Iranian officials and analysts are warning that the Strait of Hormuz may be losing the leverage that made it one of Tehran’s most powerful tools, as Gulf neighbours push ahead with alternative pipelines and export routes. Hamid Paktinat wrote that those projects could halve the strait’s strategic value within three years.
The debate has sharpened this week after Badr Albusaidi visited Tehran and Asim Munir also visited Tehran, adding to the sense that regional actors are already thinking about what comes after a crisis over Hormuz. The timing matters because Iranian leaders are now speaking more openly about the cost of prolonging confrontation, and because the strait remains central to Strait of Hormuz oil exports and global shipping.
Masoud Pezeshkian recently said the war must end at some point, while Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf argued that no country can endure on military strength alone if people are hungry and the economy is not growing. Abdolnaser Hemmati went further on TV, saying Iran is facing four or five major challenges at once, including maximum sanctions, blockade, cutting off oil exports, and a budget imbalance, all of which are squeezing the economy. His warning is the clearest sign yet that the pressure is not only strategic but financial.
That pressure lands in a country where the office of the Iranian supreme leader has recently described the strait of Hormuz as the pillar of Iran’s new security order and as transformative as possessing a nuclear weapon. For years, that language turned the waterway into a symbol of deterrence. But Hamid Asefi warned that if Hormuz is used as Iran’s final card every time a crisis arises, it will gradually lose its value. His point is that repetition changes the meaning of a threat: what once looked like a decisive weapon starts to look like habit.
The friction is obvious. Iran still talks about Hormuz as a decisive chokehold, yet neighbouring states are building ways around it, and Iran’s own officials are acknowledging the strain of sanctions, blocked oil sales and budget pressure. That leaves Tehran with a narrower set of options than it had when the strait alone could intimidate markets.
The unresolved issue is whether Iran can turn that reality into a deal before the strait’s leverage erodes further. June brought a memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran that the article says was later discarded, but the facts on the ground are moving in the opposite direction: more alternatives, more internal alarm, and less certainty that Hormuz can keep doing the political work Tehran once expected of it.
