Chokepoints for Ocean Trade: Strait of Hormuz, and What Else?

For those who can be fuzzy on global geography, like me, it’s perhaps useful to say that the Persian Gulf is a body of water bordered by eight countries: Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Oman. These countries include some of the world’s most prominent oil exporters, who have shipping ports for their oil on the Persian Gulf. However, oil tankers leaving the Persian Gulf (and headed for the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and destinations around the world) need to travel through the Strait of Hormuz, a channel that is about 100 miles long, but with shipping lanes for big oil tankers that at the narrowest point are only about two miles wide in each direction. The chokepoint is bordered by Iran to north and UAE and Oman to the south. Chokepoints can cause problems, and not just because of armed conflict. Some readers may remember that five years ago in 2021, a container ship called Ever Given ran aground and shut down traffic through the…