Picture this: somewhere in the Persian Gulf, a tanker the length of four football fields is sitting dead in the water. Its crew hasn’t moved in weeks. It’s carrying enough crude oil to fill two million car tanks. And it’s not going anywhere — not because of a storm, not because the engine broke down — but because of a strip of sea so narrow that in some places, you could theoretically see both shorelines. That strip of sea is the Strait of Hormuz. And right now, it is the most consequential piece of geography on the planet. A strait is simply a narrow channel of water connecting two larger bodies. The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf — home to the world’s most oil-rich nations — to the Gulf of Oman and, from there, to global markets. At its narrowest, it is about 33 kilometres wide. Shipping lanes run through just a fraction of that: two corridors, each roughly 3 kilometres across, one for incoming vessels and one for outgoing. Through those two lanes, before this war began, passed roughly 20% of the world’s oil and 20% of its liquefied natural gas every single year — about 3,000