by Lorenzo Maria Pacini, Strategic Culture:
Until February 2026, an average of 129 merchant ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz each day, carrying about one-third of the crude oil traded by sea and one-fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas. No other maritime passage concentrates such a large share of the world’s energy wealth in such a confined space; at its narrowest point, the strait measures about 33 kilometers, but the actually navigable channels are much narrower. For Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Iraq, Hormuz is not just another shipping route; it is the only viable outlet on an industrial scale for hydrocarbons, which account for between half and nearly all of these countries’ government revenues, depending on the case.
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Then everything changed.
The war unleashed on February 28, 2026, by the joint U.S.-Israeli airstrike against Iran transformed this geographical dependence into systemic vulnerability. As of March 4, Tehran declared the strait “closed,” proceeding to lay naval mines, board merchant ships, and launch direct attacks against vessels in transit. Traffic plummeted by about 90% in the space of just a few days.
Technically speaking, it was not a physical closure; it was, first and foremost, an insurance-driven closure. When war-risk insurers withdrew coverage or raised premiums to prohibitive levels, and when crews refused to sign on for the crossing, the strait became impassable without a single shot being fired at most of the ships. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has noted that the distinction between a military blockade and an insurance-driven blockade is, from the perspective of Gulf producers, purely academic: once storage capacity is exhausted, the wells must be shut down.
Over these long months, we have come to know a new Middle East, a new landscape of trade relations, and new scenarios for the future.
As of mid-July 2026, the situation shows no signs of stabilizing. The collapse of negotiations between Washington and Tehran has reignited the most intense phase of the conflict: CENTCOM has struck Iranian air defenses, coastal surveillance facilities, and the port of Bandar Abbas, while Iran reiterates its threat to extend its campaign beyond the strait if its national energy infrastructure continues to be targeted. The IMO Secretary-General has publicly urged shipowners not to attempt transit through the strait. President Trump’s proposal to impose a toll equal to 20 percent of the cargo’s value – with the United States acting as the self-proclaimed “guardian of the Strait” – which was then quickly withdrawn, signals just how much the hegemonic power itself now considers negotiable what had been presented for half a century as a global public good: freedom of navigation in the Gulf.
We have come to understand that Hormuz acts as a catalyst: it does not create the vulnerabilities of the rentier model, but brings them to simultaneous maturity, forcing a reshuffling of the global trade deck. Or, if you will, Hormuz is literally setting the entire Middle East – and much more – ablaze, striking at the oil monarchies, those entities that until a few months ago were considered the superpowers of oil and the saviors of the petrodollar.
The paralysis of trade
Let’s take things in order. The first change concerns logistics. The shock was transmitted not through oil prices, but through the London insurance market: premiums for war risk rose to levels that made shipping uneconomical well before Iranian attacks reached a critical mass. In the first eight days of March, the British Maritime Trade Operations Center recorded ten attacks on merchant ships, with the first seafarers killed; by April, the IMO counted approximately 2,000 ships and 20,000 seafarers stranded within the Gulf, unable to leave. Brent crude, which was trading at around $72 per barrel at the end of February, surpassed $84 in five trading sessions and exceeded $100 during moments of peak tension, eventually settling steadily above $80 in the summer.
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