felt for months.

The first reaction was a sharp spike in oil prices. But as always happens in these stories, a whole chain of consequences followed the oil surge. Inflation, which had seemed to be losing steam, suddenly got fresh fuel to accelerate. Central banks around the world, already starting to entertain the idea of easing policy, found themselves trapped: cutting rates now means risking a new inflationary spiral. Not cutting them means squeezing already fragile economic growth. It's at this crossroads that the renewed strength of the U.S. dollar is born.

Currency strategists at one of the most influential banks on Wall Street have released a fresh research note, and its core message sounds unambiguous: the dollar will keep strengthening. In the near term, an almost perfect storm is brewing for the greenback — not the kind that sinks ships, but the kind that fills sails.

Karen Reichgott Fishman, a strategist at Goldman Sachs, laid out the picture without embellishment. Macroeconomic reality, in her words, is playing squarely in the dollar's favor. Here's why. On one hand, inflation is gaining momentum again, stoked by expensive oil. On the other, the U.S. economy is showing enviable resilience to external shocks. Unlike Europe, which sits far closer to the epicenter of the conflict and is...