The Six Miles of Water Keeping the Global Markets on Edge

Roughly 20% of the world's petroleum passes through the 20-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz

- David Uberti & Costas Paris

Oil traders see it as a worst-case scenario. Pentagon officials have long warned against it. Vice President JD Vance believes it would be suicidal.

Yet Iranian lawmakers on Sunday reportedly threatened a closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a strip of water connecting the energy-rich Persian Gulf to global markets, after the U.S. joined Israeli strikes on Tehran's nuclear facilities. That rattled oil markets and sent U.S. stock futures lower on Sunday evening.

Roughly 20% of the world's petroleum passes through the 20-mile-wide strait, where dozens of skyscraper-size tankers each day funnel into a pair of 2-mile-wide traffic lanes separated by a 2-mile-wide buffer. The transit through that 6-mile strip within the strait includes a similarly huge share of the world's liquefied natural gas.

Crucial for cars, chemical makers and power plants around the world, the supplies help fuel the oil-hungry Chinese economy and dictate prices paid by U.S. drivers and air travelers. Iran has often harassed foreign-flagged tankers in the area and occasionally threatened to disrupt that trade more broadly in times of stress, a move that could upend financial markets and send global energy costs soaring.

On Sunday, after U.S. forces struck three Iranian nuclear sites, Iranian state media reported that Iran's parliament had approved a closure of the strait. But they added that ultimate power to do so lay with the regime's top security officials.

Many oil traders and energy executives still view the scenario as a scorched-earth tactic and distant possibility. Tanker-tracking firms said Sunday that traffic through the strait was proceeding as usual.