Escaping the Hormuz Trap |
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Barring regime change in Iran or a durable diplomatic resolution to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the West is now facing its most fundamental challenge to its energy security since the Arab-Israeli wars of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. To escape the Hormuz trap—a crisis in oil, gas, and petrochemicals transit that will slowly degrade the global economy over the months and years to come—the West must revisit a familiar pattern.
For nearly three decades during those wars, Arab states seeking to pressure Israel and its Western backers repeatedly weaponized Middle Eastern oil transit chokepoints by blocking canals and sabotaging pipelines. Each time, Western oil companies, regional states, and European financiers engineered around the disruption by deploying larger tankers and building new pipelines.
Barring regime change in Iran or a durable diplomatic resolution to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the West is now facing its most fundamental challenge to its energy security since the Arab-Israeli wars of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. To escape the Hormuz trap—a crisis in oil, gas, and petrochemicals transit that will slowly degrade the global economy over the months and years to come—the West must revisit a familiar pattern.
For nearly three decades during those wars, Arab states seeking to pressure Israel and its Western backers repeatedly weaponized Middle Eastern oil transit chokepoints by blocking canals and sabotaging pipelines. Each time, Western oil companies, regional states, and European financiers engineered around the disruption by deploying larger tankers and building new pipelines.
The West and its allies can replicate that logic today by building new energy corridors to the Mediterranean to connect European demand to Gulf supply and deny Iran its chokepoint leverage. The first step should be restoring the Iraq-Turkey pipeline system and developing a Trans-Arabian energy route linking Gulf production to the Mediterranean coast.
The West’s strategy to counter oil supply disruption was first established during the 1956 Suez crisis, when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser blocked the Suez Canal—and Syria sabotaged Iraq Petroleum Co. pipelines—in response to a joint military attack by Israel, Britain, and France on Egypt. The United States, along with Western Hemisphere producers, particularly Venezuela, made up the shortfall by redirecting supplies to Europe, while Anglo-American oil companies began commissioning larger tankers, making the longer Cape of Good Hope route commercially viable for the first time.
U.S., British, and regional governments convened........