Each flare‑up in the Middle East draws global focus back to the same narrow waterway. When tankers are detained or missiles streak near the Persian Gulf, oil prices swing, insurers adjust risk premiums, shipping lanes shift, and the United States shifts naval and air assets to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. This reaction is logical—the strait moves volumes that no alternative can match. Parallel to the sea lane, a second layer of energy security is emerging: pipelines, railways, power grids, and transit corridors that connect the Caspian Basin and South Caucasus to Europe.
Western governments are coupling a forward military posture in the Persian Gulf with a gradual push to broaden the pathways through which energy and trade reach global markets. These initiatives are handled by separate agencies and run on different schedules. Though they do not yet constitute a unified strategy, combined they blunt the influence any single chokepoint, supplier, or armed group can wield over the system.
The magnitude of this leverage became evident this year. In 2024, roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day transited Hormuz—about one‑fifth of global petroleum‑liquids demand—plus roughly one‑fifth of worldwide LNG trade, most of it originating from Qatar. During the U.S.–Iran standoff, the waterway came close to shutting down. According to the Energy Information Administration, oil flow through the strait dropped to roughly 4.9 million barrels per day in Q2 2026, down from 21.6 million two quarters earlier, while LNG shipments virtually stopped. The agency notes that vessel‑tracking data have been unreliable since February.
No overland corridor across the Caucasus can match that throughput, and none of the routes under discussion handles the Asia‑bound crude or Qatari LNG that constitute Hormuz’s core exposure. In 2024, 84 % of the oil and 83 % of the LNG moving through the strait headed to Asia, chiefly China, India, Japan, and South Korea. An Armenian railway or a new Anatolian line cannot offset that imbalance—this is the paradox fueling the corridor race. The strait remains indispensable, yet, as this spring demonstrated, it can also strangle the system at a moment’s notice. The new corridors add redundancy for Europe but do not lessen Hormuz’s central role; each crisis that highlights reliance on a single waterway strengthens the argument for building them.
Existing routes are modest in volume but politically salient. The Baku‑Tbilisi‑Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline transports Caspian crude across Georgia to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, avoiding Russian and Iranian territory—its chief advantage. However, its political significance exceeds its actual throughput. With a design capacity of 1.2 million barrels per day, the BTC moved about 206 million barrels in 2025, averaging roughly 565,000 barrels daily—under half capacity and down nearly 8 % year‑over‑year.
Natural gas tells a comparable tale. Azerbaijani gas reaches Europe via the Southern Gas Corridor, delivering about 12.8 billion cubic meters in 2025—virtually unchanged from 2024 and a fraction of the EU’s roughly 335 billion cubic meters of annual demand. Supplies to Germany and Austria started in January 2026, a diplomatic step that did not alter the scale. Often quoted as a potential expansion to 31 billion cubic meters, the Trans‑Anatolian pipeline’s ceiling reflects engineering headroom rather than a funded project; the necessary compressor upgrades and long‑term contracts have not been secured.
Observers sometimes cite the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity—a proposed corridor across southern Armenia that would link Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave and then to Turkey—but it remains merely a conceptual framework. It does not yet exist and may never materialize. While its vision is broad, the underlying agreement was only initialed at the White House in August 2025 and remains unsigned; Baku continues to tie final ratification to constitutional changes in Armenia. Nonetheless, the route’s design is beginning to take shape.
Under the arrangement, a U.S.-led consortium would secure development rights for an initial 49‑year term—74 % American and 26 % Armenian—while Armenia retains authority over border control, customs, taxation, and security on its territory. By design, the setup displaces Russia, whose border guards previously monitored the route under the 2020 ceasefire, without ceding Armenian sovereignty to Washington—a shift in influence that is more tangible than any volume metric.
The Trump Route remains non‑operational; engineering surveys in Armenia are only just getting underway. Current transit corridors still pass through Georgia, where ties with Washington and Brussels have soured markedly, and the Turkish‑Armenian frontier stays shut despite Ankara’s May easing of direct‑trade restrictions.
Turkey stands to benefit most from this realignment. Nearly every westbound route under discussion—the BTC pipeline, the Southern Gas Corridor, the Middle Corridor, and the proposed southern Armenian corridor—either crosses Turkish territory or ends at a Turkish port, positioning Ankara as the near‑indispensable transit hub for Caspian energy headed west. As more energy and commerce flow through Turkey, its leverage over Europe, Washington, Moscow, and Tehran grows, granting it greater freedom to dictate terms. Turkey functions as an independent broker on this map, and the corridor strategy hinges on cooperation—cooperation that Ankara can set on its own terms.
A maritime chokepoint creates a confined arena where U.S. naval and air power can be concentrated within a limited geographic area. By contrast, land corridors extend thousands of kilometers across fixed, largely undefended infrastructure and multiple jurisdictions, much of it exposed to Russian and Iranian standoff weapons and situated near unresolved conflicts. Spreading routes distributes risk across many potential disruption points.
The 2022 Nord Stream sabotage demonstrated how a single pipeline can be destroyed without clear attribution or effective remedy. In July 2026, drone strikes on the Black Sea terminal of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium reduced loadings by more than one‑fifth—several hundred thousand barrels per day—on a route that carries roughly 2 % of global oil supplies and serves as Kazakhstan’s primary maritime outlet.
Pipeline sections in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia fall outside NATO territory, so attacks on them would not automatically trigger the alliance’s mutual‑defence clause. A diversified network of routes offers a stronger hedge than reliance on a single conduit. Physical vulnerabilities persist, and ignoring them repeats the complacency that once assumed sea lanes were permanently secure.
Turning to Iran, it is often claimed that the country is being bypassed given its position between the Persian Gulf, the Caspian, Central Asia, and the Caucasus—but that is inaccurate. Iran is shut out of the Western and Persian Gulf‑Arab corridor networks while remaining tightly integrated into the Russian‑led alternative. The clearest illustration is the International North‑South Transport Corridor (INSTC), the Russia‑Iran‑India route whose missing Iranian segment, the Rasht‑Astara railway, secured financing in early 2026 as corridor trade roughly doubled in 2024. For Iran, the effect is adverse lock‑in: it becomes a captive, sanctions‑burdened, lower‑value node in a Moscow‑dependent network, limiting its ability to act as a preferred connector courted by all sides. Its eastern buffer is thinner than many assume. The 25‑year partnership with China has yielded discounted oil sales but little of the promised investment.
Iran’s remaining leverage is of a particular, self‑undermining nature. It still flanks Hormuz and can threaten the strait, and it regards any corridor along its Armenian border as a red line while opposing a U.S. presence on its northern frontier. This enables Iran to raise costs and insurance premiums for others, yet it yields little economic gain from transit fees or integration. Essentially, the Islamic Republic is exchanging the profitable role of a desired transit hub for the costly stance of a chokepoint that the world spends billions to circumvent.
Since the majority of Hormuz’s oil and gas flows eastward rather than westward, no Caucasus pipeline can capture the bulk of that exposure; it cannot transport the Asia‑bound crude or Qatari LNG. Consequently, the new corridors offer only marginal redundancy for Europe, while the bulk of reliance on the strait remains in Asia.
In this light, diversification is a partial remedy. Its deeper impact lies in re‑pricing Iran’s geographic standing by establishing a competing Eurasian transit network, which reduces the premium on Iran’s position while the fundamental reliance on Hormuz stays largely unchanged. The spring’s near‑closure demonstrated that dependence remains concentrated in the same narrow waterway and under the same government’s control.
This is the paradox left by the corridor race: the world cannot bypass Hormuz because the volume of crude and gas transiting it is too large and too heavily skewed toward Asian markets to be diverted elsewhere. New corridors are increasingly skirting Iran. Hormuz will stay indispensable as long as the Persian Gulf produces and Asia consumes. Iran’s broader geopolitical outlook hinges on whether future pipelines, railways, and power grids are laid across its territory; increasingly, they are being built elsewhere—a decision now being set in concrete.
Aidin Panahi is an energy expert with the Iran Prosperity Project. Follow him on X @Aidin_FreeIran.
Image: Jelger Groeneveld via Wikimedia Commons
