The war between Israel and the United States against Iran began much like the summer 2025 conflict: a campaign of airstrikes and targeted killings directed at Iran, met by Tehran’s missile response, though this time against a larger set of states. Yet within days, the strategic center of gravity shifted. The decisive arena, as these words are being written, is no longer the air domain, but the narrow waters of the Strait of Hormuz.
This shift has transformed the nature of the conflict. What began as a regional war, albeit one involving a global power alongside a regional ally, has evolved into a global crisis. This transformation has occurred not because additional states formally entered the fighting, but because global maritime energy flows have been disrupted. Roughly one-fifth of global oil and significant volumes of other energy products such as liquefied petroleum gas and liquefied natural gas transit Hormuz. In some weeks, the volume was even higher. UNCTAD data indicates that in the week preceding the war, 38% of global oil trade passed through the Straits.
Today, shipping traffic has collapsed. United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD) data illustrate the speed and scale of disruption. On the last day before the war (February 27), 141 vessels transited the Straits. One week later, on March 6, that number had collapsed to just five vessels. By March 16, according to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), there had been 17 incidents of attacks and (possibly) damage from sea mines. Seven seafarers were killed, and a number are unaccounted for or injured. Moreover, more than 20,000 seafarers were stranded aboard hundreds of vessels awaiting passage, as major carriers suspended operations. The some 90 vessels (including oil tankers) that have crossed the Straits with Iranian approval since the war began, did not prevent global oil prices from surging.
The closure of the Straits was a long-feared scenario. For decades, analysts warned that confrontation with Iran could trigger a chokepoint crisis, transforming a regional Middle Eastern conflict into a global economic shock, most notably in 1973, and to a lesser extent in 2025.
The maritime domain has become the principal mechanism through which the war has been globalized. Commercial shipping does not require a formal blockade to cease functioning. It is sufficient that insurers withdraw coverage, that shipowners judge transit too dangerous, and that crews refuse to sail.
This transformation has a potential to create strain within the U.S.-Israel alignment. Washington’s primary concern is now the reopening of the strait and the stabilization of global flows. Israel remains focused on degrading Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, while hoping to create the conditions for regime change. These are not mutually exclusive objectives, but they are not identical. As the conflict globalizes, the divergence between American systemic priorities and Israeli regional priorities becomes more pronounced, potentially complicating alliance coordination.
At the operational level, the conflict reflects a broader transformation in maritime warfare that has been unfolding for a number of decades now. The battlespace is no longer defined by fleets maneuvering for sea control. Rather, it is shaped by the integration of land-based strike systems into the maritime domain. Iran has deployed naval mines, unmanned aerial systems, anti-ship missiles, mini submarines, and fast attack craft to create a dense, layered threat environment across a confined space. The objective is not to command the sea, but to deny it: to render its use prohibitively dangerous.
This form of denial has evolved. Beyond mines and small boats, used during the Tanker War in the 1980s and again playing a crucial role today, Iran also employs precision-guided munitions, persistent surveillance, and low-cost unmanned systems, enabling sustained pressure on maritime traffic. A substantial deployment of U.S. naval assets could likely reopen the Straits, but doing so would entail a deterrence–escalation dilemma: restoring freedom of navigation would require introducing additional forces into the theater while accepting a heightened risk of further direct engagement and, no less importantly, potential losses.
Iran acted more cautiously in the late 1980s, because it was engaged then in a large-scale war with Iraq. Now it appears that Tehran is willing to take greater risks. This shift may reflect a perception that regime survival is at stake. It also reflects a broader strategic pattern: in asymmetric maritime conflicts, weaker actors positioned near chokepoints can impose disproportionate costs on materially superior adversaries and targets. Iran, the Houthis, and even Somali pirates have all exploited this logic in different contexts.
The implications extend beyond the Gulf. The maritime domain enables horizontal escalation. U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian vessels outside the immediate theater (in the Caspian Sea and near Sri Lanka) demonstrate that the battlespace is no longer geographically bounded.
This feature means that more actors may get involved. President Trump called on other nations to assist in opening the straits. Similarly, Iran’s targeting on March 19 of a refinery at the port of Yanbu, on the Red Sea, may compel China to weigh more seriously its position in the conflict. The port serves as the exit point of the only major pipeline that bypasses the Gulf by linking Saudi oil infrastructure directly to the Red Sea. It is also the site of a Chinese-majority-controlled joint venture with Saudi Aramco, the Yanbu Aramco Sinopec Refining Company (YASREF), which was not attacked. The project represents an investment of approximately USD 8.6 billion. Another actor is India. It depends on energy from the region, and indeed some India-bound tankers were allowed to pass. It is also concerned because some 10 million of its nationals work in the Gulf. India had further quietly signaled its displeasure with the sinking of the Iranian Navy ship Dena near Sri Lanka on March 4, following its participation in an Indian-hosted exercise.
At a deeper level, the conflict exposes a growing tension regarding the U.S. role in the international system. For decades, the United States – inheriting what was once the British Empire’s role – has positioned itself as the guarantor of freedom of navigation. a central pillar of the rules-based international order. In the current crisis, it continues to frame, to a degree, its actions in these terms. Yet the broader war within which these operations are embedded needs a clearer foundation in international law.
The result is a duality: the United States acts simultaneously as defender of the global maritime commons and as a belligerent in a contested war. This tension may have long-term consequences. It could erode the legitimacy of freedom of navigation operations and weaken the willingness of other states to accept U.S. leadership at sea. More broadly, it highlights that the erosion of the international order is uneven. Some norms may persist even as others degrade.
Recent conflicts help place the current crisis in context. In the Black Sea, the Russia-Ukraine war disrupted grain exports, contributing to global food insecurity. The Black Sea Grain Initiative demonstrated that maritime access can be partially restored through negotiated arrangements, even during active conflict. However, its eventual collapse underscores the fragility of such solutions.
In the Red Sea, Houthi attacks that started in late 2023 forced major shipping companies to reroute vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, increasing costs and transit times. Both cases illustrate, as noted, how relatively weak actors can leverage maritime geography to generate global effects. The Hormuz crisis builds on this pattern but exceeds it in scale.
The risks are substantial. In the short term, continued attacks or expanded mining operations could sustain or deepen the effective closure of Hormuz. American efforts to reopen the straits could lead to significant escalation, including a limited use of U.S. ground forces. In the medium term, disruption could spread to other chokepoints, including the Bab el-Mandeb. In the longer term, the normalization of chokepoint disruption as a strategic tool could make such crises more frequent and more difficult to manage.
The longer-term implications are conceptual as well as strategic. The conflict challenges traditional assumptions about maritime power. It suggests a shift from a paradigm centered on control to one centered on disruption. The ability to impose risk, to make maritime flows uncertain and unreliable, may, in some contexts, outweigh the ability to secure them.
The war in the Gulf thus reveals a broader transformation. It shows how regional conflicts become global through the maritime domain, how technological change is reshaping naval warfare, and how the foundations of maritime order are being tested. It also exposes a growing tension between power and legitimacy in the governance of the seas.
