appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

hooksArticlePageFloatingButtonConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

Tom Hussain

Geography has handed the United Arab Emirates quite the quandary: its government wants to cut dependence on the Strait of Hormuz to “zero”, yet the ports that power its economy sit squarely inside the waterway it hopes to avoid.
Jebel Ali and Khalifa ports collectively handle most of the UAE’s US$1 trillion in annual non-oil trade, much of which flows to and from Asia. Together, they form the single most vital link in a logistics corridor stretching from Singapore to Europe – a status not easily replicated.
But war has a way of necessitating the impossible. With the United States and Iran locked in a seemingly intractable conflict, nervous exporters across Asia have been hedging their bets – and Oman’s ports are the immediate beneficiaries.
Duqm, Salalah and Sohar are all enjoying something of a renaissance, attracting shipping lines, investors and billion-dollar free-zone deals as cargo owners seek routes free from Hormuz’s volatility.
The UAE has its own ports along the Gulf of Oman and Minister for Foreign Trade Thani Al Zeyoudi has outlined plans to pour investment into Khor Fakkan, Fujairah and Dibba, as well as an entirely new facility to be built on the country’s east coast.


“We’re moving towards having zero Hormuz dependency and that’s regardless of whether it’s open or not,” Zeyoudi told Bloomberg last month, framing the strategy as insurance. “It’s going to open and we hope that will happen quickly, but we will not stop the new plan.”
Capacity will need to be seriously ramped up for the east coast ports to start shouldering more of the trade burden, however. Khor Fakkan, the busiest terminal on that coast, moved 2.5 million standard shipping containers, known as twenty-foot equivalent units, last year – a fraction of Jebel Ali’s 15.5 million TEU and Khalifa’s 6.6 million.
Even with Khor Fakkan’s capacity set to expand from 3.5 million to 5 million TEU, it remains dwarfed by Jebel Ali’s 19-million-TEU capacity and Khalifa’s 10.5 million.
Among Oman’s terminals, meanwhile, only Salalah currently registers meaningfully, at 5.5 million TEU, while Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah – the region’s only other major Hormuz workaround – handled 8.3 million last year.

With that in mind, Robert Mogielnicki, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Arab Gulf States Institute, said: “the Emiratis view zero dependency on Hormuz as a desired option, not an objective in itself”.
Diversification “may help boost resilience”, he said, but any eventual post-war settlement over Hormuz would inevitably produce “winners and losers” among the UAE’s ports and free zones – with shippers voting with their cargo based on pricing and perceived risk.
There is precedent for such disruption. “We have seen Red Sea traffic being slow to normalise following tensions with the Houthis,” Mognielicki said of the Iran-allied movement’s attacks on shipping moving through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, off the coast of Yemen, between 2023 and 2025.
Gravity of trade
Port infrastructure tells only half the story. The economic ecosystem that has clustered around Jebel Ali – a free zone that has drawn roughly 40 per cent of all foreign investment in the UAE – is not something the can be easily replaced or recreated.
Unsurprisingly, DP World, the Dubai-government-controlled operator of the Jebel Ali superhub, appears largely unmoved by talk of zero reliance on Hormuz.
In a federation of seven hereditary monarchies where oil-rich Abu Dhabi acts as the centre of political power and Dubai drives commerce, DP World’s strategy looks past the current crisis towards permanence: a diversified, integrated network enabling global trade over the long term.
“Customers are looking to build greater resilience into their supply chains, but resilience is not the same as replacing established hubs,” a company spokesman said. “In practice, customers are balancing optionality with cost and efficiency, which is why Jebel Ali continues to play a central role in regional and global trade.”

DP World ranks among the world’s foremost port operators, vying for global supremacy with Hong Kong’s Cosco Shipping Ports and Hutchison Port Holdings, and Singapore’s PSA International.
What sets Jebel Ali apart, the company spokesman said, was that it functioned as more than a transshipment point, with its port, free zone, logistics network and multimodal reach “creating significant value” through manufacturing, warehousing and market access that “cannot be replicated quickly elsewhere”.
Customers seeking flexibility could already route cargo through Jeddah, Khor Fakkan or Sohar, he said, but such options “complement, rather than replace” Jebel Ali, whose scale and connectivity continue to “deliver compelling commercial advantages”.
Gulftainer, operator of the port at Khor Fakkan, added that global trade was “changing fundamentally”.
“Customers are no longer looking for isolated logistics services,” CEO Farid Belbouab said on July 7 while announcing the company’s plans to restructure. “They are looking for resilient, intelligent and fully integrated supply chain solutions.”
In the end, the UAE’s future as Asia’s gateway to Europe may rest less on concrete and cranes than on diplomacy.
A durable peace over Hormuz is more likely to determine whether the country’s trade ambitions hold than any spending spree on its margins.
“A negotiated settlement that ensures a durable return to stability in the Strait of Hormuz would be a huge relief for the UAE,” Mogielnicki said, adding that Emirati policymakers “aren’t going to sit around and hope for that to happen without plans B, C and D”.


Iran says only diplomacy can end Hormuz crisis after Trump rejects deal

Xi-Trump atmospherics welcomed but mask structural rifts: analysts

Iran offers US plan to reopen Hormuz within 7 days

HK Electric to cut fuel charge for first time in 4 months as CLP raises rate

US-Israel war on Iran

UAE’s Hormuz workaround tries to bypass its trillion-dollar economic heart

Workers load and unload containers  at Khor Fakkan Port in the United Arab Emirates on July 7. Photo: EPA

Ships anchor at Khor Fakkan Port in the United Arab Emirates on July 7. Photo:  EPA

Smoke billows from Jebel Ali port in Dubai following an Iranian attack on March 1. Photo: Reuters

‘Just as soon as possible’: Asia’s post-Hormuz supply chain rethink

A crane loads a container onto a ship at a terminal in Singapore. Photo: AFP

Ships are seen in the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Tuesday. Photo: ISNA/WANA/Reuters

A house burns in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Tuesday after a Russian strike. Photo: AP 

A man fills his motorcycle with fuel at a petrol station in Selangor, Malaysia, last month. Photo: EPA

A person points to a screen displaying vessel movements in the Strait of Hormuz in May. Photo: AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (left) on the sidelines of a Russia-Asean Summit in Kazan on June 17. Photo: Kremlin/Sputnik/EPA

A crane loads a container onto a ship at the Pasir Panjang port terminal in Singapore. Photo: AFP

No victory, no defeat: Iran war pauses with fragile freeze

Smoke rises behind the Azadi Tower in Tehran following a US-Israeli military strike on Iran in early March. Photo: ISNA/AP

An American warship fires missiles from an undisclosed location in March amid the US-Israel war on Iran. Photo: US Central Command/Reuters

(From left) Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister meets his Pakistani, Turkish and Egyptian counterparts in Islamabad for talks on the Iran war in March. Photo: Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Xinhua

Smoke rises from an Israeli bombardment of a village in southern Lebanon on Sunday. Photo: AFP

A woman in Tehran walks past a giant billboard depicting Iranian missiles and a sword on June 10. Photo: AFP

US President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance monitor strikes on three Iranian nuclear enrichment sites carried out on June 21 last year. Photo: The White House/Getty Images/TNS

UAE ‘surpassing Hong Kong’, challenging Singapore for global trade crown

A container ship docked at the port of Jebel Ali, operated by the Dubai-based ports operator DP World. Photo: AFP

The Burj Khalifa and skyline of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Photo: Reuters

Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (centre), also UAE’s prime minister and vice-president, attends the World Governments Summit in Dubai on February 3. Photo: AFP

Container cranes bearing the PSA logo in Singapore. The UAE’s DP World is on track to challenge PSA International for the title of world’s leading port operator. Photo: EPA-EFE

The first Pax Silica Summit, held in Washington, the US, in December 2025. Photo: Getty Images/AFP

A member of a military police unit loyal to the Southern Transitional Council, a UAE-backed separatist group, stands guard on a patrol vehicle in Aden, Yemen, on January 10. Photo: Reuters

This Week in Asia

Economics

Politics

News

World

Middle East

New terminals offer insurance, but analysts say securing trade ultimately relies on lasting peace, not just pouring concrete


New terminals offer insurance, but analysts say securing trade ultimately relies on lasting peace, not just pouring concrete.


UAE’s Hormuz workaround tries to bypass its trillion-dollar economic heart

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}New terminals offer insurance, but analysts say securing trade ultimately relies on lasting peace, not just pouring concrete

New terminals offer insurance, but analysts say securing trade ultimately relies on lasting peace, not just pouring concrete