A Permanent Veto: Iran and the Strait of Hormuz

A maritime chokepoint is governed not simply by whether ships can physically pass through it, but by whether commercial operators are willing to send them through it. A tanker owner does not ask whether a vessel can technically survive a passage. The owner asks whether the cargo can be insured, whether the crew will accept the risk, whether the vessel can obtain financing, whether the voyage remains commercially rational, and whether the ship will become a target.

That distinction is decisive.

Iran can therefore exercise what might be called a commercial veto. It need not sink hundreds of ships. A relatively small number of attacks, missile or drone threats, mines, seizures, harassment incidents, or credible warnings can radically alter the risk calculation. The March 2026 experience demonstrated precisely this phenomenon: the Strait was not necessarily physically impassable, but threats of Iranian attack and the withdrawal or cancellation of insurance coverage caused most tankers to avoid it.

This creates an extraordinary asymmetry. Iran does not have to defeat the combined naval forces of the United States and its allies. It merely has to make the marginal risk of transit unacceptable to commercial actors. The military power required to impose that kind of disruption is vastly smaller than the military power required to maintain uncontested command of the sea.

The geography makes the asymmetry particularly durable. Iran’s long coastline along the Strait and the Persian Gulf places potential targets within comparatively short range of land-based missiles, drones, aircraft, and other asymmetric capabilities. The Gulf states, by contrast, are defending territory and shipping lanes from the other side of the chokepoint. Their enormous economic wealth does not translate automatically into the ability to neutralize Iran’s geographic advantage.

This is particularly important when considering Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a wealthy and increasingly sophisticated military power, but wealth and advanced weapons systems do not erase geography. Nor does the collective military expenditure of the Gulf monarchies necessarily translate into an ability to impose uncontested control over the Strait. Iran’s advantage is not that it is necessarily stronger than every Gulf state in every dimension. Its advantage is that the Gulf states are the parties that need uninterrupted access through the chokepoint, while Iran is the party capable of threatening that access from the landward side.

The asymmetry extends beyond the Gulf states themselves. The United States can, under the right circumstances, protect shipping and impose enormous costs on Iran. But that does not eliminate the underlying strategic problem. If keeping Hormuz open requires a continuing and potentially escalating military commitment, then Iran has succeeded in converting geography into a source of strategic leverage even when it cannot achieve permanent naval supremacy.

This is why the distinction between military control and strategic control matters so much.

The United States may be able to fight its way through Hormuz. Iran may not be able to prevent every determined military vessel from doing so. But that is not the same thing as restoring normal commercial traffic. A warship willing to accept extraordinary risk is one thing; hundreds of privately owned tankers carrying cargoes worth billions of dollars are another.

The same principle explains why the Strait can remain effectively under Iranian influence even during periods when traffic resumes. Iran does not need to demonstrate its maximum capability continuously. The existence of a credible capability can be enough. Once shipowners and insurers know that Tehran can impose substantial losses at relatively low cost, Iran possesses a latent veto that can be activated whenever its strategic interests require it.

And that veto will not disappear merely because a particular crisis ends.

The Gulf states therefore face a structural problem rather than simply a military one. They can buy more aircraft, missiles, ships, and air-defense systems. They can strengthen alliances with the United States and other outside powers. They can improve surveillance and maritime security. All of these measures can reduce the probability and consequences of an Iranian disruption. None of them changes the basic geography.

There is only one durable way to eliminate the problem: make Hormuz less indispensable.

The objective should therefore not be to achieve permanent military domination of the Strait. It should be to make the Strait progressively less important to the world economy by constructing alternative infrastructure capable of moving energy from the Persian Gulf to the outside world without passing through Hormuz.

Some of that infrastructure already exists. Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline connects its eastern oil fields to Yanbu on the Red Sea and has a nominal capacity of roughly 5 million barrels per day, temporarily expandable to 7 million. The UAE has a pipeline connecting its oil fields to the export terminal at Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman. Together, however, the available bypass capacity remains far below the approximately 21 million barrels per day that normally transit Hormuz.

That gap should be regarded as a strategic vulnerability—and an infrastructure investment opportunity.

The long-term objective should be a sufficiently large network of pipelines, storage facilities, export terminals, and alternative maritime routes that the temporary or even prolonged closure of Hormuz becomes an economic shock rather than a global energy catastrophe. The world does not need to make Iran incapable of disrupting Hormuz. It needs to make the disruption manageable.

That is the fundamental strategic answer to Iran’s geographical advantage.

Iran will always possess the ability to threaten the Strait because Iran will always be there. Geography cannot be sanctioned, bombed away, or negotiated out of existence. But dependence on that geography can be reduced.

The ultimate liberation of the global economy from Iran’s leverage over Hormuz therefore does not lie in permanently stationing more warships in the Strait. It lies in building enough alternative infrastructure that, when Tehran threatens to close the gate, the rest of the world can simply say:

There are other roads out.

Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security News Wire