At its narrowest point, it is only 33 kilometers wide. Normally, about 100 ships a day, and a fifth of the world's oil production, pass through the waterway that connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman.
Now, however, nothing is normal.
Hundreds of ships are at a standstill under the threat of attacks from Iran, which occurred on Wednesday, including an attack on a Thai ship.
President Donald Trump has previously announced that the United States is prepared to escort ships through the strait, as it did during the Iran-Iraq war in the late 1980s. However, Hans Liwång, professor of defense systems at the Swedish National Defense University, sees challenges for both sides:
"Guaranteeing a convoy's safe passage is very difficult. You will have to invest large resources and still not be able to provide 100 percent protection," he tells TT.
A range of variants
He points out that in theory Iran has a variety of attack types to use, such as airborne drones, traditional military forces, underwater attacks by torpedoes, surface drones or, for that matter, mines.
"In this region, we have also seen almost a form of suicide attacks, meaning a small rubber boat or similar that is filled with explosives and driven into the side of the ship," he says.
An advantage for Iran is that it does not have to knock out the ships completely, points out Hans Liwång.
"They don't need to create a large-scale one, they just need to create a high enough risk that this could happen to stop shipping traffic and thus the flow of oil."
How extremely crucial the issue is was illustrated on Tuesday evening when information came from the US that a supertanker had been escorted through the strait. This caused the price of oil to plummet immediately. When the information was then denied, the price rose again.
Show courage
Donald Trump has also said in an interview with Fox News that shipping companies should "show guts", freely translated "show courage", and that the Iranian fleet should be destroyed. For those who dare now, there are also great economic gains. Hans Liwång believes that less careful shipping companies can in principle force crews to go through a war zone.
"There will be those who are prepared to take the risk and succeed, sometimes with Iran's good memory and sometimes just because they have a little bit of liquidity. Then it will never be able to compensate for the large flow of oil that is needed."
