While Iran Blocks the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia Sends Ships Over the Mountains to Bypass It

This is the Persian Gulf.

And now we need to cover this route about 590 mi long all the way to this point.

Under Saudi Arabia’s plan, huge cargo ships carrying all kinds of goods are supposed to pass through here.

And that’s despite the fact that this entire area is solid mountains.

See for yourself.

There’s basically no infrastructure here at all.

So, how does the country plan to send ships through a place like this? Although, that’s not even the biggest problem.

Take a look over here.

This is Yemen.

And according to the plan, part of Saudi Arabia’s route would have to pass through the territory of a country that’s been trapped in a civil war for years.

And if you’re wondering why they would take such a risk and cut straight through the mountains, it’s because Saudi Arabia doesn’t really have another option.

Right now, a blockade of the straight of Hormuz is not just a problem because of oil and gas.

The Persian Gulf countries also supply roughly onethird of all nitrogen fertilizer on the global market.

And a closed hormuz would be a disaster for the Gulf States because they import even the most basic resources.

That’s the problem Saudi Arabia is trying to solve.

So how exactly are they planning to pull off something this ambitious? And would it really help ships bypass the straight of Hormuz? Let’s find out.

Let’s start by understanding how the Gulf States can be so dependent on a single straight and the container ships passing through it.

Just look at this place.

It’s almost nothing but desert.

Literally sand everywhere.

temperatures hitting 113° F in the shade, you can’t exactly grow crops here.

You can’t turn cattle out to pasture.

There’s simply nowhere for them to graze.

And that’s where the region’s real dependence on the outside world begins.

Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and Bahrain import nearly 90% of their food.

Saudi Arabia tries to project self-sufficiency and does grow some of its own produce but strip away the polished messaging and the dependence is still around 70 to 80%.

And that means something very simple.

Every breakfast, every lunch, every dinner has to come from somewhere else.

Meat comes from Australia.

Grain comes from the Black Sea region.

Dairy comes from Europe.

All of it moves through the straight of Hormuz.

And if that routes cut off, store shelves would start emptying fast.

But food’s only part of the problem.

What about the things without which life in the desert is physically impossible? Water and cooling.

That’s where the situation becomes truly alarming.

There are no rivers, almost no lakes.

Rain is rare.

So, the entire region relies on the only real option it has, desalination plants.

And that leads to, well, you’ll see it on the map in a moment.

In Saudi Arabia, roughly 50 to 60% of the water supply comes from desalination.

In Qatar, it’s about 40%.

In the UAE, roughly half.

In Bahrain, also about 40%, and then there’s Kuwait, where dependence on dissalination facilities reaches as high as 90%.

Sounds like a lifeline for desert countries.

It is, but now let’s look at what technology actually requires.

Dissalination plants do not simply take seawater and turn it into fresh water.

There are highly complex systems built on membranes, chemicals, pumps, and electronics.

And those components are not produced locally.

It all has to be shipped in from abroad by sea.

If a container carrying replacement filters doesn’t arrive on time, a plant can start choking up.

Water production drops.

And if it seems like only the Gulf countries depend on the rest of the world, that’s not true either.

The world depends on the Gulf as well.

And not just because of oil and gas.

Right now, massive shipments of fertilizer, roughly 1 million tons, are stuck in the Persian Gulf and can’t get out.

Wait a second.

Fertilizer in the desert and countries where almost nothing grows.

It sounds paradoxical, but it’s a very real problem.

One that affects countries all over the world.

The explanation’s actually pretty simple.

Modern nitrogen fertilizers are basically natural gas in packaged form.

And that’s where Qatar and Saudi Arabia come in.

They have so much gas that they can do far more than cover their own needs.

They can produce fertilizer on an enormous industrial scale and do it at a lower cost than almost anyone else in the world.

And once you see the numbers, you realize just how serious this is.

About 30% of the world’s maritime fertilizer exports come from the Persian Gulf countries.

And if we look specifically at URA, the world’s most widely used fertilizer, the shares nearly half.

Do you see the whole scale? If this system starts slowing down, the whole world will feel it very quickly.

Take Brazil for example.

It’s a giant in soybean and corn production.

Basically, one of the countries feeding half the world.

There’s a catch.

Without imported fertilizer, including supplies from the Persian Gulf, crop yields there can drop by 30 to 50% in a single season.

And that immediately means higher prices.

Not just for grain either.

Once the chain reaction begins, the cost of just about everything starts going up.

Now look at India.

It’s a huge country that has to feed itself every single day.

And it’s one of the world’s biggest buyers of ura.

Want to guess where a large share of it comes from? That’s right, the Persian Gulf again.

So now the big question is what project does Saudi Arabia come up with that could help solve this problem.

So the Saudi project is called the Salman Canal.

The idea is an artificial waterway roughly 590 to 597 mi long.

Sure, you can dig even 6,000 mi of canal if you want.

But how do you make that strip of water capable of handling massive cargo ships instead of just small boats? Not little vessels, but full scale container ships.

So, what exactly is this new canal supposed to look like? That’s where it gets really interesting.

We’re talking about Saudi Arabia, a country that has never exactly been known for modesty when it comes to mega projects.

The proposed channel would be about 82 ft deep and roughly 492 ft wide.

To put that into perspective, it would actually be deeper than the Suez Canal and only about 164 ft narrower.

And yes, with dimensions like that, it could handle almost anything that floats.

The depth is especially important.

82 ft is enough to accommodate the world’s largest container ships, Megaax 24 vessels.

These aren’t really ships so much as floating cities capable of carrying around 24,000 containers at a time.

In ordinary canals, they’d constantly face restrictions, reduce load or speed due to the danger of being pulled down toward the bottom.

But here, they could theoretically travel at full load and normal speed.

And what about ships carrying fertilizer related cargo? Same story.

Ammonia tankers with a draft of about 39 to 49 ft would pass through without trouble.

Chemical tankers, too.

Altogether, it sounds extremely impressive, almost unbelievably so.

But the main question comes up, how hard would it actually be to build? No one’s giving exact figures, but rough estimates suggest that once you factor in engineered slopes, embankments, dams, and technical safety margins, the total excavation could reach 1.

7 to 2 trillion cubic feet.

To understand the scale, that’s roughly 60 times more material than was excavated to build the Suez Canal.

And honestly, that’s not even the end of the challenges.

Let’s look at the map again.

About 391 mi of the canal would run through Saudi Arabia, mostly across desert terrain.

Another 199 mi would cross Yemen, where the landscape’s very different.

Hills, mountains, and uneven ground almost everywhere.

And here’s the biggest issue.

On the Saudi side, the canal route would sit at an elevation of roughly 984 feet above sea level, while in Yemen, the elevation difference reaches about 2,297 feet.

So, how do you stop cargo ships from basically turning into mountain climbers? The classic answer is locks.

Just on a completely insane scale, something like the Panama Canal, only larger, taller, and much more complex.

These would be gigantic lock chambers capable of lifting and lowering ships supported by huge water reservoirs somewhere in the mountains so the system could operate without draining the canal itself.

But there’s also a second option, an even more audacious one.

That would mean cutting enormous trenches and tunnels right through mountain ranges.

If that happened, the project would become the largest earthmoving operation in human history.

And that’s saying something because even without tunnels, the plan already involves moving around 1.

7 trillion cubic feet.

Along with tunneling, it’s hard to even imagine how high that number could climb.

And there’s one more thing worth pointing out here.

A canal is a waterway, which means it would need a constant supply of water.

It wouldn’t simply fill itself from the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea because things don’t work that way on their own.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia is one of the driest countries in the world.

It has almost no rivers at all and certainly none running through the harsh desert regions where this canal would pass.

So how exactly are the Saudis planning to deal with that? Saudi Arabia’s answer is to build an artificial water supply system at both ends of the canal, one on the Persian Gulf side and the other on the Arabian seaside.

They would install massive pumping stations to force sea water into the channel and maintain a constant water level.

Essentially, the canal would become a man-made river with artificial flow.

The water would not simply stay there.

It would be pumped continuously along the entire route to keep the channel navigable and to prevent stagnation or silting.

And now for the most interesting part.

The project’s estimated to cost more than $200 billion.

And those are only preliminary estimates.

Construction hasn’t even started yet.

It’s still only at the planning stage.

So the final price could go much higher.

But let’s be honest, money is not the main issue here.

Saudi Arabia has plenty of that.

There are much bigger difficulties.

How’s the country supposed to build a canal through Yemen? Because that area is, to put it mildly, not exactly a calm and stable construction site.

The problem is modern-day Yemen’s not just an unstable country.

It’s really more like a patchwork of territories with each piece operating by its own rules.

The North and West are under Houthi control.

The South is locked in a constant power struggle between different forces including the official government and the Southern Transitional Council.

The east in places like Almara province is a chaotic mix of different players and interests.

Now picture this.

Saudi Arabia wants to run a canal through all that stretching nearly 620 mi.

At that point, it’s no longer just a construction project.

It becomes a non-stop fight for every single mile.

Every excavator, every concrete plant, every section of the site would instantly become a perfect target.

And then add modern reality to the equation.

Anti-tank weapons that can be hidden almost anywhere.

and cheap attack drones that can be launched practically every day.

And so you’re not simply building a canal, you’re trying to secure hundreds of miles of exposed territory.

So maybe Saudi Arabia could just make a deal with the official government and let it handle the problem.

That still solves nothing.

In Yemen, real power belongs to the people with the guns.

There’s a reason the official government still hasn’t managed to stabilize the country.

Okay, let’s say that somehow by some miracle, Yemen quiets down and the canal actually gets built.

Can we then say the ships would be safe? Not at all.

A canal is a fixed, highly vulnerable target.

You can’t hide it.

You can’t realistically protect its entire length with air defenses.

One successful act of sabotage at a lock or pumping station would be enough to shut traffic down and cause billions of dollars in damage.

And that leads to the obvious question.

So, how exactly does Saudi Arabia plan to get around this problem? After all, the Salman Canal is really important not only to the Saudis themselves, but to their neighbors as well.

Well, there is one alternative option on the table.

It involves neighboring Oman.

This is the most logical move.

If Yemen’s chaos, Oman’s the exact opposite.

There’s a reason people call it the Switzerland of the Middle East.

The country has managed to maintain working relations with everyone, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the West alike.

And just imagine what that means for Riad.

Oman’s Dar governor is basically a golden corridor.

A calm, predictable route to the Arabian Sea without constant danger, no endless attacks, no fighting for every mile.

It sounds like the perfect solution, right? Well, it’s not that simple.

Oman’s not a country that simply lets other powers pass through.

It’s a country that spent centuries building a policy of balance.

And its leaders understand one thing very clearly.

The moment you allow a canal like that to cross your territory, you automatically become part of someone else’s game.

For Muscat, that means risking its status as an independent player and turning into Saudi Arabia’s transit route.

And with that comes the danger of being pulled into a confrontation with Iran.

At that point, it’s no longer just about economics.

Geopolitics comes into play.

On top of that, Oman knows exactly how strategically valuable its land is, and it would charge accordingly.

That would mean not only direct transit payments, but also demands for investment in local infrastructure, ports, and social programs.

In fact, Saudi Arabia would have to buy loyalty.

Fine, let’s say they reach a deal.

Let’s say the canal through Oman is completed.

Gulf shipping moves through it, fertilizers go out, resources come in, everything works smoothly.

But here’s the bigger question.

Would Saudi Arabia gain something more? Because this would not just be a canal, it would be a massive strip of water cutting through the desert and things like they rarely remain just a shipping lane.

Saudi Arabia already has a huge blueprint in store.

Vision 2030.

And its core idea is very simple.

To stop relying on oil alone.

In other words, the goal is not just to pump raw resources out of the ground and sell them, but to build an economy of its own.

Tourism, manufacturing, services, anything that generates income beyond oil wells.

And that’s exactly where the Salmon Canal fits in.

It could become a massive economic artery around which an entire new ecosystem is built.

The canal proposals envision the following.

Industrial zones, ports, and logistics hubs rising along its route.

Goods would not simply pass through in transit.

They would be processed on site.

That means the added value stays inside the country.

And that’s a completely different level of the game.

At that point, you’re no longer just a raw material exporter.

you become part of the production chain.

And yes, it would also create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and attract investment, making the region far more appealing to business.

Of course, we’re still talking about a canal that would cut straight through the desert.

If Saudi Arabia decided to turn it into a tourist attraction, it would be hard to imagine crowds rushing there.

Or maybe they would.

The idea is not entirely far-fetched.

Waterfront recreation areas, yacht marinas, and resorts could appear along the canal.

So it would stop being just a piece of infrastructure and become a destination in its own right.

At some point it would no longer be just a canal.

It would become the axis around which everything grows.

Cities, logistics, industry, tourism.

The real question is how to sustain all of this new infrastructure.

It would require enormous resources and Saudi Arabia already faces serious challenges with both food and water.

But in theory, the King Salman Canal could help solve those problems.

Water entering the canal from the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea could be used not only to maintain navigable levels, but also as feed stock for dissalination plants planned along the route.

In theory, those plants could turn salt water into fresh water, which could then be used to irrigate agricultural parks, supply industrial and logistic zones with technical water, and meet the domestic needs of new cities and worker settlements.

From a food and agriculture perspective, the concept suggests that such a canal would support localized agroindustrial clusters where fresh water would make green houses, irrigated fields, and even farming operations possible in desert areas.

So yes, food could follow too.

And after considering all that, one question naturally comes to mind.

Yes, the canal would allow vital cargos like food and fertilizers to move without depending on the straight of Hormuz.

Yes, it could help transform the desert.

But could the Gulf States find a simpler way to bypass the straight of Hormuz? Quite possibly.

And that alternative may emerge very soon.

And Oman could play a major role in it.

The Gulf States have been thinking for years about the possibility of the Straight of Hormuz being blocked.

And for years, they’ve been discussing with each other what needs to be done to avoid major problems if that happens.

That’s exactly why the UAE and Oman have long been focused on a rail project called Hafit.

The route will stretch for about 148 miles, linking the port of Sahar and Oman to the UAE’s railway network.

And the moment you look at the map, one obvious question comes up.

How exactly will the line pass through the Hajar mountains? The answer is purely an engineering one.

Tunnels, bridges, cutings, and vioaducts.

In other words, the goal is not to go around the mountains, but straight through them.

Engineers are designing the route so trains can travel as directly and quickly as possible despite the terrain.

On top of that, the project includes landslide protection and drainage systems.

Everything needed to keep the line from turning into a problem after the first major storm.

So, where does the project actually stand? If we compare it to something like the Salman Canal, that question matters a lot because the Saudi project is still more of a distant future scenario.

Here though, the UAE and Oman are making real progress and quite actively.

In October 2025, tunnel work began in the Hijar Mountains.

The first shipment of rails has already been delivered.

3,800 rails with a total weight of nearly 6,000 tons.

According to the project participants, by the fall of 2025, more than 50% of the entire railway had already been completed, including earthworks, bridges, and tunnels.

So, most likely the wait will not be much longer.

But let’s answer the main question.

Honestly, can this railway really replace the straight of Hormuz? If you look at the numbers, the gap is just too big.

Around 33 million containers move through the straight every year, while Hafi at launch will handle fewer than 200,000.

A single container ship can carry up to 20,000 containers in one voyage.

A freight train carries about 280.

The scale is simply not comparable.

But that was never the goal.

It’s not a replacement.

It’s a backup plan.

And a backup plan for the things that matter most.

medicine, electronics, spare parts, food, all the essentials without which an economy could start collapsing in a matter of days.

If something goes wrong, cargo can be unloaded in Sohar and delivered farther into the UAE in about an hour and a half.

For business, that’s a massive difference.

Instead of waiting for weeks in a danger zone, companies can quickly secure critical supplies.

That leads to the next question.

Can Oman’s port of Sahar handle a sudden surge if traffic is redirected there? While the port’s already been expanded and is still growing, its current capacity is estimated at roughly 3.

5 to 4 million containers a year, plus tens of millions of tons of bulk and general cargo.

It also has room to keep expanding with more than 11,000 acres of industrial land available for factories and warehouses, which means some cargo can be processed right there on site instead of overwhelming the terminals.

And Oman’s not stopping there.

The connection to Sohar is only the first step.

Further expansions already part of the plan and this is where another port comes in.

Duke, in fact, Duke has been designed as a mega project from the very beginning.

A special economic zone covering about 770 square miles has already been established there with plenty of room for factories, warehouses, and transport infrastructure.

The port itself is built to accommodate large oceangoing vessels with deep water births and dry docks for ship repair and maintenance.

What matters most is that Dukem was designed from day one with future growth in mind.

This is not an old overloaded port that’s now being stretched beyond its limits.

It’s a site with built-in room for new terminals, container capacity, and industrial development.

So, if cargo volumes rise sharply, part of that flow could be redirected there without immediately running into physical constraints.

Okay, even if Oman’s ports can handle the load in an emergency, cargo could still only be moved as far as the UAE.

But what about everyone else? Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar all seem like the countries that have been almost completely left out of the picture.

Habitat rail is not really a standalone project at all.

It’s part of a much bigger plan.

A unified Gulf railway network that the countries of the Persian Gulf have been pushing for years.

The basic idea is simple, but the scale is enormous.

a rail system stretching about 1300 to,370 mi linking the entire region in one continuous line from Kuwait in the north to Oman in the south while also passing through Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

And this is no longer just a concept on paper.

Some sections are already in place.

Saudi Arabia has a well-developed freight rail system, including the North South Railway and port connections.

In the UAE, Edahad Rail is already operating and carrying Rio cargo.

What remains are relatively limited gaps that could be completed fairly quickly.

And once that happens, the Gulf States will finally have a single connected rail network that could at least partly offset a shutdown of the Straight of Hormuz if necessary.

And you know what’s another important point here? It feels like the events of 2026 should give Gulf countries a major push to accelerate these rail projects.

At this point, even the idea of spending more than $200 billion on the Salman Canal no longer sounds all that far-fetched.

The reality is that disruptions in the Straight of Hormuz hit the Gulf States too hard.

They understand that and they’ll do everything they can do to fix this vulnerability, even if the current conflict ends soon.