For months, the narrow strategic waterways of the Straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb have been at the center of escalating global geopolitical tension. These chokepoints control the flow of maritime traffic connecting the Arabian Sea and Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, and through them passes a disproportionately large share of the world’s most critical global trade. Rivalry over these strategic passages is far from new – conflict over control of these waterways has shaped maritime trade and international power dynamics for centuries. Today’s standoff between the United States and Iran is only the most recent chapter in this long history of extra-regional powers attempting to dominate the Middle East via maritime control.
One of the earliest recorded examples of an extra-regional power projecting influence across the Indian Ocean comes from Ming Dynasty China. In 1405, renowned Chinese admiral, explorer, and diplomat Zheng He launched the first of seven unprecedented voyages into the Indian Ocean. Leading a fleet of over 300 ships, Zheng He reached the trading hub of Hormuz around 1414, before sailing on to Aden in Yemen, passing through the Bab el-Mandeb into the Red Sea.
Unlike the colonial powers that would follow centuries later, Zheng He’s expeditions did not seek to seize or colonize the straits. Instead, his Pax Sinica established a peaceful and mutually beneficial trading presence, built on displays of naval strength, formal diplomatic engagement, and profitable exchange of gifts. Zheng He integrated into the existing regional trade networks developed by Arab, Persian, Indian, and East African merchants rather than attempting to subvert or control them.
Even so, Zheng He’s voyages illustrate a consistent historical pattern: overextended maritime power eventually reaches its limits. After the final expedition in the 1430s, changing domestic priorities in the Ming Court led to the abandonment of the voyages, as the imperial court chose to redirect state resources away from naval expansion and maintenance.
Today, Beijing references Zheng He’s historic voyages to frame its modern relationships with Middle Eastern nations as a continuation of ancient peaceful ties. China positions its contemporary investments in regional infrastructure, energy development, and port projects – such as the deep-water port at Gwadar in Pakistan – as a revival of the pre-modern Silk Road’s inclusive, peaceful trade connections.
By the 16th century, the growth of global shipping and the arrival of European colonial powers brought a dramatic shift toward violent, coercive control of the straits. Portugal led this new era of aggressive maritime power, revolutionizing naval warfare with heavy cannons mounted on ocean-going caravels. In 1513, Portuguese commander Afonso de Albuquerque launched an attack on Aden in a bid to control access to the Red Sea. The fortified coastal city, protected by steep surrounding terrain, withstood the assault, proving that even overwhelming naval superiority does not guarantee immediate victory on land – a lesson the United States would also learn centuries later. While Portuguese warships could destroy enemy vessels and bombard coastal harbors, controlling the waters off a port did not equate to controlling the territory inland.
Two years later, in 1515, Albuquerque successfully captured Hormuz. There, he imposed the cartaz system, a mandatory paid permit that all merchants were required to purchase to sail through the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. This model of controlling trade through enforced tolls is effectively the same approach Iran has attempted to implement in the region today. The ruins of 16th-century Portuguese forts still stand on Hormuz Island, a tangible reminder of this era of coercive colonial control.
Portugal’s Pax Lusitana was far more violent than the earlier Chinese presence in the region, and by 1622, a combined force of the Iranian Safavid Dynasty and ships from the English East India Company expelled the Portuguese from Hormuz, reopening the strait to free trade.
With Portugal ousted, a new period of rivalry began, as Ottoman, Safavid, Omani, Dutch, and English powers competed for influence. This new system was dominated heavily by heavily armed European fleets, working alongside local rulers who retained control over coastal ports and traded goods.
The Dutch East India Company arrived in the region in 1614, and established a presence at Yemen’s key port of Mokha, backed by heavily armed vessels. Following the expulsion of Portugal, the Dutch secured favorable commercial privileges in 1623, and competed directly with British traders out of Bandar Abbas, the primary Gulf trading hub opposite Hormuz.
While Britain built its global trade around commodities such as tea, the Dutch came to dominate the global coffee market, which had previously been controlled exclusively by Yemeni merchants based in Mokha. The Dutch broke Yemen’s global coffee monopoly by smuggling Arabica coffee plants out of the region and establishing large-scale plantations on the Indonesian island of Java, demonstrating that control over production and trade networks could shift the balance of maritime power far more effectively than brute military coercion.
By 1839, Britain had captured Aden, and seized de facto control over the Bab el-Mandeb at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The British secured their position through treaties with local rulers and tribal groups in southern Yemen. Aden quickly developed into a critical naval coaling station and global communications hub, connected to Britain’s crown colony in India via undersea telegraph cables. When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, Britain solidified its control over the entire Red Sea shipping route, which offered the fastest maritime passage to India.
British hegemony in the region was built on steam-powered warships, controlled port infrastructure, diplomatic treaties, and financial loans, sustained through partnerships with local proxy allies along the entire coast from Aden to Kuwait.
After World War II, the regional balance of power shifted once again. The United States replaced Britain as the dominant external power, building military bases, deploying carrier strike groups, and selling arms in exchange for access to Gulf oil. In 1980, U.S. President Jimmy Carter formally announced what would become known as the Carter Doctrine: any Soviet attempt to seize control of the Persian Gulf would be interpreted as an attack on core American interests, and would be met with military force.
Forty-five years later, former President Donald Trump effectively dismantled the framework of the Carter Doctrine, even if inadvertently. While U.S. naval vessels remain deployed in the Strait of Hormuz to ostensibly protect freedom of navigation, it was Trump’s 2026 military campaign that initially endangered regional shipping, prompting Iran to retaliate by disrupting Gulf trade routes.
History offers a clear lesson for contemporary powers: while external maritime hegemony over these straits is possible, it is always temporary. Dominance is fleeting, as ephemeral as the waves that carry naval vessels across the ocean. Ming China abandoned its ocean-going fleets, Portugal lost control of Hormuz, the Dutch shifted their focus to Java, and Britain eventually withdrew from Aden. Hegemonic power collapses when overextension, technological change, and shifting local alliances erode the foundations of control.
Today, Iran and the Houthi movement, which recently seized the port of Mokha, do not need large aircraft carrier fleets to challenge external dominance. Instead, their arsenal of missiles, naval mines, and drones have driven up the cost of maritime insurance for commercial shipping, effectively weaponizing the risk of operating in these waters. For all its overwhelming naval might, the United States cannot eliminate the agency of local communities and nations that border the Straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. Every empire that has attempted to control these chokepoints has eventually learned that seizing a geographic strategic point does not equate to controlling the political will of the people who live in the surrounding region.