Hormuz crisis underlines vulnerability of global trade chokepoints

War in Iran disrupting established trade flows raises an important question: how serious could the consequences be, and for whom will they be most severe?To answer this, it is useful to look at history. During the fifth and fourth centuries BC, Athens, a major centre, depended heavily on grain imports. Whenever routes were blocked during wars, Athens almost immediately faced the threat of a food crisis. In the Middle Ages, Venice became one of Europe’s richest cities and a crucial hub linking European and eastern trade. When wars disrupted routes, the effects were felt almost instantly in the Venetian economy.For centuries, trade between China and Europe moved along the Silk Road. As trade networks expanded, disruptions to key routes began to have far wider consequences. In response to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Arab oil-producing countries imposed an embargo on the United States and several Western economies. Oil supplies fell sharply, prices surged, global inflation accelerated and many major economies slipped into recession.A similar pattern appeared in 1956 when Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal, disrupting European trade with Asia. The canal’s closure again from 1967 to 1975 forced global shipping to reorganise routes. In 2021, the container ship Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal for six days, leaving hundreds of vessels waiting and delaying supply chains around the world. During the 1980s Iran-iraq-war" class="entity-link entity-event" data-entity-id="46051" data-entity-type="event">Iran-Iraq war, attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf led to the deployment of international naval escorts.These examples tell us that whenever a narrow trade corridor carries strategically important goods, blocking that corridor tends to produce consequences far beyond the immediate region. From the Bosphorus Strait to the Strait of Malacca, world trade has long depended on vulnerable chokepoints.04:04How US-Israeli strikes on Iran are sending shock waves through global energy marketsHow US-Israeli strikes on Iran are sending shock waves through global energy marketsWhy, then, does the current situation around the Strait of Hormuz appear potentially even more serious? The modern global economy is far more complex than in the past. Supply chains are deeply interconnected, economic shocks spread faster, and major transport routes now carry a wide range of goods, many of them critical to modern production and energy systems.