August 16, 2026
Juan Cole
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump said in a speech on Saturday that he wants to make the Strait of Hormuz part of the United States.
Juan Cole
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump said in a speech on Saturday that he wants to make the Strait of Hormuz part of the United States.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister,
Kazem Gharibabadi replied, “Trump says he will soon declare the Strait of
Hormuz as US territory after Iran’s defeat! The Strait of Hormuz cannot be
captured by a tweet, an aircraft carrier, an order, or an election speech. Iran
is neither afraid of threats nor intimidated by displays of power.”
Western powers have attempted to control the Strait of Hormuz before. Basically, however, they only held it at Iranian sufferance. When, as in 1622, the Iranians determined to expel the foreigners, they proved able to do so. Nowadays they have 50,000 drones and have damaged or destroyed all 17 US bases in the region, so I don’t think trying to occupy Hormuz would be any fun.
It was known as a strategic trading port even before the age of the great maritime empires.
Marco Polo wrote in his Travels , likely of his second visit to Hormuz in 1293–1294, shortly before the ruler of the Persian littoral moved much of his population to the island of Jarun (now also called Hormuz) to escape raiding by Mongols and Chaghatay Turks.
Marco Polo related,
“At length you reach the border of the ocean, where, upon an island, at no great distance from the shore, stands a city named Ormus, whose port is frequented by traders from all parts of India, who bring spices and drugs, precious stones, pearls, gold tissues, elephants teeth, and various other articles of merchandize. These they dispose of to a different set of traders, by whom they are dispersed throughout the world. This city, indeed, is eminently commercial, has towns and castles dependent upon it, and is esteemed the principal place in the kingdom of Kierman . . .”
Despite the “spices and drugs, precious stones, pearls, gold leaf, ivory” and other goods traded there, Hormuz in Marco Polo’s telling was at some times during the year uninhabitable because of the heat. (Marco Polo was writing during the medieval warming period, when the climate, though it wasn’t quite as hot as today, was quite warm.)
Its ruler is named Rukmedin Achomak [Rukn al-Din Mahmud], who governs with absolute authority, but at the same time acknowledges the king of Kierman as his liege lord. When any foreign merchant happens to die within his jurisdiction, he confiscates the property, and deposits the amount in his treasury. During the summer season, the inhabitants do not remain in the city, on account of the excessive heat, which renders the air unwholesome, but retire to their gardens along the shore or on the banks of the river, where with a kind of ozier-work they construct huts over the water. These they enclose with stakes, driven in the water on the one side, and on the other upon the shore, making a covering of leaves to shelter them from the sun. Here they reside during the period in which there blows, every day, from about the hour of nine until noon, a land-wind so intensely hot as to impede respiration, and to occasion death by suffocating the person exposed to it. None can escape from its effects who are overtaken by it on the sandy plain. As soon as the approach of this wind is perceived by the inhabitants, they immerge themselves to the chin in water, and continue in that situation until it ceases to blow.”
If the winds were bringing very high temperatures amid 80 percent humidity, people may in fact have been dying of it. We’re on the verge of returning to this dangerous climate now that we are surpassing the medieval warming maximum.
Portugal took the island of Hormuz briefly in 1507-1508, and then came back to rule it 1515 to 1622. This occupation was during the Little Ice Age and we don’t hear as much about fatal heat. Although the Portuguese were now imperial administrators, they ruled through a vassal dynasty of the kings of Hormuz.
Interestingly, as Willem Floor observes, “Hormuz continued for some time the age-old policy of paying an annual fixed tribute (moqarrariya) to the mainland rulers to ensure safe passage of commercial traffic to and from the island.”
Over 500 years ago, Iran was collecting tolls for passage through the Strait of Hormuz!
But, Floor says, the Portuguese gradually put a stop to those payments.
The king of Hormuz owned some of what is now the United Arab Emirates, especially the port at present-day Ras al-Khaimah, which the Portuguese invaded and took over, since it was said to generate great wealth.
Floor quotes traveler Michele Membré as depicting Hormuz in 1540 as “small; it seemed to me to have 2,000 hearths in number, and the fort is very small. It is adjacent to the city, with one part next to the city and one part in the sea, and it has much artillery and the houses are around it. Inside it has a large water citadel. All the people of the city are Moors [Muslims] and a few Portuguese. In the said city they make a very great traffic of merchandise, for merchants of all the world are found there, and sometimes there is scarcity of provisions, and sometimes great abundance. Ships come to the said city of Hormuz from everywhere, that is, from Basra, from India and from the Straits of Mecca. For great business is done in divers merchandise.”
The great historian Marshall Hodgson spoke of the great early modern Muslim-ruled land empires — the Mughals in India, the Safavids in Iran, and the Ottomans in Anatolia, the Balkans and the Arabic-speaking lands — as “gunpowder empires,” given their adoption of artillery. They were agrarian states, mainly dependent on agriculture, and worried about land-based enemies. For Safavid Iran the threats were from Central Asia, Mughal India and the Ottomans.
The reason for which little Portugal, a country of only about a million poor peasants, could incorporate places like Hormuz and Goa into its maritime empire was twofold. First, it had naval artillery. The Portuguese built big ships for the rough Atlantic, out of sturdy wood, nailing them together. The Indian Ocean is placid, and locals tied their ships together with rope. Marco Polo was appalled, and did not understand why these ships were perfectly seaworthy in that environment.
However, after the Military Revolution that began in 1450, when Europeans adopted Chinese gunpowder and constructed cannons, the Portuguese found they could mount cannons on their sturdy ships. The bigger the cannons and the greater range they had, the more likely it was you could blow an enemy ship out of the water. Obviously, you can’t put cannons on ships tied together with ropes, so for a long time the Portuguese dominated the Indian Ocean and its component parts such as the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, etc.
The other reason great Muslim land empires had little incentive to dislodge Lisbon’s land forts was that it wasn’t cost effective.
It is estimated that Portuguese control of coastal enclaves such as Goa and Diu in India only cost the Mughal Empire about 5% of its revenues (from port tariffs). The Mughals got most of their tax income from peasant farmers. Mounting an army and a navy and pushing the Portuguese out would have cost the Mughals more than they would have realized in extra port taxes. In 1632 the Mughals did successfully besiege Hooghly in Bengal, and captured some 300 Portuguese pirates. But Goa intervened and the Mughals had to let some Portuguese return to trade in Bengal. It is very unlikely that the 1632 campaign was remunerative.
Likewise, the Safavid rulers of Iran had other fish to fry than the Portuguese in Bahrain and Hormuz.
Only when Shah Abbas fought off his land-based challengers and built Iran up into a strong empire did he decide to try to dislodge the Portuguese from Hormuz and Bahrain. Even then he did so in collaboration with the British and to a lesser extent the Dutch, both of which were rivals of Lisbon.
I told the story last April of how, in 1622, the Safavids finally expelled the Portuguese from Hormuz.
Ironically, Hormuz declined in importance after that. In the 1700s the Sultanate of Oman took it over. It ceased being a major entrepot. My impression is that the bigger Dutch ships of that era could take advantage of the southern trade winds and so trade shifted south. The Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies and thence to China and Japan was the route, and it didn’t require a stop at Hormuz, in which the Dutch were not very interested. In the 19th century, the British were focused on their enormous Indian domains and had plenty of ports in the Persian Gulf for the Indian trade to the Mediterranean. Only the discovery of petroleum in Masjid Sulaiman in 1908 by George Reynolds caused the Strait of Hormuz gradually to reemerge as a global strategic choke point.
Western powers have attempted to control the Strait of Hormuz before. Basically, however, they only held it at Iranian sufferance. When, as in 1622, the Iranians determined to expel the foreigners, they proved able to do so. Nowadays they have 50,000 drones and have damaged or destroyed all 17 US bases in the region, so I don’t think trying to occupy Hormuz would be any fun.
It was known as a strategic trading port even before the age of the great maritime empires.
Marco Polo wrote in his Travels , likely of his second visit to Hormuz in 1293–1294, shortly before the ruler of the Persian littoral moved much of his population to the island of Jarun (now also called Hormuz) to escape raiding by Mongols and Chaghatay Turks.
Marco Polo related,
“At length you reach the border of the ocean, where, upon an island, at no great distance from the shore, stands a city named Ormus, whose port is frequented by traders from all parts of India, who bring spices and drugs, precious stones, pearls, gold tissues, elephants teeth, and various other articles of merchandize. These they dispose of to a different set of traders, by whom they are dispersed throughout the world. This city, indeed, is eminently commercial, has towns and castles dependent upon it, and is esteemed the principal place in the kingdom of Kierman . . .”
Despite the “spices and drugs, precious stones, pearls, gold leaf, ivory” and other goods traded there, Hormuz in Marco Polo’s telling was at some times during the year uninhabitable because of the heat. (Marco Polo was writing during the medieval warming period, when the climate, though it wasn’t quite as hot as today, was quite warm.)
Its ruler is named Rukmedin Achomak [Rukn al-Din Mahmud], who governs with absolute authority, but at the same time acknowledges the king of Kierman as his liege lord. When any foreign merchant happens to die within his jurisdiction, he confiscates the property, and deposits the amount in his treasury. During the summer season, the inhabitants do not remain in the city, on account of the excessive heat, which renders the air unwholesome, but retire to their gardens along the shore or on the banks of the river, where with a kind of ozier-work they construct huts over the water. These they enclose with stakes, driven in the water on the one side, and on the other upon the shore, making a covering of leaves to shelter them from the sun. Here they reside during the period in which there blows, every day, from about the hour of nine until noon, a land-wind so intensely hot as to impede respiration, and to occasion death by suffocating the person exposed to it. None can escape from its effects who are overtaken by it on the sandy plain. As soon as the approach of this wind is perceived by the inhabitants, they immerge themselves to the chin in water, and continue in that situation until it ceases to blow.”
If the winds were bringing very high temperatures amid 80 percent humidity, people may in fact have been dying of it. We’re on the verge of returning to this dangerous climate now that we are surpassing the medieval warming maximum.
Portugal took the island of Hormuz briefly in 1507-1508, and then came back to rule it 1515 to 1622. This occupation was during the Little Ice Age and we don’t hear as much about fatal heat. Although the Portuguese were now imperial administrators, they ruled through a vassal dynasty of the kings of Hormuz.
Interestingly, as Willem Floor observes, “Hormuz continued for some time the age-old policy of paying an annual fixed tribute (moqarrariya) to the mainland rulers to ensure safe passage of commercial traffic to and from the island.”
Over 500 years ago, Iran was collecting tolls for passage through the Strait of Hormuz!
But, Floor says, the Portuguese gradually put a stop to those payments.
The king of Hormuz owned some of what is now the United Arab Emirates, especially the port at present-day Ras al-Khaimah, which the Portuguese invaded and took over, since it was said to generate great wealth.
Floor quotes traveler Michele Membré as depicting Hormuz in 1540 as “small; it seemed to me to have 2,000 hearths in number, and the fort is very small. It is adjacent to the city, with one part next to the city and one part in the sea, and it has much artillery and the houses are around it. Inside it has a large water citadel. All the people of the city are Moors [Muslims] and a few Portuguese. In the said city they make a very great traffic of merchandise, for merchants of all the world are found there, and sometimes there is scarcity of provisions, and sometimes great abundance. Ships come to the said city of Hormuz from everywhere, that is, from Basra, from India and from the Straits of Mecca. For great business is done in divers merchandise.”
The great historian Marshall Hodgson spoke of the great early modern Muslim-ruled land empires — the Mughals in India, the Safavids in Iran, and the Ottomans in Anatolia, the Balkans and the Arabic-speaking lands — as “gunpowder empires,” given their adoption of artillery. They were agrarian states, mainly dependent on agriculture, and worried about land-based enemies. For Safavid Iran the threats were from Central Asia, Mughal India and the Ottomans.
The reason for which little Portugal, a country of only about a million poor peasants, could incorporate places like Hormuz and Goa into its maritime empire was twofold. First, it had naval artillery. The Portuguese built big ships for the rough Atlantic, out of sturdy wood, nailing them together. The Indian Ocean is placid, and locals tied their ships together with rope. Marco Polo was appalled, and did not understand why these ships were perfectly seaworthy in that environment.
However, after the Military Revolution that began in 1450, when Europeans adopted Chinese gunpowder and constructed cannons, the Portuguese found they could mount cannons on their sturdy ships. The bigger the cannons and the greater range they had, the more likely it was you could blow an enemy ship out of the water. Obviously, you can’t put cannons on ships tied together with ropes, so for a long time the Portuguese dominated the Indian Ocean and its component parts such as the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, etc.
The other reason great Muslim land empires had little incentive to dislodge Lisbon’s land forts was that it wasn’t cost effective.
It is estimated that Portuguese control of coastal enclaves such as Goa and Diu in India only cost the Mughal Empire about 5% of its revenues (from port tariffs). The Mughals got most of their tax income from peasant farmers. Mounting an army and a navy and pushing the Portuguese out would have cost the Mughals more than they would have realized in extra port taxes. In 1632 the Mughals did successfully besiege Hooghly in Bengal, and captured some 300 Portuguese pirates. But Goa intervened and the Mughals had to let some Portuguese return to trade in Bengal. It is very unlikely that the 1632 campaign was remunerative.
Likewise, the Safavid rulers of Iran had other fish to fry than the Portuguese in Bahrain and Hormuz.
Only when Shah Abbas fought off his land-based challengers and built Iran up into a strong empire did he decide to try to dislodge the Portuguese from Hormuz and Bahrain. Even then he did so in collaboration with the British and to a lesser extent the Dutch, both of which were rivals of Lisbon.
I told the story last April of how, in 1622, the Safavids finally expelled the Portuguese from Hormuz.
Ironically, Hormuz declined in importance after that. In the 1700s the Sultanate of Oman took it over. It ceased being a major entrepot. My impression is that the bigger Dutch ships of that era could take advantage of the southern trade winds and so trade shifted south. The Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies and thence to China and Japan was the route, and it didn’t require a stop at Hormuz, in which the Dutch were not very interested. In the 19th century, the British were focused on their enormous Indian domains and had plenty of ports in the Persian Gulf for the Indian trade to the Mediterranean. Only the discovery of petroleum in Masjid Sulaiman in 1908 by George Reynolds caused the Strait of Hormuz gradually to reemerge as a global strategic choke point.
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