The effective closure of the Strait has driven up energy prices and unsettled global markets, with volatility expected to continue as unrestricted navigation remains uncertain.
Experts have expressed deep concern over the economical impact the turmoil in the Strait has had thus far.
“We are really in an enormous energy crisis,” Emily Holland, director of the Eurasia program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, tells TIME. “You can open up the Strait, you can have oil pulling again, but you still have these sort of long-term effects, particularly poorer countries being priced out.”
There are also mounting worries over another critical maritime chokepoint.
The Bab El-Mandeb, a waterway situated between Yemen and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa, has come under threat from Iranian officials.
Emphasizing the importance of the waterway, Noam Raydan, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, tells TIME: “The Bab el-Mandeb, just like Hormuz, is critical for the global economy. It is a chokepoint through which you have various ships, container ships, oil tankers or carriers that move between different regions or continents.”