Maritime corridors are a fundamental pillar of the world’s economic and strategic security, and through them flow the energy, international trade, and supply chains on which the global economy depends.
But as crucial as they are as transit routes, these corridors can become geopolitical chokepoints giving actors able to control them a form of leverage that can sometimes trump conventional military leverage.
It is not necessary to control a strait completely in order to influence global trade. It is sufficient to increase the risks of transiting it, thereby driving up shipping and insurance costs and leading shippers to reroute their vessels. This helps to explain why maritime chokeholds have become a crucial component of deterrence strategies and crisis management.
The impact of these geographical considerations has been on full display in the war the US and Israel launched against Iran this year. As tit-for-tat military strikes and reciprocal pressures have intensified, military operations ceased to be the sole determinant of the trajectory of the conflict.
Instead, the maritime corridors emerged as a principal arena for escalation management through threats or actions that could disrupt trade, cause panic in the energy markets, and drive up the cost of prolonging hostilities.
The Strait of Hormuz was the first locus of this transformation. Linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, this serves as the principal gateway for oil and gas exports from the Gulf region.
With roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies and liquified natural gas (LNG) trade passing through it, the Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most sensitive maritime chokepoints. Iran’s position directly overlooking the strait offers it a powerful source of asymmetric leverage with which to offset the conventional military balance that favours the US and Israel.
This played out during the recent escalation, when Iran shifted tactics from merely threatening to disrupt shipping in the Gulf to explicitly presenting the closure of Hormuz as one of its strategic options and the reopening of the strait as contingent on the course of the war and US conduct.
Although Washington denied that a closure had occurred, the very fact that this option had become one of its escalatory tools heightened uncertainty over maritime security, leading to a reduction in traffic transiting through the strait.
As the military pressure on Iran continued to mount, observers feared that the escalation would spill over beyond the Gulf to other strategic chokepoints, such as the Bab Al-Mandeb, the southern gateway linking the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean.
This vital waterway is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Disrupting navigation there would send shockwaves through global trade, energy flows, and supply chains.
The Bab Al-Mandeb has resurfaced as a potential second maritime pressure point in the light of Western reports suggesting that Iran might tap it as another source of asymmetric pressure should the US launch an extensive assault against Iranian infrastructure or attempt to seize Iranian territory.
According to these reports, military preparations being undertaken by the Houthis in Yemen have lent weight to conjectures that Iran might call on its Yemeni ally to activate the Bab Al-Mandeb option. However, the information in these reports remains speculative, suggesting an increase in the likelihood of this option as opposed to a definitive plan.
Opening a front in the Bab Al-Mandeb would not require a direct Iranian presence, since Tehran could expand its maritime pressure indirectly through its ties with the Houthis. However, the Houthis have their own agency. Any decision to escalate would remain contingent on their calculations of the costs and timing of such a move, which would factor in potential international reactions, domestic considerations related to the Yemeni conflict, and the Houthis’ relationships with other local actors.
The Houthis do not automatically follow Iranian directions, and their decisions are shaped by how they calibrate their political and security interests.
The reality of Houthi agency throws into relief the difference in Iran’s leverage at the two strategic chokepoints. In Hormuz, Iran’s power rests on its geographical position directly overlooking the strait and its ability to affect shipping from its own shores.
In Bab Al-Mandeb, its influence depends heavily on its network of regional allies. The strategic significance of Hormuz thus resides in its geographic immediacy, making it a lever that can be pressed instantly, whereas the value of Bab Al-Mandeb resides in its potential as an avenue for expanding indirect pressure.
This in turn reflects the flexibility of the Iranian toolkit for managing escalatory dynamics within a complex regional environment.
The US and its partners have not confined themselves to reacting to Iranian pressure and instead have proactively sought to undermine Iran’s sources of leverage. Towards this end, they have strengthened their naval presence, intensified surveillance operations, and targeted Iranian assets that could be used against commercial or military vessels.
This reflects the extent to which maritime security has become a principal arena of strategic competition in the war.
Potential scenarios: There are several potential scenarios in which Bab Al-Mandeb would become incorporated into asymmetric escalation.
The first is to adhere to the strategy of deterrence through threats, overtly signalling the ability to target ships or disrupt navigation, but without following through with a military operation. The objective would be to deter the US from escalating its aggression against Iran, while avoiding the consequences of acting on the threat.
The second scenario is to selectively target vessels associated with the US, Israel, and their allies. This would resemble the actions the Houthis took in the Red Sea in response to the genocide Israel has been perpetrating in Gaza. While this option represents a high degree of escalation, it is far from representing full closure. It allows for some sustained pressure on maritime traffic while minimising the chances of broadening the scope of the war.
The third scenario entails the widespread disruption of navigation. Should Houthi attacks against shipping become more frequent and less specifically targeted, shipping companies would regard Bab Al-Mandeb as too hazardous and reroute their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding considerable distance, time, and shipping costs.
While global trade would not grind to a halt, this scenario would increase and spread the economic pain through delays and price hikes.
The most dangerous scenario would see the simultaneous disruption of both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab Al-Mandeb. This would elevate the conflict beyond its regional scope to an international crisis affecting the structure of global trade, supply chains, and energy markets.
The US and its partners would be confronted with a dual challenge: protecting oil and LNG flows from the Gulf and preventing the Red Sea region from becoming a second maritime front, tasks that would necessitate a much greater naval presence and more extensive operations to safeguard shipping.
Rather than amounting to a total blockade, the latter scenario would become a prolonged war of attrition. The shipping lanes would remain open in theory, but transiting them would become progressively more dangerous, more costly, and less economically viable.
As the situation stands, the most likely scenario is for the current pattern of incrementally ratcheting up the pressure through threats, limited attacks, and elevating security risks to continue. Passage through these waterways would remain technically possible but become increasingly costly and less secure.
The US war on Iran illustrates an important facet of the changing nature of modern warfare: maritime geography is no longer an area through which military forces pass but has become an active component of coercive power.
From the Strait of Hormuz to Bab Al-Mandeb, strategic chokepoints have become tools for shaping escalation by influencing the costs of trade, energy flows, supply chains, and the calculus of prolonging a conflict. The main challenge is not necessarily to control these waterways outright, but rather to manage the risks associated with them.
The writer is a researcher at the Egyptian Centre for Strategic Studies (ECSS).
* A version of this article appears in print in the 23 July, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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