Why Hormuz isn't even the world's most dangerous chokepoint

Edward Fishman, the former State Department sanctions official whose book Chokepoints reframed how Washington thinks about economic power, used a Foreign Policy Live interview to rank the pressure points that could upend global commerce — and the Strait of Hormuz, the one dominating headlines this week, did not top his list. Fishman argues that the strait, whatever its symbolic weight, sits a notch below at least three other chokepoints in the sheer economic damage a closure could inflict, from semiconductor manufacturing bottlenecks to the dollar-clearing systems Washington itself controls. His broader point is that the current crisis is not an aberration but the maturing of a two-decade shift in which states increasingly weaponise the physical and financial infrastructure of globalisation rather than fighting over it directly. That shift, he says, means the next flashpoint is unlikely to announce itself as clearly as a mined strait — it could be a chip fab, a shipping insurer, or a clearing house nobody outside the industry has heard of. Fishman's framework arrives as Trump says a deal to reopen Hormuz to shipping could come within days, following weeks of Iran-Oman talks over a safe-passage arrangement. If a deal holds, he suggests, it will not end the era of chokepoint warfare — it will just relocate its next test elsewhere.