A maritime chokepoint is a narrow passage that a large share of seaborne trade has to pass through because the alternatives are much longer or don’t exist. Five matter most to world trade: the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb, the Suez Canal, the Strait of Malacca and the Panama Canal. They differ a lot. Hormuz is about energy, Malacca about sheer volume, Suez and the Bab el-Mandeb work as one Europe-Asia corridor, and Panama is a freshwater-fed canal that fails in droughts.

Every escalation cycle in the Gulf eventually runs into the same hard constraints: oil flow, market stability, and military sustainment. When pressure builds too fast, something has to give—not because leaders suddenly prefer diplomacy, but because systems start to strain. A ceasefire, especially one announced loudly and ambiguously, acts as a release valve. The constraints are structural, not psychological. Oil markets respond to threat premiums with price spikes that damage the economies of both belligerents and bystanders alike.