Strait of Hormuz could be vulnerable to Iran’s reprisals. Here

The United States launched military attacks in three Iranian nuclear facilities on Sunday morning at local time, Trump Action President said aimed at neutralizing a threat “Presented by the world number one sponsor.” It was widely seen as a turning point in the participation of the United States in the ongoing conflicts of the Middle East as the first direct intervention of US forces in the war between Israel and Iran.

The strikes have lit concerns about possible Iranian reprisals and how could such answers take. Among them, Iran will be able to block oil exports through the Hormuz Strait, an important commercial passage that the country controls in part.

What is the hormuz narrow and why is it important?

Located between Oman and Iran, the Hormuz Strait connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabic Sea and at its narrowest point, it has only 21 miles wide. Water, a crucial piece of global commercial infrastructure, facilitates the transit of millions of oil barrels and oil products per day, according to the administration of energy information, or EIA, a branch of the United States Department of Energy.

Iran controls the north side of the Strait, which runs along its border, and Oman and the United Arab Emirates control the southern side.

Because of that, the Strait has become one of the “strangulation points” of the world in the world, American energy officials say. An analysis published last week by the strangulation points defined by EIA as “narrow channels along widely used global marine routes that are criticism for global energy security”, which can increase shipping costs and cause supply delays if the step through them is interrupted.

Iran has long used the threat of closing the Strait as a way to avoid Western pressure.

What products go through the Strait?

In 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, more than a quarter of world maritime oil trade flowed through the hormuz narrow, which equals approximately a fifth of the consumption of oil and oil worldwide, according to EIA.

The agency estimated that approximately 20 million barrels of oil have traveled the Strait daily since at least 2020, with oil follow -up data that indicates that about 40% of barrels last year were exported from Saudi Arabia, most of any country. Together with crude oil and oil products, the Strait also allowed approximately one fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas trade in 2024, which mainly caused Qatar, the EIA said.

Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have pipelines that, to some extent, could serve as alternative commercial routes if the hormuk narrow is committed, but their relative abilities would be limited. The EIA said that the interruptions to oil flow through the Strait would severely affect some markets, such as China, India, Japan and South Korea, which imported the majority of oil and gas that transmitted it in 2024. In the United States, the agency reported that oil imports through the Hormuz narrow liquid.

However, officials warn that any interference with oil flows through the Strait could widely alter international energy markets and economies, by quelling the supply and possibly increasing oil and gas prices.

“A suicide movement”

Talking about what Iran could do next, said the Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio “Face the nation with Margaret Brennan” That an Iranian effort to block the narrow “would be a suicidal movement”, probably promoting a violent reaction of a considerable group of powerful countries that would be affected by that type of decision.

“If they do that, the first people who should be angry about it are the Chinese government, because much of their oil gets there,” said Rubio, when asked about the possibility of Iran’s mining or avoids the movement through the Strait. “Mining” implies placing naval mines, which are explosive, in the water to damage the ships that try to pass.

If that happened, Rubio said that China “would pay a great price”, as “all other countries in the world, including the United States.

“It will have some impact on us. It will have much more impact on the rest of the world,” he said hypothetically, the consequences. “It would be a suicidal movement on his part because, I think, the world would face them if they did.”

The United States, with its fifth fleet parked in Bahrain, has long committed to defend the freedom of navigation in the Strait.

• Iran
• Israel
• Donald Trump
• United States military
• Oil and gas