Pakistan, Aug. 18 -- The Strait of Hormuz has carried commerce and conflict for over two thousand years. Under the Achaemenid Empire, Persian Gulf shipping linked the Persian heartland to the Indus Valley, though overland routes still dominated. The Parthians also depended more on overland trade routes whereas the Sassanids expanded maritime trade through the Gulf in the centuries that followed, moving silk, spices, and pearls between Mesopotamia, Persia, and India. No single power fully controlled the strait in that period. It functioned as an open corridor, its narrowness made it a natural funnel for east-west trade rather than a contested chokepoint, since no navy at that time yet had the reach to blockade it.

That however, changed wi...