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I'd like to remind people of the historical fact of how the Strait of Hormuz became a tool of extortion.
It didn't happen overnight. The seeds were planted during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, when both sides turned tankers into targets in the so-called "Tanker War." Iran laid naval mines, used speedboats and missiles to harass shipping, and effectively weaponized the narrow chokepoint. The U.S. and others stepped in with escorts because the world couldn't afford a full closure. Decades of sanctions, appeasement, arms flows, and looking the other way allowed Iran to refine that playbook — turning a vital global artery into leverage for geopolitical blackmail.
There's plenty of finger-pointing to go around on who enabled it. Fair questions, but they don't unblock the strait today.
The immediate problems are three:
1. Who safeguards the passage right now so oil (~20% of global supply, ~25% of seaborne oil trade) keeps flowing freely.
2. How do we prevent future extortion — because if a narrow waterway can be weaponized this easily, long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons are in the exact same category: tools of evil thugs for leverage.
3. Who bears the ongoing cost of real security.
The world should be appreciative that those tools of evil thugs have been removed or neutered. That was the hard, necessary part.
Now that it's done, securing the strait isn't about settling historical scores. It's practical reality: the countries that depend on it most — especially China (by far the largest importer), India, Japan, South Korea, Europe, and the Gulf exporters themselves — have the greatest incentive, the revenues at stake, and the direct skin in the game. A coalition of the major beneficiaries is the logical, sustainable path. Everyone wins when this chokepoint stays open and neutral; repeated weaponization hurts the entire global economy.
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