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Each day Oregon drivers perform the utilitarian ritual of pulling up to the gas pump to refill their nearly empty tanks. Focused on the digital ticker, they watch as the dollar amount soars.
Few of my fellow Oregonians, I suspect, are aware that the fuel that we depend on for our daily commutes has traveled through vital transport arteries and ancient trade routes that have shaped civilizations for millennia.
The Strait of Hormuz is one such ancient route. This strategic waterway, long before it became the jugular vein of the modern global economy, was the sacred and strategic maritime gateway to the Persian empire.
Most Americans know the strait only in terms of higher gas prices brought on by the unprovoked U.S.-Israel war on Iran. For Iranians, this ancient body of water has been a geographic constant in their history, deeply woven into the geopolitical identity of the nation. Over millennia, the strait has also served as a central artery for Persian economic power.
Iran’s geopolitical identity is fused with this narrow stretch of water. It is a physical manifestation of sovereignty, ensuring that the “Passage of the Palm Groves” and its divine namesake “Ahura Mazda” remains a focal point of global history.
Linguists and historians trace the etymology of “Hormuz” to “Ohrmazd,” the Middle Persian derivation of “Ahura Mazda” (the supreme deity of Zoroastrianism). In the ancient dialect of southern Iran, the name is believed to have evolved from “Hur-Mogh.” In the local tongue of Hormozgan, Hur means waterway and Mogh refers to palm trees. For people who lived there for millennia, the strait was not a military chokepoint, it was simply, “The Passage of the Palm Groves.”
Yet today, this waterway whose foundational ethos is “humata, hukhta, and huvarshta” (good thoughts, good words and good deeds), is now the epicenter of severe international geopolitical friction and trade instability.
The Achaemenid Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC, was the first imperial power to recognize the strait as a strategic artery to be owned. Its name is tied to the Sassanian dynasty (224-651 CE), the last great pre-Islamic Persian empire and initiator of Zoroastrianism as a state religion.
During the Sassanian era, its Zoroastrian rulers expanded outward from the Iranian plateau to dominate both the northern and southern shores of the strait.
By commanding the entrance to the Persian Gulf by constructing forts and coastal infrastructure, these ancient kings secured their control over the lucrative maritime trade routes, linking Mesopotamia, the Indian subcontinent and the broader world.
Control over the Strait of Hormuz – the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean – has long been a linchpin of imperial power in West Asia. Its control has shifted across empires, passing from Sassanian Persian rulers and the Abbasid Caliphate to the formidable Kingdom of Hormuz, and eventually into the hands of expanding European colonial powers.
When the Safavid Empire (1501-1736) recaptured the region from the Portuguese in the 17th century, the strait was reestablished as an Iranian geopolitical asset. In the modern era, the reality of the waterway has been magnified on a global scale due to the discovery of petroleum in Iran in 1908.
The impact of the Strait of Hormuz extends far beyond the physical movement of petroleum, liquified natural gas and global commerce. Historically, this narrow sea passage became a natural crossroads connecting civilizations, diffusing and blending Persian, Arab and Indian art, philosophy and belief systems. Also, the prosperity generated by taxing trade through the chokepoint allowed for port cities like old Hormuz to build grand mosques and complex architecture.
In the modern era, particularly following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iran’s political geography has become inextricably tied to the strait’s unique topographical realities. Its main navigational corridors are incredibly constrained, forcing commercial and military vessels to travel through the territorial waters of Iran and Oman.
The once-open international thoroughfare is now at the center of conflict because of the Feb. 28 American and Israeli assault on the Islamic Republic of Iran. For Tehran, control of the natural chokepoint serves as an asymmetric strategy to counterbalance foreign military power. Iran has successfully relied on its geographical proximity, utilizing coastal missiles, fast-attack boats and strategic islands to assert control over the strait.
Today, the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly a fifth of the world’s daily energy sources flow, remains the ultimate trump card in Iranian political geography. The narrow passage, which links regional production to global consumption, grants Iran undeniable economic and strategic leverage.
From the divine association of Zoroastrian antiquity to the modern age of energy diplomacy, the Strait of Hormuz remains a defining feature of Iranian political geography and the gate through which Iran intersects with the wider world.
