The Strait of Hormuz and the Impact of Its Closure on the GCC States: Asymmetric Interdependence, Sensitivity and Vulnerability

Abstract

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the outbreak of the Iran–Israel/United States war in February 2026 has produced the most severe simultaneous security and economic shock experienced by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) since its establishment in 1981. Existing commentary tends to treat the six member states as a single exposed bloc, an assumption that obscures the analytically decisive fact that their exposure is structurally unequal. Drawing on Keohane and Nye’s theory of asymmetric interdependence, and specifically on their distinction between sensitivity and vulnerability, this article argues that GCC members are uniformly sensitive but sharply differentiated in their vulnerability to disruption at Hormuz. Sensitivity is determined by the immediate, policy-invariant transmission of the shock through prices, war-risk premia, freight availability and fiscal revenue; vulnerability is determined by the availability and cost of effective adjustment, principally the existence of hydrocarbon export capacity that does not transit the strait. On this reading, Oman is structurally exempt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates possess partial and capacity-constrained exits, and Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain are effectively locked in. The article further argues that this configuration produces a specific and counter-intuitive political outcome: shared sensitivity generates strong declaratory unity at the level of collective diplomacy and mutual-defence signalling, while divergent vulnerability simultaneously fragments operational policy on energy routing, force posture and engagement with Tehran. Unity in the GCC, in other words, has been reaffirmed in rhetoric precisely where it has been strained in substance.