Strait of Hormuz is a shipping channel to the United States; but to Iran, it’s a sovereign soil guarded with the same resolve Iran showed centuries ago. Iran continues to treat the strait as a border wall rather than as a waterway, four hundred years after the Portuguese were driven out of Hormuz. The Portuguese controlled the fortress-island of Hormuz for a century starting from 1507 AD till 1622, when Shah Abbas I of Safavid Persia, besieged and drove out the Portuguese garrison, re-establishing Persian dominance over the waterway. That incident is constantly engraved in Iranian political memory and people as evidence that Iranian sovereignty over Hormuz has always been the prime. Hormuz’s importance to international trade was however since then, rarely put to the test till the current crisis which has reawakened the giant, as a real pressure point for the global economy. Reports closure........

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