What is the Hormuz Strait and why does it matter?

There is significant speculation that Iran can take revenge on the US strikes on its nuclear facilities by closing the most busy shipping channel in the world, the hormuz strait.

About 20% of global oil and gas flow through this narrow shipping in the bay. Blocking would have deep consequences for the global economy, violation of international trade and raising oil prices.

This can also inflate the price of goods and services around the world and hit some of the largest world economies, including China, India and Japan, which are among the best importers of crude oil passing through the Strait.

The hormuz conductor is one of the most important shipping routes in the world and its most vital point for suffocation of oil transit.

Limited north of Iran and south of Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the corridor – which is about 50 km wide at the entrance and exit and about 33 km wide at its largest point – connects the bay with the Arab Sea.

The conductor is deep enough for the largest raw oil tankers in the world and is used by major producers of oil and gas in the Middle East – their customers.

In the first half of 2023, about 20 million barrels of oil went through the Hormuz Strait a day, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), which is worth $ 600 billion per year.

This oil comes not only from Iran, but from other Gulf countries such as Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Former leader of the United Kingdom Intelligence Agency, Sir Alex Youngrine, told the BBC that his worst scenario in the ongoing conflict in Iran-Israel included the blockade of the hormus strand.

“The closure of the strait would obviously be an incredible economic problem, given the effect it would have on the price of oil,” he said.

According to Bader al -Sifs, this would be an “unexplored terrain”, an associate professor at the University of Kuwaiti, who specializes in the geopolitics of the Arabian Peninsula.

“This would have direct consequences for the world markets, because you will look at the price of oil (s) you will see that the stock markets respond very nervously to what is happening,” Mr Al Sifff told BBC Newshour.

Of course, this would hurt the Persian Gulf countries, whose economies rely largely to exports of energy.

Saudi Arabia, for example, uses a strait to export about 6 million barrels of raw oil a day – more than any adjacent country – according to research by the Vortexa Analytical Substances.

Iran, for comparison, exports about 1.7 million barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency. Iran made oil worth $ 67 billion in the financial year, ending March 2025 – its highest revenue from oil in the last decade – according to the Central Bank’s estimates of Iran.

Asia would also be hit hard. In 2022, about 82% of the raw oil and condensates (low -density liquid hydrocarbons, which are commonly found with natural gas) leaving the Hormuz Strait, were bound to Asian countries, according to EIA assessments.

China alone is thought to buy about 90% of the oil that Iran exports to the world market.

Any interruptions could increase fuel and production costs at a time when China is to rely on production and export. This is also not just an internal problem: increasing production costs can eventually be transferred to consumers, which nourishes inflation around the world.

The impact can be huge for other key Asian economies that are among the largest importers after China. Almost half of India’s raw oil and 60% of natural gas imports pass through the Hormuz Strait. South Korea is reported to receive 60% of its raw oil through the Strait, and Japan is almost three -quarters.

The rules of the United Nations allow the countries to exercise controls up to 12 nautical miles (13.8 miles) from their coastline.

This means that at its largest point the Strait Hormuz and its shipping sails lie entirely in the territorial waters of Iran and Oman.

If Iran tries to block 3000 or more ships that sail every month, one of the most effective ways to do so, according to experts, would be to put mines using boats and submarines for quick attack.

Iran’s regular Navy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) Navy can potentially launch attacks on foreign warships and merchant ships.

However, large warships can, in turn, become easy targets for air strikes in the United States.

Iran’s fast boats are often armed with anti -ship missiles, and the country also operates a number of surface vessels, semi -workmanship and submarines.

Experts say Iran could temporarily block the strait, but many of them are equally confident that the United States and its allies can quickly restore the flow of marine traffic through military means.

The United States has done this before.

In the late 1980s, during the eight-year war in Iran and Iraq, the strikes of the oil facilities escalated in Tanker War, in which both sides attacked neutral ships to exert economic pressure.

The Kuwaiti tankers carrying Iraqi oil were particularly vulnerable – and in the end, US warships began to accompany them through the bay in what became the largest Navy convoy of World War II.

While Iran repeatedly threatened to close the Hormuz Strait in past conflicts, he never followed.

Perhaps the closest appeal was during the tanker war from the late 1980s -but even then shipping through the Hormuz Strait was never seriously disturbed.

If Iran fulfills its threat, this time it may be different.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims that the closure of Iran by the Hormuz Strait will represent an “economic suicide” and summoned to China, an ally of Tehran, to interveneS

“I am encouraging the Chinese government in Beijing to call them (Iran) because they are highly dependent on the Hormuz Strait for their oil,” Rubio said in an interview with Fox News on Sunday.

“We reserve options for dealing with this, but other countries must also look at this. This would harm other countries’ economies much more than ours.”

Although China is yet to react, Beijing is very unlikely to welcome an increase in oil prices or interruptions of delivery routes and could use its diplomatic weight to discourage the Iranian government to move forward with the blockade.

Energy analyst Vandana Harry said Iran had a “little to win too much to lose” from closing the Strait.

“Iran risks turning its neighbors with oil and gas into the bay into enemies and referring to the fury of its key market China by violating traffic in the Strait,” Harry told BBC News.

The sustainable threat of closing the Hormuz Strait over the years has encouraged oil countries in the Persian Gulf region to develop alternative export routes.

According to an EIA report, Saudi Arabia has activated its Eastern Western pipeline, a 1200 km long line capable of transporting up to 5 m barrel crude oil per day.

In 2019, Saudi Arabia temporarily converted the natural gas pipeline for the transfer of raw oil.

The United Arab Emirates are linked to their internal oil deposits with the port of Fujira of the Gulf of Omani via a pipeline with a daily capacity of 1.5 million barrels.

In July 2021, Iran discovered the Goreh -Jask pipeline designed to move raw oil to the Gulf of Oman. Currently, this pipeline can carry about 350,000 barrels a day – although reports suggest that Iran is not yet.

EIA estimates that these alternative routes can collectively cope with about 3.5 million barrels of oil per day – approximately 15% of the raw are currently being delivered through the Strait.