I’m looking at the map about the strait of hormuz, I’ve looked up what made it so important and I still don’t get it. I thought that the reason there is so much conflict over it, was that I assumed it looked like it was a very integral passageway for ships to get in and out of. But looking at the map again, it only goes straight to into Kuwait.
What am I missing here? Couldn’t the ships just, not bother with that part and route through elsewhere?
The Encyclopedia Britannica has a great article covering this exact question:
https://www.britannica.com/place/Strait-of-Hormuz
Long story short, the strait is not just the only access point to Kuwait, but also a chokepoint to almost all of Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and so on.
There is of course the Red Sea, that too allows sea access to some of the countries mentioned above, but that features its own chokepoint strait, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. That strait is already a conflict zone because of the Houthi conflict. It’s also closer to Israel, and it’s partly under Iran’s control too.
And there’s too little infrastructure on that side to divert enough oil from the countries in question compared to the Hormuz side.
Looking for the alternate name for the Bab el-Mandeb Strait (the Gate of Grief), sent me looking for other strategic “choke” points.
Aljazeera came through with the first one that was descriptive and visually informative, though they skipped the Strait of Magellan, probably because it’s not a shipping lane for oil. Published this year.