Are Suez, Malacca, Panama, and the Turkish Strait safe?

The vessels made their turns before the smoke had settled. This is how fearful the waters have grown. In early March, tankers ferrying oil and food supplies have discreetly shifted direction, opting for a route that keeps them clear of the Strait of Hormuz because the conflict between America, Israel, and Iran has rendered the Persian Gulf as inhospitable as any other war zone on Earth. This is how global conflict spreads beyond borders.

The Strait of Hormuz is narrow, measuring only 33 kilometres across at its narrowest point, yet it still handles one-fifth of the world's daily oil consumption. Iran does not even need to defeat the United States in naval warfare to close the Strait. All Iran needs to do is create an environment so dangerous that other countries cannot use it.

The world has seen this happen before. From 2023 to 2025, Houthis in Yemen attacked ships travelling through the Red Sea using missiles and drones. The Houthis did not destroy the world economy, nor did they have to. Shipping activity in the area dropped to 10 per cent of its previous levels.

When one door closes, others crack open

The most immediate consequence of Hormuz's effective closure is the redirection of vessels around the Cape of Good Hope and through the Mozambique Channel.

Trips that took three weeks earlier now take five or six weeks. Fuel prices go up. Freight prices go up. At some point along this longer, costlier route, people will be paying more for what they receive.

Many ships, paralysed by uncertainty about the conflict's duration, are simply sitting idle in Indian Ocean ports, waiting.

This congestion does not happen in a vacuum. Poorly patrolled or suddenly overcrowded sea lanes are magnets for piracy. Somali pirates, whose activities had tapered off in recent years, are already resurgent. Historically, naval coalitions, from the EU's Operation Atalanta to China's 48th naval escort task group, have responded with patrols and escorts. Today, with American, European, Chinese, and Indian naval assets all operating in proximity in contested waters, the danger is not merely piracy. It is a miscalculation. A Chinese escort vessel and a US warship responding to the same incident could transform a merchant ship's misfortune into an international incident.

A fragile world of chokepoints

Hormuz is just one vulnerable route in this part of the world, but it has started to bleed. The world's seaborne trade flows through roughly 24 chokepoints, and most of them are under pressure at the same time.

The Suez Canal, which handles about 10 per cent of all international maritime commerce, is the fastest link between Asia and Europe, saving at least 10 days' journey time.

However, this channel relies on the Bab el Mandeb Strait at the southern tip of the Red Sea for feeding it with shipments. The Houthis have demonstrated their capacity to shut down this route. The leaders of this group have explicitly stated that they would start attacking again because Iran is under attack. Shipping through the Suez Canal has dropped from more than 26,000 vessels in 2023 to 13,000 in 2024.

The Strait of Malacca, the busiest shipping lane on the planet, carries nearly a quarter of all global seaborne trade passes through it.

For China, Japan, and South Korea, it is the primary door through which energy enters their economies.

Close to 80 per cent of China's oil imports travel this route, a vulnerability that Beijing has quietly worried about for years. Piracy in the Strait of Malacca has been on the rise, with over 130 incidents reported in 2025 alone.

If tensions between China, the United States, and India were to spill into these waters, the consequences would be felt in every economy connected to East Asia, which is nearly all of them.

The Panama Canal carries about 40 per cent of all containerised shipments going to or from the United States.

Droughts have been draining the freshwater reservoirs that the canal depends on, forcing restrictions on how many ships can pass and how heavy they can be. Political pressure from Washington over who operates the canal's ports has added uncertainty on top of climate stress.

The Turkish Straits, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, are the only sea route between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

They are only 700 meters wide at their narrowest point, and they run right through the centre of Istanbul. About 20 per cent of the world's wheat exports from Ukraine, Russia, and Romania pass through here. If that route were disrupted, grain prices would jump. And when grain prices jump, the pain lands hardest on the countries that can least afford it.

What this means for Bangladesh

While it might seem quite far off between the Persian Gulf and the Bay of Bengal, the sea is not cognizant of the human sense of distance. Almost all Bangladeshi fuel is imported via sea routes, which are under pressure from several sides.

Bangladesh's main port, Chittagong, imports materials via sea routes that traverse either the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, or the Malacca Strait before reaching Bangladesh.

If shipping takes another route around the continent of Africa, shipping prices increase, and Bangladesh bears the burden of such cost hikes. Whenever the supply of fuel is restricted due to Hormuz's closure, production slows, transportation costs rise, and the price of cooking gas becomes unaffordable for most people.

The other major import of Bangladesh is that of wheat and oil. Any disruption in the Black Sea region, which seems far away, affects prices in Bangladesh, particularly in the Dhaka and Chittagong markets.

What this moment makes clear, in ways no policy report could, is that the world's commerce was built on several extremely fragile chokepoints, and that the world somehow took for granted that they would remain open forever. That is true no more.

In the waters off Africa, pirate activity is becoming more common as bottlenecks draw out traditional threats. US, European, Chinese, and Indian naval forces now operate in increasing closeness amid the same disputed areas. So many warships of so many rival nations crammed into the same narrow, contentious space leaves little room between misunderstanding and conflict.

Making the world's supply chains truly resilient by diversifying their route networks, bolstering regional production capabilities, creating strategic stocks, and forging international accords on maritime security is a lengthy process. It will take many years, much longer than this war.

But perhaps that is the conversation this war should finally force us to have. The sea has always connected us. What we are learning now, the hard way, is how completely we depend on it, and how little we have done to protect that dependence.

The ships are still waiting. The world is still watching. The straits are still narrow.

mohsinanazibah@gmail.com