The Strait of Hormuz remains open in name but degraded in function. Merchant vessels continue transiting, but traffic sits roughly 65% below pre-war levels according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations Center's November 6 report, which logged 325 transits in the week ending November 4 — up 17% from the previous week's 277, but nowhere near normal operations. Iran's strategy is not blockade but attrition: keep the threat high enough to spike costs without triggering the political blowback of a full closure. The cost structure tells the real story. Average freight rates for a large tanker carrying crude from the Middle East to East Asia have risen roughly 12-fold since the start of the year, from $3.18 per barrel to $37.13 per barrel at end of October, according to OPEC figures cited by energy expert Dalga Khatinoglu. Crude oil exports from the broader Middle East region have largely recovered to pre-war levels across all routes — and in some September and October weeks exceeded them — but the insurance and shipping premiums remain embedded in every barrel. Refined petroleum products and LNG tell a harsher story. Before the war, the Middle East exported roughly 6.2 million barrels of petroleum products daily; that figure has approximately halved. Qatari and UAE liquefied natural gas exports as of September remained about 10% below pre-war levels. The distinction matters: crude can reroute, but refinery and LNG infrastructure dependencies are stickier. Iran's constraints are economic, not military. Ali Mohammadi, an Iranian affairs expert based in France, argues Tehran can sustain attacks given its geography and equipment but faces mounting economic pressure from continuing the war. The opacity around Iran's weapons stocks and resupply capacity makes duration estimates speculative, but Mohammadi's core point is structural: Iran cannot indefinitely disrupt its own allies' access to the strait. The leverage calculus is clear. Iran uses Hormuz disruption to raise the cost of confrontation and seek negotiating leverage, but this is a depreciating asset. Each week of sustained attacks erodes commercial confidence further while draining Iran's own economic reserves. Neither expert interviewed sees a military-only solution — both Mohammadi and Khatinoglu argue that only a war's end accompanied by a lasting security agreement will restore normal freight economics. For Asian importers — the primary consumers of Gulf crude — the situation is a slow tax. Even when barrels arrive on schedule, $37 per barrel in freight versus $3 transforms energy economics across the continent. This is value extraction at scale: Iran imposes costs on global shipping to gain marginal negotiating leverage, while shipping companies, crews, and end consumers absorb the price. The 20-year question is whether this pattern calcifies into a permanent risk premium on the strait. If Hormuz remains a periodically activated chokepoint, global energy infrastructure will slowly reroute — pipeline alternatives, alternative LNG sourcing, reduced Gulf dependency — but that transition takes decades and trillions. In the interim, every barrel transiting Hormuz carries embedded geopolitical rent.
