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ince the Iranian Revolution and sued warnings forbidding commercial following the collapse of diplomatic overthrow of Shah Moham- passage, boarded and attacked merchant talks in Islamabad, Pakistan, the U.S. mad Reza Pahlavi in 1979, the ships, and laid mines throughout the strait. Navy imposed its own blockade of Ira-

SStrait of Hormuz has been a Within days, major ocean carriers sus- nian ports beginning April 13, 2026, geographic constant as a choke point for pended all transits. The IRGC con? rmed creating what analysts came to call a which closure has been threatened from the formal closure on March 2, 2026. “dual blockade.” Iran also began charg- time to time but never truly closed. The The situation devolved further when, ing vessels tolls exceeding $1 million longstanding assumption of the contin- ued openness of the strait collapsed on

February 28, 2026. In the weeks since

Iran effectively shut the strait to com- mercial shipping in response to U.S. and Israeli military strikes and the U.S. established its own blockade, the global maritime transportation system has been forced into a rerouting effort of historic proportions. The consequences have rippled far beyond just oil and gas mar- kets, exposing vulnerabilities in global supply chains and potentially threaten- ing important aspects of the customary international law of the sea that are cen- turies upon centuries old.

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway—a little under 18 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point—that connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of

Oman and the wider Arabian Sea. Be- fore the current crisis, roughly 25 per- cent of the world’s seaborne crude oil trade and roughly 20 percent of global lique? ed natural gas (LNG) transited the passage daily. Previously, on an aver- age day well over 100 vessels moved through the strait carrying millions of barrels of oil, vast volumes of LNG, and signi? cant quantities of petrochemicals and fertilizers. Asian economies—

China, India, Japan, and South Ko- rea—received the bulk of the crude oil transiting the strait, making it an arterial lifeline for the world’s most dynamic manufacturing economies.

Closure of the strait has made clear an uncomfortable truth: the $123 tril- lion global economy can be held hos- tage across a stretch of water just a few miles wide.

The crisis in the strait escalated rapidly after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran begin- ning on February 28, 2026. Iran’s Islamic

Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is- www.marinelink.com 11

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