Strait Of Hormuz: Iran’s 50-Km-Wide Geopolitical Bargaining Chip

The Strait of Hormuz’s narrowness, at around 50 km, and shallow waters, at no more than 60 metres deep, make it vulnerable to being sealed off militarily

New Delhi: The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Office has said it received reports from merchant ships operating in the Arabian Gulf that the Strait of Hormuz has been closed. These reports could not be independently verified at this time, it said.

Here’s your cheatsheet to this big story

1. The Strait of Hormuz is a strategic route for global oil shipping. The reports came hours after the US and Israel launched airstrikes on Iranian cities. In response, Iran fired several missiles on the UAE’s Abu Dhabi and Dubai, Qatar’s Doha, and Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh. The US military has bases in these countries in the Middle East.
2. Iran had last month warned it would close the Strait of Hormuz if the US or any other nation launched a strike. Despite its frequent warnings of a blockade, Tehran has never acted on them, though it closed part of the strait briefly for “safety” reasons during recent military drills.
3. The Strait of Hormuz links the Gulf to the Indian Ocean and is situated between Iran and Oman’s Musandam exclave, situated at the tip of a peninsula. Its narrowness, at around 50 km, and shallow waters, at no more than 60 metres deep, make it vulnerable to being sealed off militarily.
4. The strait is dotted with sparsely inhabited or desert islands, which are strategically important, notably the Iranian islands of Hormuz, Qeshm and Larak. Also among them are the disputed islands of Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Mussa, which lie between the UAE and Iran and provide a vantage point over the Gulf, and have been under Iranian control since 1971.
5. The strait is a vital corridor connecting the oil-rich Gulf with markets in Asia, Europe, North America and elsewhere. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the Strait of Hormuz is “one of the world’s most important oil chokepoints”. 
6. About one-fifth of global oil and petroleum product consumption flows through the strait, averaging 20 million barrels per day in 2024, according to the EIA. Around one-fifth of global liquefied natural gas trade also transited the Strait of Hormuz in 2024, primarily from Qatar, it said.
7. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have infrastructure to bypass the strait, potentially mitigating disruption, but their transit capacity remains very limited – around 2.6 million barrels a day. “Large volumes of oil flow through the strait, and very few alternative options exist to move oil out of the strait if it is closed,” the EIA warned. More than 80 per cent of the oil and gas moving through the strait is destined for markets in Asia, according to the EIA. China, a key backer of Tehran, buys more than 90 per cent of Iran’s oil exports.
8. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the ideological arm of the Islamic republic’s military, controls naval operations in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has repeatedly criticised the presence of foreign powers in the region – home to the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and the Middle East’s largest US base in Qatar.
9. The Strait of Hormuz is frequently the scene of ship seizures and attacks. Incidents multiplied after the United States withdrew in 2018 from the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme.
10. In 2019, unclaimed attacks on ships in the Gulf region, a downed drone and seized tankers raised fears of an escalation between Tehran and Washington. On July 29, 2021, an attack in the Gulf of Oman on a tanker operated by a company owned by an Israeli billionaire killed two people.

With inputs from AFP