When the "Bermuda Triangle" first entered the popular imagination, it was presented as an obscure area that mysteriously swallowed ships and aircraft. Over time, it became clear that those stories had been propped up by the media and popular fantasies, lacking any scientific evidence.
Today, however, the Middle East has become home to another Bermuda Triangle, not in the Atlantic but in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran seeks to hold the world hostage, obstruct international shipping, and wreak havoc in this international waterway. It is trying, in other words, to claim an exceptional right to control a crucial artery of the global economy, effectively declaring war on the world.
The Strait of Hormuz is no ordinary passageway. It is a vital artery through which a substantial share of the world's trade depends on: oil, gas, petrochemicals, and industrial fertilizers. The repercussions of disruptions are not confined to the Gulf; Hormuz is pivotal to European factories, Asian ports, African markets, and even Latin American dinner tables. Iran’s actions amount to holding the global economy hostage. Accordingly, this is not a border dispute but a direct threat to the world economy and global political stability.
Since the Iranian Revolutionary Guards closed the strait and threatened international navigation, the consequence of the crisis have gradually begun to surface. Major industrial nations from China to Italy are struggling to secure energy supplies. Shipping and insurance costs have risen sharply, while agriculture and industry are suffering disruptions in the delivery of raw materials, fertilizers, and fuel.
Every day that the crisis persists, global anxiety mounts on the back of rising prices and rising unemployment. The modern world was built on the principle of the free flow of trade and freedom of maritime navigation; it cannot allow for holding the world hostage to a parochial political project.
The irony is that international law is clear on this matter. Freedom of passage for all states must be ensured in all international waterways, and no single party has the right to obstruct their path or use them as tools of political coercion. Yet the political mindset of Tehran has led Iran to behave as though geography were private property and as though history allowed a return to the age of maritime fortresses and tolls levied on passing ships. Here, politics is rendered into a kind of myth resembling the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, where facts disappear beneath the fog of slogans and ideological incitement.
Some revolutionary regimes in the developing world have long confused sovereignty with domination. Sovereignty entails safeguarding a state's borders and respecting international law; domination means trying to subjugate others through force or blackmail. What is happening in Hormuz today is a reflection of this dangerous conflation that harms the interests of the entire world. Iran is not defending its borders; it is attempting to impose its own interpretation of the international order by which it is the custodian of a strait that belongs to the world.
The very idea of unilateral control over maritime chokepoints goes against the modern age. After the Second World War, the world built a broad system of international agreements designed to prevent the monopolization of vital passages or their use as political weapons. Even the great powers, despite their rivalries, understand that the security of global trade is a shared interest. It cannot be tampered with without paying a heavy price.
For now, they are looking for alternatives as they seek bargains on other fronts. Any state attempting to redefine international law according to its ideological vision is, in practice, confronting the entire international community, not only its immediate adversaries.
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the current crisis is that some voices in the region have addressed these developments sentimentally rather than strategically. Some see disrupting Hormuz as an act of heroic defiance or as leverage that can allow for the extraction of political gains on other issues. The truth, however, is that strangling maritime passages threatens both the region and the world, both the rich and the poor. Gulf economies, Asian markets, and global trade are interconnected to an unprecedented degree, and any collapse in this network produces no victors, only a long series of losses and instability.
Recent episodes have taught us that the world can no longer endure projects of reckless adventurism. Long wars, ideological slogans, and the export of crises or revolutions have exhausted societies around the globe and left everyone worse off. The first victims are the very states engaging in these near-suicidal ventures. The Gulf states, which lived under constant threat for decades, understood early on that development and stability must take precedence over fantasies of expansion and perpetual enmity, and that investing in people is more rewarding than building militias and raising thunderous slogans.
Turning Hormuz into a "political Bermuda Triangle" will offer Iran neither influence nor an edge. It will deepen its isolation, add to its enmities, and intensify the erosion of trust both regionally and globally. The world may disagree politically, but it is united in resistance when its interests are harmed, especially when the security of maritime routes is at stake.
Whoever imagines that the world can be subdued by strangling its economic arteries ultimately discovers that geography may provide temporary leverage, but it does not provide lasting legitimacy. A final word: geography comes for those who ignore it.
