Iran war and Hormuz crisis reshaping geopolitics of Indian Ocean

Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.

Tensions in the Strait of Hormuz extend way beyond the Persian Gulf. Just today, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards announced attacks on ten vessels and expanded a prohibited zone into the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea, waters that open directly onto the Indian Ocean.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations reported that several ships in those areas had been subjected to disabling fire as part of ongoing military activity.

The Gulf of Oman sits on the Indian Ocean side of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which around a fifth of global oil and LNG supplies normally transit.

The latest incidents form part of a broader pattern of reciprocal actions: Tehran has targeted vessels in and near the strait, while US forces have interdicted Iran-linked tankers farther out in the Indian Ocean as part of Washington’s blockade of Iranian ports.

Attacks and disruptions linked to the Hormuz corridor have reached their highest levels since the war began, forcing commercial operators to recalculate routes and risks

As commentator Murat Sofuoglu observed in July, the escalation around Hormuz has turned the wider maritime space into a central arena for great-power competition, global trade, and maritime security.

The Indian Ocean handles roughly half of global container traffic and 80% of seaborne oil trade.

As Frédéric Grare, co-author of “The Indian Ocean as a New Political and Security Region”, has argued, China’s rise, the opening of its base in Djibouti, and the Belt and Road Initiative have helped transform the Indian Ocean into a “strategic stake in itself.” For the scholar, this transformation is closely linked to the broader Indo-Pacific concept, with China’s growing presence.

This emerging configuration extends beyond the traditional US–China–India triangle.

Against this backdrop, the US-Israeli war against Iran and the resulting questions over Washington's long-term regional role add another layer of uncertainty to an already increasingly complex security environment.

The Indian Ocean is therefore becoming a multipolar arena in which the US, China, India, Iran and others compete for influence over ports, maritime trade routes and chokepoints.

As Sofuoglu notes, China’s presence in Djibouti, its role at ports such as Gwadar (Pakistan) and Hambantota (Sri Lanka), and its growing access to strategically located commercial infrastructure give Beijing a lasting maritime reach across the Indian Ocean region. Washington, meanwhile, continues to rely on its Diego Garcia military base, while seeking greater burden-sharing from regional partners.

New Delhi, for its part, is advancing projects such as the Great Nicobar development, which will add a trans-shipment hub, civil-military airport and supporting infrastructure near the approaches to the Strait of Malacca, the world’s second-largest oil-trade chokepoint after Hormuz.

The war in Iran and the strait crisis are undeniably having global impacts: Ukraine’s reported activity in the Caspian Sea, new tensions in the South Caucasus, the Afghan-Pakistan escalation, Europe’s renewed interest in Russian energy, the US redeployment of South Korean missile defenses, and wider effects across Eurasia have all drawn attention.

The Red Sea has already been described as a new Hormuz amid Saudi-Houthi tensions. Yet the importance of the Indian Ocean - the maritime space linking many of these theaters - remains underreported, despite its enormous geopolitical significance.

For India, the rising temperature poses particular difficulties. New Delhi has long sought to maintain a balancing role amid deepening contradictions, engaging both Western partners and Eurasian frameworks such as the SCO and BRICS

The India-Pakistan rivalry itself is no longer a purely bilateral matter; it carries Eurasian and global implications that increasingly complicate cooperation within these same multilateral platforms.

Heightened competition over Indian Ocean ports and routes, combined with the energy and security shocks emanating from Hormuz, will, in all likelihood, make that balancing act harder to sustain.

For New Delhi, the Hormuz crisis has revealed the importance of maritime chokepoints - and the need to strengthen its position at both ends of this maritime space, from the Persian Gulf to the Strait of Malacca, as ORF scholar Manoj Joshi argues. New Delhi’s maritime strategy, he notes, increasingly has to account for chokepoints stretching from Hormuz to Malacca.

The Indian Ocean has moved, in the words of Air Marshal PK Roy (a former Commander-in-Chief of the Andaman and Nicobar Command), “from maritime commons to contested geopolitical theater.”

The Indian Ocean is thus emerging as a crucial space in the evolving polycentric order. The way its ports, routes and chokepoints are developed and connected in the coming years will have consequences well beyond the immediate crisis in the Strait of Hormuz - it will help shape the future of the Indo-Pacific.