Uninterrupted supply chains and energy routes, which are the lifeblood of the global political-economic architecture, are rapidly turning into systemic crises due to geopolitical struggles in vital maritime chokepoints in today’s world of deepening asymmetric interdependence. Indeed, the recent war between the US, Israel, and Iran, which has evolved into a hot conflict, has once again certified the fragility of the Middle East and the existential importance of the Strait of Hormuz in the international system. This blockade in maritime traffic not only creates momentary commodity and price shocks; it also necessitates the long-term reconstruction of international trade routes, logistical doctrines, and the energy security strategies of states. This picture, which severely tests global supply chain resilience across a vast line extending from the Asia-Pacific to Europe, points to a historical breaking point where the geoeconomic center of gravity is rapidly shifting to the Caspian Basin, the Caucasus, and the Middle Corridor due to the obligatory security reflexes of states.
The crisis escalating between the US, Israel, and Iran, which has turned into a war by evolving directly into a hot conflict, has proven once again that the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most sensitive nerve endings of the global political economy, is not merely a geographical transit point, but also the keystone of the global security architecture. While the military escalation on the ground continues unabated, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on Tuesday, March 10, along with footage of the strike moments shared on the X platform, that it had destroyed 16 Iranian minelaying vessels, mostly anchored near the Strait of Hormuz.
On the other hand, while it is not yet clear whether Iran has laid naval mines in the region since the large-scale attacks launched by the US and Israel on February 28, the Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, Alireza Tangsiri, in his response also via X, denied allegations that the US Navy was escorting oil tankers and threatened to stop the US and allied fleets attempting to pass through the strait with missiles and submarines, and the escalating military tension in this strategic gateway, which is the heart of approximately one-fourth of the global maritime oil trade as well as a significant volume of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and fertilizer shipments, has also been reflected in the report published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on Tuesday, confirming the concern that disruptions in maritime traffic could create devastating chain effects. [1]
While this situation indicates that the scenario of closing the Strait of Hormuz, which analysts have viewed for decades as Iran’s greatest weapon in a potential war with the West, has been replaced by a much more insidious and effective strategy of targeting energy infrastructures in the Gulf; instead of blocking this narrow waterway through which one-fifth of global oil consumption passes with mines or missiles, launching asymmetric attacks against refineries, LNG facilities, and pipelines in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE provides Iran with both deniability and a flexible maneuvering space, underscoring that the main weak point of the global energy system is not a narrow maritime corridor, but the fragile infrastructure network surrounding it. [2]
This new generation energy war doctrine, which utilizes the extreme sensitivity of modern markets to “risk perception” rather than physical disruptions, has turned into concrete destruction on the ground; as a matter of fact, in addition to Iran’s attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, the cessation of operations due to a fire at Saudi Arabia’s largest refinery in the Ras Tanura region proves that the conflicts have struck a critical oil infrastructure for the first time, while the stranding of at least 40 fully loaded tankers carrying approximately 2 million barrels of oil in the Persian Gulf, the halting of insurance companies’ coverage of war risks, and the projection that oil prices could climb to the $100-120 band with a daily deficit of 8-10 million barrels despite alternative pipelines, reveal the severity of the collapse in supply chains.[3]
The most shocking waves of this emergent structural crisis have reached the Asia-Pacific region, which is deeply dependent on energy imports, and Tehran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the coordinated attacks by the US and Israel has exposed the vulnerabilities of countries by triggering not only a price shock in East Asia but a structural energy and logistics crisis that will fundamentally shake supply chains; so much so that while China, whose energy basket is dominated by coal and renewable resources and which has alternative lines such as Russia and Central Asia, is largely sheltered from this shock, Japan and South Korea, which are 70 to 95 percent dependent on Gulf oil, have faced the risk of a severe industrial paralysis due to rising costs and especially LNG stocks that only have a lifespan of a few weeks, despite their massive strategic reserves exceeding 200 days, creating deep political fault lines where China condemned the US, Japan and Taiwan remained within the US axis, and South Korea and ASEAN countries pursued neutral crisis management.[4]
Paradoxically, this desperate search for alternatives by Asian countries has paved the way for sanctioned Russia to re-fortify its geopolitical position; as Lin Ye, Vice President of Oil Markets at Rystad Energy, also stated, thanks to its vast floating storage capacity at sea, Russian oil stands out as the fastest substitution option for Asia, while India’s increasing purchases from Russia and the signals from US President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that sanctions against Russian oil could be relaxed indicate that the balances in energy markets could rapidly shift in Russia’s favor.[5] This process, in which geopolitical competition yields to pragmatic national interests rather than normative sanctions, clearly accelerates the transition to a multipolar order where the American hegemonic architecture is forced to stretch.
This macro-strategic rupture in East Asia has swiftly pushed nation-states to prepare micro-level emergency action plans and certified that energy security has turned into a matter of national survival; in this context, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi announced that the attacks targeting Iran by Israel and the US and the disruptions in maritime transportation have prompted her country to find new routes, stating that Japan, which meets more than 90 percent of its oil (mostly via Hormuz) and 10 percent of its LNG from the Middle East, has rapidly begun efforts to expand its oil import geography to stabilize gasoline prices in the domestic market despite its 254-day oil and three-week LNG reserves.[6]
Acting with a similar defensive state capitalism reflex and deeply feeling the socioeconomic effects of the crisis, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung also announced that they would enter an urgent coordination process with strategic partners to find alternative routes for energy procurement that exclude the Strait of Hormuz; he demanded that the harshest sanctions be applied against potential price manipulations between refineries and gas stations, that a price ceiling application for fuel be put into effect, and that these protective measures be expanded to encompass the country’s financial and foreign exchange markets.[7] The inflationary pressures that geopolitical shocks in foreign policy can create in domestic politics set the stage for the efforts of political decision-makers to prevent a systemic collapse through strict market interventions.
While such a sharp knotting of global maritime trade transforms the land-based transportation corridors in the heart of Eurasia, particularly the Caspian Basin and the Caucasus, into the new epicenter of the global geoeconomy; the war with Iran has deeply shaken the logistics strategy of Kazakhstan, which previously viewed Tehran as the main gateway to foreign markets and aimed to increase the capacity at the Shahid Rajaee port to 20 million tons by 2030, urgently directing the Astana administration towards transit trade agreements providing access to Pakistani ports (Karachi, Qasim, Gwadar), Afghanistan-Turkmenistan railways, and the “Middle Corridor,” which extends from the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan and Türkiye, transforming the South Caucasus into a strategic corridor.[8]
Another reflection of this geoeconomic fault rupture in the region has been observed in landlocked Uzbekistan, which conducts up to 60 percent of its foreign trade cargo through Iranian ports. It is observed that the current situation not only jeopardizes the 500 million dollar bilateral trade but also carries the risk of triggering import inflation with a 30 percent increase in transportation costs brought about by the shift towards alternative routes such as Pakistan or the Middle Corridor. Furthermore, the indirect shocks that will occur as its largest trading partner, China, is affected by the increase in energy costs augment the severity of the crisis. However, it is confirmed at an academic level that all these challenges will serve as a strategic catalyst in the long term, breaking the country’s chronic dependence on a single route and mandating the integration of Central Asia into the Middle Corridor.[9]
The most rational medium and long-term expectation of this systemic congestion on the axis of the Strait of Hormuz is the transformation of the Caspian Basin from being a secondary alternative in the global energy and logistics architecture into a primary geostrategic center of gravity. The simultaneous hostage of global supply chains to asymmetric threats in the Persian Gulf and sanctions regimes in the Northern Corridor will force international capital flows towards the Middle Corridor’s energy and transportation lines into an obligatory momentum.
In this context, it is inevitable that projects such as the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline, which envisions the direct delivery of particularly Kazakh and Turkmen hydrocarbons to European markets but has been hindered by political and financial obstacles for decades, will urgently return to the table with the intersection of the mutual interests of the European Union and Asian economies. The rapid attainment of the structural limits of the Caspian Sea’s transshipment capacity, not only in energy transportation but also in intermodal transport, will push the countries of the region into a multi-actor infrastructure mobilization; the modernization of the Aktau, Turkmenbashi, and Baku ports and the capacity expansions of existing lines such as Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) will become the most concrete geoeconomic guarantee of the multi-vector foreign policy doctrines of regional actors.
On the other hand, this increasing geoeconomic allure of the Caspian Basin simultaneously imposes the construction of a new regional security architecture and institutionalization as a rational necessity. For the Middle Corridor to transform into a permanent and uninterrupted global jugular vein rather than a momentary crisis-averting route, the prompt implementation of multilateral binding mechanisms such as the standardization of customs procedures, common tariff regimes, and digital logistics integration between the littoral states of the Caspian and transit countries like Türkiye and Georgia is imperative. The exponential increase in trade and energy volume across this basin will lead to the evolution of the Caspian Basin beyond being a closed body of water into a new generation security and competition sphere.
When China’s motive to protect supply lines in the region, Europe’s strategy to guarantee energy diversity, and the Organization of Turkic States’ rising institutional profile intersect; the Caspian Basin will transform into a modern geopolitical center of equilibrium where the cyber and physical security of critical infrastructure facilities are supported by international consortiums, and where regional countries fortify their own “strategic autonomies” against asymmetric shocks.
[1] “US Struck Iran’s Mine-Laying Ships Near Strait of Hormuz, Says Central Command”, ChinaDaily, https://www.chinadailyasia.com/hk/article/630239, (Access Date: 11.03.2026).
[2] “Iran’s Real Weapon Is Not The Strait Of Hormuz – OpEd”, Eurasia Review, https://www.eurasiareview.com/07032026-irans-real-weapon-is-not-the-strait-of-hormuz-oped/, (Access Date: 11.03.2026).
[3] “Ormuzskiy Krizis: Pochemu Alternativnyye Marshruty Ne Spasut Mirovoy Rynok Nefti’”, Mondiara, https://news.mondiara.com/categories/4/posts/200851, (Access Date: 11.03.2026).
[4] Hao Nan, “Hormuz Closed: East Asia’s Energy Shock and Strategic Shift”, ThinkChina, https://www.thinkchina.sg/politics/hormuz-closed-east-asias-energy-shock-and-strategic-shift, (Access Date: 11.03.2026).
[5] “Alternativnym Postavshchikom Nefti v Aziyu Mozhet Stat RF”, Media Paluba, https://paluba.media/news/210353, (Access Date: 11.03.2026).
[6] “Yaponiya Nachala Poiski Alternativnykh Istochnikov Postavok Nefti iz-za Situatsii Vokrug Irana i Ormuzskogo Proliva”, SB BY, https://www.sb.by/articles/v-yaponii-zayavili-chto-rabotayut-nad-rasshireniem-istochnikov-postavok-nefti.html, (Access Date: 11.03.2026).
[7] “Glava Yuzhnoy Korei Zayavil o Poiske İnykh Putey Postavok Energoresursov v Obkhod Ormuzskogo Proliva”, Interfax, https://www.interfax.ru/world/1076814, (Access Date: 11.03.2026).
[8] “Kazakhstan Looks to Pakistani Ports in Response to the Strait of Hormuz Crisis”, Nova, https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/il-kazakhstan-guarda-ai-porti-del-pakistan-in-risposta-alla-crisi-dello-stretto-di-hormuz/, (Access Date: 11.03.2026).
[9] Sadig Djavadov, “Nazvan Obyem Kompensatsiy, Vyplachennykh Byuro Obyazatelnogo Strakhovaniya Azerbaydzhana v 2025 g.”, Trend, https://ru.trend.az/business/4162842.html, (Access Date: 11.03.2026).
