The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - The Strait of Hormuz Remains Open...For Iran || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

Despite the ongoing conflict in the Persian Gulf, shipping in the Strait of Hormuz remains open...sort of. The Iranians have taken control, requiring ships to get clearance for safe passage. Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihan Full Newsletter: https://bit.ly/40XWUl6

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This is Loki. You may have heard him or seen him in videos in the past. Anyway, today I wanted to let you know about a little internal investigation that we've been running in the Iran War. Specifically, we've got questions here on our end about why shipments are still getting through the Persian Gulf at all. Now, international insurance has basically been canceled for all ships in the area. Basically, once somebody starts shooting civilian shipping, all bets are off and the captains are on the own and if the ship takes a hit oftentimes it's the captain that is legally or financially vulnerable if not the shipping company and there's no way to file a

claim in that circumstance so lots of ships are trapped inside the Gulf and there's a couple hundred waiting outside for things to clear which isn't going to happen anytime soon and yet there are still some ships coming and going but all of them have gotten clearance from Iran so under normal circumstances. There's a six mile navigable channel that's in roughly in the middle of the Strait of Hormuz. Most of it is actually in Omani territory. Some of it does go into Iranian territory. And there's a two mile channel for going one way, a two mile a channel for going the other way, and then a two mile gap in the middle. That is not being used by anyone.

That's what's completely shut down because of the attacks we've had so far. On the other side of the equation, you've got Iran basically processing ships. at the Imam Khomeini port, which is way up in Kuzistan, which is in the northern extreme of the Gulf, actually in the general vicinity of Karg Island, if you know where that is. So for ships wanting to get passage approval from Iran, they have to sail all the way to the northern end of the port, basically under all the drone and missile attacks that are going back and forth. They have to dock at Imam Khomeini Port. They have to basically get their papers, pay their bill, which comes out for a large ship to be like $2 million.

And then they sail down the Iranian coast as close to the Iranian coast as they can. And instead of using that navigable pathway through the middle of the strait, they hug the Iranian coast as closely as they can and sail through that way. And same for anyone who's coming in. They have to sail all the way up to Kuzaskan to basically get their papers stamped. So what has happened here is a clear example of the United States just being unable to process what's going on. On the front end, the United States seemed woely unprepared for anything happening in the Strait of Hormuz during a war with Iran, which is just beyond ludicrous because that has been the issue since 1979.

And there was no meaningful preparation at all. Second, Iran has managed to set up basically a protection racket. And cargo is still not just coming to and from Iranian ports, including Chinese gear that basically is full of drone parts. They're actually able to sail into the Strait of Hormuz all the way up into the Northern Gulf, not be molested at all, dock at an Iranian port, disgorge or take on cargo, pay their fees, and then sail all the way back down through the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz and out. And the United States is doing nothing. So the idea that the Iranian authorities, as they are at the moment, are under pressure, is just mind-bogglingly, stupid because the economy of Iran is largely managed by the IRGC. And we have actually in these circumstances seen income for the IRGC go up because not only are they getting these transit fees, but the core issues of economic smuggling still apply.

And even though the U.S. military is now more present in this region than it has been at any time in modern history, it is doing nothing to interrupt the current. commercial flows going to and from Iran, and Iran is able to increase the volumes of its exports to nearly two million barrels per day and garner the war surcharge, so they're earning easily in terms of profits two and three times what they were earning before the war, and the U.S. military is doing nothing. Now, under normal circumstances, there are analysts at the military and especially at the Department of Energy who would point these things out to their chain of command, and it would go up to the department heads and eventually the president. But President Trump fired all those people last year.

So it took people like me doing this little project on the side to figure out how everything is flowing. Someone please tell Trump because until this is interrupted in some way, two big problems. Number one, the IRGC is getting more money now than they did before, which reinforces all of the pillars of the Iranian structure that allows it to fight the war and encourages political cohesion. Second, they have no problem resourcing parts for missiles and especially drones from the Chinese, and so they're able to maintain their current pace of fighting, more or less indefinitely. So yeah, someone please pass that along. Maybe it'll make a difference.