Two shipping lanes, each about 3.2 km wide, separated by a buffer of similar width. That is the whole road that oil tankers use to leave the Persian Gulf, and Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has ordered it closed.
Onmanorama reported on March 14, 2026 that oil had already passed $100 a barrel and that analysts feared the largest supply disruption in modern history. President Donald Trump has said stopping the Islamic republic’s “evil empire” matters more than crude prices.
A small strait with a huge job
The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. It runs about 167 km, and its width ranges from roughly 97 km down to 39 km, narrower still in places. Between 20 and 25 percent of the world’s seaborne oil passes through it, along with nearly 20 percent of liquefied natural gas shipments, mostly from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain.
Few detours exist. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline and the UAE’s Habshan-Fujairah pipeline can carry only about a quarter of what normally goes through Hormuz.
Asia takes the hit
Nearly 85 percent of the oil in the strait ends up in Asian markets, with China, India, Japan and South Korea the biggest buyers. India shows the exposure clearly. It imports about 88 percent of its crude and burns roughly 5.8 million barrels a day. Between 2.5 and 2.7 million barrels of that normally arrive from West Asian producers via the strait, along with about 55 percent of its LPG imports and nearly 30 percent of its LNG. Those gases feed power plants, fertiliser output, CNG and household cooking.
As tanker movements slowed, India was already facing a severe LPG shortage and had started looking to Russia for more crude.
Law on paper, mines in the water
International law treats Hormuz as an international strait, so every ship has a right of transit passage and bordering states cannot suspend it. Geography tells a different story. Iran could block traffic with naval mines, missiles, drones or fast attack boats, and its Shahed drones have a range of up to 2,500 km. Even the US Navy would struggle to guarantee safe passage, because clearing mines or removing a stricken tanker from such a tight channel can take days or weeks. Commanding the strait outright would mean neutralising Iran’s coastal missile and drone capability, and that could mean a far wider war.
A long record of trouble
During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, both sides hit oil tankers in the “Tanker War,” and the US ended up escorting Kuwaiti ships. In 1988 a US warship accidentally shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 people. In 2019 Iran seized the British tanker Stena Impero.
The strait mattered long before oil. By the 7th century it was a trading hub linking Persia with India. Marco Polo visited Hormuz in 1272 and again in 1293. The Portuguese took it in 1507 and held it until the Safavid Empire expelled them in 1622. Britain later backed Oman’s claim, and a dispute over the island fed the 1856-57 Anglo-Persian War, which ended with Persia giving up its claims in the 1857 Treaty of Paris.
Sources
- Onmanorama Explains | Strait of Hormuz: Why this energy chokepoint matters in the Iran–Israel–US war
