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The Strait of Hormuz is a maritime passage that carries a vast majority of global oil trade through a channel narrowing to just 33 kilometers, making it a unique waterway with no equivalent in the world. This intensity positions the strait as both the functional hub and the most prominent point of vulnerability in the global energy system. The ongoing geopolitical tensions surrounding it have transformed this structural vulnerability from an extraordinary situation into a chronic and systematic quality. The relationship among the primary actors in this tension—Iran, the United States, and Israel—navigates an unstable equilibrium through armed conflicts, the nuclear dossier, sanctions regimes, regional proxy conflicts, and periodic escalations in rhetoric, a situation that keeps the Strait’s geostrategic significance constantly in the spotlight.
Following the coordinated attacks by the U.S. and Israel on February 28, 2026, Iran’s moves to effectively close the strait and the wave of attacks targeting maritime trade demonstrated that chronic tensions could quickly escalate into a concrete crisis. Following the escalation of attacks, on March 2, 2026, Ibrahim Jabbari, Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, announced that they had closed the Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic and would attack any ships attempting to pass through. With the closure of the Strait, the energy security debate must move beyond the binary of “closed or not closed” and instead analyze how energy trade had already been disrupted on the path to closure and what measurable losses were generated through which channels. For the crisis has generated an actual supply and logistics shock through dynamics such as the narrowing of insurance access, surging freight costs, shipping companies’ decisions to suspend routes, and waiting and congestion at the strait’s entrance. In other words, the way the threat was perceived and priced—rather than the threat itself—has emerged as an independent economic variable; the relationship between security and market operations has become visible through an expectation-based mechanism.
This analysis aims to examine the mechanisms through which security warnings centered on the Strait of Hormuz and the conflict between the U.S., Israel, and Iran have shaped perceptions of risk regarding energy trade, and under what conditions these perceptions materialized and evolved into an actual crisis. Within this framework, the relationship between security and the economy is conceptualized not as a linear causal chain, but as an expectation-based, multi-layered, and perception-sensitive mechanism. Risk pricing is treated as the most concrete expression of this mechanism in energy trade. Accordingly, the analysis will consist of five sections. The first section of the analysis will examine the strategic position of the Strait of Hormuz within the global energy system; the second section will cover the chronology of the war and its critical turning points; and the third section will analyze the mechanisms through which the crisis impacts energy trade, specifically insurance, freight rates, and route changes. The fourth section will address Europe’s exposure to the crisis; the final section will present implications for energy security policies based on the distinction between perceived risk and realized risk.
The Strategic Role of the Strait of Hormuz in the Global Energy System
The structural importance of the Strait of Hormuz within the global energy system is explained not merely by its strategic location, but by the fact that energy flows are concentrated in this passage on a concrete scale. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the daily average oil flow through the strait in 2024 is approximately 20 million barrels, a volume corresponding to roughly 20% of global liquid fuel consumption. Such a concentration transforms the strait from merely a regional transit route into the “bottleneck” of global energy circulation; consequently, security shocks in the region can produce systemic consequences by targeting the deliverability of supply to world markets, independent of production itself.
The critical aspect of this structural position is that it links the energy security debate not only to the “number of barrels” but also to the issue of “how the barrels are transported.” When risks rise in the Strait of Hormuz, the primary impact often stems not from a physical supply shortage in the initial phase, but rather from the disruption of the cost structure of trade—specifically through delays, longer routes, higher insurance costs, and freight charges. A recent study examining the systemic economic impacts of chokepoint disruptions reveals that channels such as delays, rerouting, and insurance costs can drive trade into financial loss even in the absence of an actual disruption (Verschuur, Lumma, and Hall, 2025). This finding provides a theoretical framework explaining why “perceived risk” can rapidly translate into “measurable economic impact” in the context of the Strait of Hormuz. As trade prices in security risks, energy trade becomes more expensive, slows down, and becomes more fragile even before the energy flow is disrupted.
The Strait of Hormuz’s potential to create vulnerability stems not only from the high volume of traffic but also from the limited availability of alternative routes. The EIA emphasizes that while there are pipeline alternatives capable of partially bypassing the strait, these would not be sufficient to fully compensate for the volume passing through the strait, meaning the impact of any disruption would remain structurally significant. Similarly, the IEA’s assessment notes that, relative to the scale of flows through the strait, the capacity to reroute traffic to completely bypass the strait remains limited, and even short-term disruptions would have a significant impact on markets. For this reason, the Strait of Hormuz should not be viewed as a manageable risk area with alternative routes, but rather as a continuously recurring point of vulnerability in the global energy network due to high concentration, despite the existence of alternatives.
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