Dunedin, President Donald Trump has now ordered a blockade of the crucial Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf after ceasefire talks between the United States and Iran collapsed.
This is just the latest and most combustible phase of a broader regional conflict with global implications and long-term complex roots.
Yet, while much analysis has been devoted to this “coronary artery” of global oil and gas trade, far less attention has been paid to the history and sociopolitical structure of the Hormuz region itself.
This is somewhat of a blind spot, as understanding the deeper cultural dynamics in and around the Channel can tell us something about what might happen in the future.
Indeed, just as the Suez crisis of 1956 marked the decline of the old British Empire, the Hormuz crisis of 2026 may be seen as a turning point for the US-led global order.
The Origins of the Petroleum Monarchy
Great powers have long sought to control the Strait of Hormuz. After expelling the Portuguese in the early 17th century, the British Empire evolved into the region’s main external power over the next three and a half centuries.
During the peacetime of Great Britain, commercial shipping through the Channel – vital for linking Britain’s imperial territories in South Asia – faced attacks from local raiders in fast dhows that would appear and quickly disappear into the complex and often foggy coastline.
Not fully understanding the region’s human and physical geography, the British began carefully mapping the coast and population. Based on this, the British turned to financial incentives to co-opt certain tribes and chiefs.
It also worked closely with the powerful Sultan of Oman, who ruled an empire stretching from the Persian Gulf to Zanzibar in East Africa, to tame the unruly people of the Hormuz coastline.
This set the pattern for the enrichment of local tribal rulers in the eastern Arabian Peninsula, who in the 20th century transformed into contemporary oil monarchies.
The tribes and clans that Britain privileged in the 19th century remain the ruling families of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. The result is a long-term safe passage for commercial oil and gas shipments through Hormuz.
After 1971, when the United States inherited security responsibilities in the Persian Gulf from Britain and the eastern Arab states were granted formal independence, it focused on these existing ruling families. Other aspects of the region’s complex human geography have been overlooked.
At the same time, local rulers on both sides of the Gulf constructed narrow nationalisms based on Arab Sunni Islamic and Persian Shiite Islamic identities. The combined effect is an illusion of political and cultural homogeneity.
Despite this, highly diverse communities still live on both coasts. The northern coast of the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz is home to important ethnic Arab and Baloch communities, which have long had tense relations with the Persian-dominated Iranian state.
Even less known are the populations along Hormuz’s southern coastline, which includes Oman’s Musandam province at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, which juts into the gulf to form the Strait of Hormuz.
Reachable only by direct ferry from mainland Oman, it consists of a complex archipelago of islands and steep-sided fjords, surrounded to the south and west by the United Arab Emirates.
Some of the indigenous people speak a unique language called Kumzari, which contains elements of Arabic and Persian. These island communities have lived for centuries, virtually unknown, with a deep symbiotic relationship with the ocean.
For example, Kumzaris’ primary reference to direction is not north, south, east, or west, but simply up and down—much like a fisherman’s perception of the depth of the ocean relative to the mountains.
When I visited in 2019, I noticed how many residents of Musandam seemed relatively reluctant to retain their Omani citizenship. Many even wore Emirati pandasha – a traditional white robe that marks the Gulf country’s different ethnic groups.
This explains the special treatment Musandam residents receive, including social welfare assistance not available in other provinces, as a means of keeping the people loyal to Muscat, Oman’s capital.
Local forces, global tensions
All of these have potential implications for the current crisis.
On the one hand, the Iranian state is increasingly being hollowed out of its ideological legitimacy in the face of internal unrest and external attacks by Israel and now the United States.
Tehran’s power has been reduced to a narrow faction within Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The weakening of state institutions makes it possible for subnational identities, including communities around the Strait of Hormuz, to materialize and mobilize in a vacuum.
Oman, on the other hand, is increasingly at odds with the UAE over Iran and the war. While the UAE takes a tough stance against Tehran, Oman, long the Gulf’s most trusted neutral intermediary, has been implicated in a plan to establish a toll system for the Strait of Hormuz. Oman strongly denies this.
Ultimately, Oman’s control of the Musandam peninsula and its close ties with Iran have created uneasy tensions with the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi.
The potential for the UAE to use local identity politics to try and bring the strategic Musandam peninsula under its control is very real. It is unclear whether the United States and other Gulf countries will interfere.
Oman is very sensitive to this possibility. At a university seminar I attended in Muscat in 2019, a map of the peninsula failed to classify Musandam as part of Oman, prompting angry reactions from some in the audience.
More broadly, the fate of the Strait of Hormuz symbolizes a shift in the world order.
In 1956, Britain misread the rise of grassroots Arab nationalism and the changing world order as it sought to maintain its imperial lifeline through the Suez Canal. The risk for the United States now is that it makes similar mistakes in the Strait of Hormuz and fails to adapt to local dynamics as the world changes again. Binh Duong
Binh Duong
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
