How long can Iran weaponise Hormuz?

photograph: ap

From The Economist by 

 

Longer than the world hopes, according to our Hormuz dependency dashboard 

For years the world has feared that Iran has been pursuing nuclear arms.

Five months of war have taught the country’s rulers they were already in possession of a formidable weapon.

Geography and firepower give them de facto command of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquid natural gas (lng) normally flows.

Choking that artery has given Iran’s leaders immense leverage over their adversaries.

Iran’s foes hope that Hormuz will prove to be a wasting asset.

Shutting Hormuz is “a card you can play once,” said Chris Wright, America’s energy secretary, in May.

 Gulf states are busily seeking alternative export routes.

Tom Barrack, Donald Trump’s envoy to Iraq and Syria, reckons the strait will be “an afterthought in two years”.

The Economist has interviewed experts and analysed data to build a “Hormuz dependency dashboard” to test these claims.

It points to three conclusions.

First, the staying power of the Iranian threat varies by commodity and country.

Second, Iran’s ability to cash in on the strait will diminish but may never vanish.

Third, even if the fees Iran can charge diminish over time, its strategic leverage will not necessarily fade in step.

Indeed, it may even deepen as the regime institutionalises its regional influence.

Start with how much Hormuz traffic could simply circumvent it.

Some 16m barrels of crude oil crossed the strait daily before the war.

That looks easiest to divert. Saudi Arabia’s east-west pipeline, which avoids the strait by crossing the peninsula to Yanbu on the Red Sea carried just 1m barrels a day (b/d) for export before the war.

Today it is running at its full 7m b/d capacity.

Nearly 5m b/d of that is exported; the rest feeds coastal refineries.

The United Arab Emirates (uae) has maxed out its Habshan-Fujairah pipeline, which carries 1.8m b/d, up from 1m b/d before the war.

Some 200,000 b/d flows through a smaller, once-idle Iraqi pipeline to Turkey.

 

chart: the economist

That narrows the crude-export deficit to 10m b/d. Now add new pipelines likely to be built as a result of the war.

Land acquisition poses no problems in the Gulf’s command-and-control economies, says a lawyer familiar with the subject.

The most advanced, in the uae, would run parallel to the existing line, adding 1.8m b/d by late 2027.

Iraq aims to raise the capacity of its pipeline to 1m b/d within a year.

It also plans a new one to connect its southern fields to existing routes to Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

Contracts for the 2.5m b/d project are being awarded and it should be done within four years, says Rahul Choudhary of Rystad Energy, a consultancy.

So by 2030 another 5m b/d of crude could bypass Hormuz.

But that still leaves the same amount with no alternative route.

And none of these fixes is foolproof.

Iraqi projects could be derailed by security risks and cross-border rows. Many dreamed-up pipelines never see the light of day.

Tankers leaving Yanbu for Asia usually sail via the Bab al-Mandab strait, where they are vulnerable to attacks by Iran-allied Houthi rebels.

Saudi crude could travel via the Suez canal or Egypt’s Sumed pipeline.

But even that route may not be safe: on July 29th a drone hit a tanker at Damietta, a port near Suez.

 

map: the economist

Iran—or its proxies—could attack any new infrastructure that it fears depletes Hormuz’s power. Barbara Leaf, who worked on Middle East policy in the Biden administration, reckons Iran would be less likely to hit such sites if the conflict ends in a negotiated settlement.

But the lingering risk of attacks could still push up insurance and financing costs for such projects.

Rerouting refined products is even harder.

Gulf countries shipped nearly 5m b/d of petrol, diesel and other fuels via Hormuz last year.

No overland pipeline alternatives exist for these.

Saudi Arabia has plans for one as part of a 2m-b/d expansion to its East-West corridor.

But that is still at an early stage and would need a similar increase in Yanbu’s capacity.

Iraq is sending 1,000 lorries of fuel oil to Syria a day, up from ten pre-war.

But that is slow and pricey.

Syria has earned $15m-20m in transit receipts from the traffic alone since the conflict began.

New refineries outside the Gulf would take even longer to build than pipelines and cost billions of dollars. 

 

chart: the economist

The problem is most acute for lng, exported almost exclusively by Qatar. No lng pipeline is under construction and no feasibility studies have been published. Qatar could in theory lay simpler gas pipes to Oman, but they would need to carry as much gas as Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines once delivered to Europe. More implausible still, Qatar’s entire liquefaction complex would need recreating on the Arabian Sea coast.

There is some room for hope. Most importers can, in time, wean themselves off Hormuz supplies. A few years of high prices could elicit an extra 2-3m b/d from the Americas and beyond. China’s refineries still hold ample spare capacity. lng is riding the fastest expansion in its history. So Iran’s leverage over global prices will weaken before the decade is out.

The same is not true of its hold over its Gulf neighbours—and not just because a sizeable share of their energy exports will still need Hormuz for years. Many also depend on the strait for imports. The Gulf Arab states rely on external suppliers for 95% of their grain but only Saudi Arabia has decent bulk-handling terminals, and these are not big enough to supply the whole region. Nor is moving lots of grain, iron ore or bauxite overland viable: a single Panamax vessel carries 60,000 tonnes of cereal, enough to fill 2,000 trucks.

 

chart: the economist

One obvious fix would be more regional railways but these would also be slow and costly to build.

Past mining-railway projects in Australia, built across similar desert terrain, have cost $12m-15m a kilometre. So a Red Sea-to-Qatar line could run to $25bn or more.

They have strategic grain stockpiles that typically cover four to six months of demand.

But there is no equivalent for containerised goods such as fresh food, medicines and appliances.

The region’s biggest container port, Jebel Ali, which has a capacity for nearly 20m 20-foot equivalent units (teu) a year, sits inside the Gulf.

Outside the strait, the largest is Jeddah which can hold 7.5m teu.

It was already running near full tilt before the war, says Alexis Ellender of Kpler, a data firm.

So our analysis suggests that Iran will be able to weaponise Hormuz for some time—and monetise it. Gulf states’ varying exposure may mean they diverge in what they will tolerate to get their ships moving.

Qatar has suggested that it could accept temporary fees; others have held a tougher line.

But now even the hawkish uae has softened: it is starting to trade with Iran again and their diplomats are talking.

Assuming it retains control of Hormuz, how much can Iran hope to make from it?

An Iranian mp claimed in June that the country was collecting $1.5m-2m per vessel transiting the strait.

That implies takings of more than $35bn a year, assuming traffic at about 70% of pre-war levels.
You cannot be serious

That figure is eye-popping—and implausible.

Rates set at gunpoint, in a market with nowhere else to go, will not survive a settlement allowing near-normal flows to resume.

Draft legislation submitted to Iran’s parliament in June envisages rates based on cargo volume, value and vessel type, with one constraint: the charge must stay below the cost of the next-best alternative.

Prices could also vary depending on the nationality of the owner or charterer.

Shahin Iraninejad of gssi, a sovereign-risk advisory, points out that another legislative proposal posits an average fee of €3 a tonne in Iranian waters and €2 in international waters.

He puts expected future income at a more modest $2-3bn a year.

As bypass capacity grows, that would drop—but not uniformly.

Crude tankers can hope for a bargain soon; oil-product, lng and bulk carriers may face higher fees for years.

Whether such revenue flows prove durable depends on shipping firms’ ability and willingness to pay.

As long as charges are predictable, easy to settle and below war-risk premiums, many probably will, says Richard Meade of Lloyd’s List, a shipping journal.

But that would change if vessels repeatedly manage to traverse the strait without paying Iran.

A tension emerges: Iran needs peace with America for its fee regime to function.

But it will need to keep up attacks on disobedient tankers to ensure the fees are paid—which could make peace hard to maintain.

On the brighter side, Iran might drop its fees faster than it needs to. Its strategic objective, says Mr Meade, appears to be maintaining market participation and reinforcing its role as gatekeeper, rather than maximising revenue.

More gloomily, it wants something more lasting: a governance system—whether a bilateral framework with Oman, a maritime-services architecture or a permit regime.

The ease with which Iran seized its new weapon shocked its foes. Its grip on Hormuz looks set to outlast the war.

 

Links : 

• The Economist :  Can Iran keep weaponising Hormuz? / Gulf states should make a deal with Iran on Hormuz 

Divers recover a bottle of Guinness from a 162-year-old shipwreck

The site of the shipwreck of the Mindoro, which sunk in 1864. (Stefan Panis)

From WashingtonPost by Miriam Waldvogel

The team discovered the bottle with a seal that says “Guinness Extra Stout, London” while exploring a shipwreck in the English Channel

The dark glass bottle was one of dozens strewn around the sunken ship when the divers spotted it. Unlike many others, though, its seal was intact, and up on the surface, they could make out the words: “Guinness Extra Stout, London.”

The antique ale is thought to be 162 years old.

The team discovered the bottle while diving a shipwreck in the English Channel last year but waited to publicize the find more extensively while they conducted research, including contacting the company itself. They hope, with the help of a lab at KU Leuven, a university in Belgium, there’s a chance the historical draft could even be re-created.
“It is quite rare to find something with a seal on it,” said Stefan Panis, one of the divers. “We are very, very excited to see what the test will reveal.”

 

A bottle has a seal that reads "Guinness Extra Stout London." (Stefan Panis)

 

A bell found at the site indicates that the wreck is a ship called the Mindoro, which set sail for Vancouver from London on Nov. 20, 1864. A week later, navigating through a treacherous part of the English Channel, it collided with another ship and sank to the bottom of the ocean, where its contents sat in cold and dark conditions — ideal for preserving a bottle of beer, like the back of a fridge.

If the bottle managed to keep out the seawater, there is a chance the Guinness might still be sippable — the alcohol would have prevented things from growing inside, said Kevin Verstrepen, who runs a lab at KU Leuven that studies yeast and fermentation.
But the Guinness brewed at the time might not have been quite as palatable as modern brews.
“In the old days, brewers were not as good working sterilely. Probably, from a microbial point of view, it was a bit of a zoo there,” Verstrepen said, which means the beer could have sour or funky flavors.
Additionally, Guinness made in that period would not have been carbonated by nitrogen, which was introduced in the 1960s and gives the beer its smooth texture and creamy head.

The company has been based in Dublin since 1759. But there is also evidence that at least some Guinness was bottled in London in the mid-19th century.

Diageo, the British alcohol conglomerate that now owns Guinness, did not respond to a request for comment. The company previously told the Irish Times that it was evaluating the find.
There is probably more Guinness to be discovered in the wreck. While the one recovered bottle was found out in the open, the divers also found wooden crates packed with bottles and stored upside-down. They also plan to examine records that they think will contain the ship’s manifest.

The divers plan to go back in two weeks to recover four additional bottles, two for the Verstrepen lab and two for the company, Panis said.
It’s unlikely that the lab will be able directly recover original yeast, Verstrepen said, because beer yeast does not have a long lifespan after bottling. However, he thinks they can find traces of yeast DNA in the hopes of finding a close living relative to re-create the brew.

“With sequencing the DNA … we can see exactly where it is on this family tree, and then we can look for modern living siblings of that yeast,” he said.
As rare as the find is, one of Panis’s partners, Pawel Truszynski, had experience in unearthing antique alcohol before. Truszynski was part of another team that in 2024 discovered a 19th-century shipwreck in the Baltic Sea laden with 100 sealed bottles of champagne.
In 2014, a different group of researchers recovered a 200-year-old bottle of distilled spirit from a shipwreck off the coast of Poland.
And a small brewery in Sunderland, England, at one point sold a porter made with yeast cultured from old bottles found in a different shipwreck in the English Channel, that one from 1825.

Surfin penguin

This is the moment a Cape penguin jumped onto a surfboard and rode the waves pic.twitter.com/IIfRYQExEH

— Science girl (@sciencegirl) August 6, 2026

Carlo Borlenghi

 “Navigo in mari inesplorati, ma c’è una bussola nel mio cuore che conosce la strada”.… 

 E. Dickinson

 

 Carlo Borlenghi has immortalized thirteen America's Cups, portraying, with his famous and iconic shots, the evolution of the event and the boats in over thirty years of career.

The power of the foils that slice through the water, the emotion in the eyes of the crew, the tension of a match race, they all become palpable in his photos that not only fix the moment, but transform it into art.

 

Links :

• Giornale della vela : Addio Carlo

How whaling strengthens the bonds uniting nation-states and Indigenous peoples

Jerry Arey, Moses Kayotuk and Larry Arey atop a landed bowhead.

 

From Arctic Today by Barry Scott ZellenJuly 24, 2026

Remembering the Great Bowhead Hunt of 1991

 

For more than four decades, my work as an Arctic scholar has been animated by a single, foundational truth: the global arena is not merely a collection of Westphalian states competing for structural dominance.
While classical international relations theory fixates on oversimplified structures such as Kenneth Waltz’s classic “three images,” it leaves an analytical void at the foundational level of human organization.

To fill this gap, I have advanced 4th Image Theory.
This framework recognizes that beneath and before the modern state lies a deeper, older reality: the tribal, sub-state, and indigenous polities that have survived millennia of change.
These are not mere domestic minorities; they are enduring sovereign entities whose governance models, land claims, and cultural practices provide a platform for enduring regional stability.

Nowhere is the intersection of state sovereignty and indigenous self-determination more sharply defined — or more routinely misunderstood —than in the deep blue waters of our global commons.
For decades, the international community, led by urban activists far removed from the realities of life on and by the sea, has viewed the harvest of cetaceans through the singular lens of prohibition.
Whaling has been falsely cast as an archaic, ecologically destructive relic of a bygone era.

This view is profoundly flawed.
It ignores both the success of modern conservation and the deep, constitutional evolution of native land claims.

When we look past the emotive rhetoric of anti-whaling campaigns, a startling paradox emerges.
The sustainable management of whaling is not a point of permanent division.
Instead, it offers a powerful framework for bridging the gap between sovereign nation-states and Indigenous peoples, forging a shared, collaborative international order.

Alternative:

To understand how whaling can unite rather than divide, one need only look to the Western Arctic.
In 1982, Canada made the decision to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission (IWC).
This move was not an act of environmental defiance; it was a pragmatic recognition of domestic political realities.

At the time, Ottawa was deep in negotiations over comprehensive land claims agreements with Arctic Indigenous peoples —treaties that would ultimately reshape governance of the Northwest Territories and lead to the creation of Nunavut.

By stepping away from the rigid, often deadlocked dictates of the IWC, Ottawa cleared a path to restore the traditional Inuvialuit and Inuit bowhead whale hunting.
It replaced distant, centralized and neocolonial governance with an innovative domestic model based on co-management.

Through boards composed of both indigenous hunters and federal biologists, decisions on quotas, sustainability, and ecosystem monitoring were co-produced.
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) was elevated to equal standing with Western empirical science.

The foundational proving ground for this paradigm shift occurred on Sept.
3, 1991, in the waters off Shingle Point.
For over half a century, the Inuvialuit had been denied the right to hunt a bowhead whale (Arviq), a restriction born of global conservation anxieties that completely ignored the ecological balance maintained by the original inhabitants of the coast.



The 1991 hunt was one of many fruits of the historic 1984 Inuvialuit Final Agreement (IFA) — the first Canadian comprehensive land claim settlement north of 60.
This treaty did not merely grant land rights; it erected a revolutionary, constitutionally protected architecture for wildlife co-management.
When the Inuvialuit Game Council and the newly formed Fisheries Joint Management Committee approved a license for a single bowhead, they were putting the constitutional teeth of their land claim to the test.

The hunt itself became a masterclass in cross-generational, cross-cultural collaboration.
Because a full 54 years had passed since the last local bowhead harvest, the Inuvialuit faced a profound rupture in practical whaling knowledge.
To bridge this historical chasm, they looked across the border to their Inupiat kin in Alaska.

Experienced whaling captains from the North Slope traveled to the Mackenzie Delta, bringing with them modern safety protocols, traditional tracking techniques, and specialized harvesting equipment.
This included penthrite projectile bombs designed to ensure a humane, efficient kill.

On Sept. 4, a crew led by Inuvialuit whaling captain Danny A. Gordon successfully landed a 36-foot, 40-ton bowhead whale.
The event was a profound cultural awakening, but its political implications were even greater.

The processing of the whale on the beaches of Shingle Point required the mobilization of whole communities — Aklavik, Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk —distributing muktuk (skin and blubber) across the region according to ancient laws of sharing that reinforce social cohesion.

For the Canadian state, this was a watershed moment in regulatory flexibility.
Federal fisheries officers worked alongside indigenous hunters — not as adversarial enforcers, but as technical partners.
The 1991 harvest proved to a skeptical international community that an indigenous polity, armed with modern legal authority and rooted in traditional ecological wisdom, could safely manage a protected species without state paternalism.
It transformed the concept of conservation from a top-down mandate into a collaborative, treaty-based partnership between indigenous peoples and the state.

This historical lesson demonstrates that when a nation-state respects the maritime traditions of its Indigenous peoples, it does not weaken its own sovereignty; it actually strengthens the fabric of its domestic peace.

The restoration of the bowhead hunt in the Western Arctic did not spark ecological collapse.
Instead, it revitalized community cohesion, strengthened food security in an economically marginalized region, and integrated indigenous governance directly into the structural machinery of the state.

In recent years, we have seen history repeating itself, with Tokyo’s decision to exit the IWC in 2019, following in Canada’s footsteps so that Japan, too, could resume coastal whaling within its own territorial waters and EEZ.

Japan’s pivot offers a compelling point of alignment with northern Indigenous communities.
Small, historic whaling towns of coastal Japan —such as Taiji, Wada, and Ayukawa — possess a deep maritime heritage that mirrors the subsistence culture of the Inuvialuit.
For coastal communities of both the Arctic and the Pacific, the whale isn’t merely a resource to be extracted; it is an economic anchor, a dietary staple, and the focus of deep cultural veneration.

When modern states like Japan, Iceland and Norway defend their right to utilize abundant marine resources sustainably under international law, they are fighting the exact same battle against eco-colonialism that Indigenous communities have waged for generations.

By reframing the whaling debate around the principles of sustainability, food security, and cultural survival, we create a powerful common denominator: sovereign nations defending their maritime rights and indigenous polities protecting their ancestral subsistence traditions find themselves standing on the same side of the geopolitical ledger.
They are united by a shared commitment to what I call constructive realism—a pragmatism that recognizes that real-world stability requires balancing ecological limits with human survival and cultural continuity.

The international community must stop viewing whaling as a binary conflict between conservationists and exploiters.
Instead, it must be recognized as a sophisticated arena for co-management, where the sovereign rights of coastal states and the inherent rights of First Nations converge.
By honoring Native traditions through robust, collaborative, and scientifically sound frameworks, we do not fracture global unity.
Instead, we ground it in the realities of our shared environment, proving that international relations are at their most resilient when they honor the tribal foundations upon which our world was built.