Israel's Indirect Stake: How Hormuz Stability Connects to the Eastern Mediterranean
Israel does not import oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Its energy supply arrives primarily through the Ashkelon terminal from the Caspian pipeline system and through domestic production from offshore Mediterranean fields that have grown substantially over the past fifteen years. Israel’s direct exposure to Hormuz transit is limited. Its indirect exposure — through the price effects of any closure, through the regional security consequences of US-Iran conflict, and through the impact of Iranian military capacity on the deterrence calculus that Israel maintains — is substantial and persistent.
The energy price channel is the most straightforward. A Hormuz closure that spiked global oil prices would raise Israel’s energy import costs even if none of the disrupted oil was destined for Israeli ports. Israel is a small, open economy with a significant petroleum product import bill. Global oil price spikes translate directly into Israeli inflation, transportation costs, and government fiscal pressure. The country’s energy independence from Gulf supply has improved but does not insulate it from a market that prices oil globally.
The military dimension is more significant. Iranian capacity to close or threaten the strait is not separate from Iranian capacity to threaten Israel. The weapons systems, the command and control infrastructure, and the military doctrine that underpin Iran’s Hormuz posture are part of the same force that maintains Hezbollah’s arsenal in Lebanon, funds Hamas in Gaza, and targets Israeli territory with ballistic missiles and drones. When Israel and Iran have engaged militarily — the exchange of strikes in April and October 2024 being the most direct example in decades — the same Iranian military infrastructure was engaged in both the Israel-facing and the Gulf-facing threat picture simultaneously.
An Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities — a scenario that Israeli military planners have maintained as a contingency for decades — would almost certainly trigger Iranian retaliation through multiple channels. The strait is one of those channels. Tehran has stated explicitly that any military attack on Iran would produce a response that includes disrupting Gulf navigation. This is not a bluff in the strategic sense: closing the strait in response to an Israeli strike would impose costs on everyone who depends on Gulf oil, which is a much larger constituency than the countries that would be the target of a military strike. The breadth of the economic damage is the point. Iran’s threat to close the strait in response to Israeli military action is a deterrent extended to parties — primarily European and Asian oil importers — who have no stake in the Israeli-Iranian dispute but who would be devastated by the economic consequences of closure. Iran weaponizes their vulnerability against Israeli decision-making.
Israel’s awareness of this dynamic is reflected in its ongoing investment in relationship building with Gulf Arab states who share an interest in Iranian containment but who also have an immediate financial stake in keeping the strait open. The Abraham Accords with the UAE and Bahrain, and the normalization process with Saudi Arabia that has been under discussion, create a set of shared-interest relationships that are partly about Iran. The Gulf states’ Hormuz exposure creates a common cause with Israel on Iranian capability reduction that would not otherwise exist between parties with a complicated history. The strait is part of the strategic glue of a regional alignment that is still being assembled.
For Israeli strategic planning, Hormuz represents both a constraint and an opportunity. The constraint is that any military action against Iran must account for the strait closure threat that Iran can use to make Israeli action economically costly for the entire world, not just for Iran. The opportunity is that this same threat gives Gulf Arab states a reason to want Iranian military capacity reduced — which aligns their interest with Israel’s even if they cannot say so publicly. The strait is not an Israeli strategic concern in the direct sense. It is woven into the regional calculus that determines what is possible and at what cost.