Majidreza Hariri told KhabarOnline that shifting container shipments from sea to land routes under a US maritime blockade would raise costs from around 3,000 dollars per container by sea to 12,000 dollars by land. With two million containers entering Iran’s southern ports each year the additional 9,000 dollars per unit would total 18 billion dollars annually according to the head of the Iran-China Chamber of Commerce whose remarks were reported by Arab Times. That sum exceeds the country’s yearly spending of less than 15 billion dollars on essential goods and medicines Hariri noted in the interview published Tuesday.
Hariri cautioned that attempting to bypass any naval blockade would further damage the economy drawing parallels to past experiences under international sanctions. «The worst thing that could happen today is for us to think we can circumvent the naval blockade and try to run the country despite it» he said. Previous efforts to evade rather than lift sanctions had instead produced economic weakness and widespread corruption the commerce official added.
The warning extends to Iran’s roughly 50 billion dollars in annual non-oil exports which Hariri said could become unprofitable if moved overland because transport expenses would exceed generated profits. Iran Customs Administration data placed non-oil exports at 57.8 billion dollars in the year ending March 2025 with total non-oil trade reaching 109.7 billion dollars according to a Tehran Times report on official figures. Such shifts would compound pressures on an economy already navigating constrained maritime access.
Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dropped to six vessels on August 10 below the preceding 10-day average of around 11 according to Kpler data cited by Reuters and carried in the Arab Times article. Four commodity ships entered the waterway including two empty oil-product tankers while two exited one carrying liquefied petroleum gas and another with residual fuels. IMF PortWatch data showed an even steeper recent decline with daily vessel averages falling from about 90 in early August 2025 to roughly four in the week ending August 2 2026 representing a 96 percent drop in both traffic and estimated tonnage.[[1]](https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/8/7/irans-grip-on-trade-is-a-potent-weapon-but-it-has-an-expiry-date)
The strait remains a critical chokepoint carrying around 20 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products in 2024 equivalent to one-fifth of global oil and petroleum product consumption according to US Energy Information Administration figures. That volume represented more than one-quarter of total global seaborne oil trade with the majority destined for Asia where China and India received 44 percent of the crude. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates also shipped nearly one-fifth of global liquefied natural gas trade through the passage which lacks practical alternative export routes for several producers an International Energy Agency assessment found.
Prolonged disruptions could intensify existing strains on Iran’s economy which the World Bank estimated contracted 2.7 percent in the 2025-26 Iranian year amid sanctions conflict impacts and resource shortages. A former Iranian Chamber of Commerce head separately estimated that sanctions inflicted 1.2 trillion dollars in damages between 2011 and 2023 resulting in an average annual per capita income loss of around 1,200 dollars. Nearly 94 percent of Iran’s 170 million tonnes of annual foreign trade passes through southern ports leaving limited scope for redirection to northern Caspian routes which handle only about 4 percent under normal conditions an Al Jazeera analysis citing local data reported.
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