6 min readApr 15, 2026 10:02 PM IST
First published on: Apr 15, 2026 at 06:19 AM IST
Asia’s long-celebrated rise has run into an unexpected vulnerability — not in familiar intra-Asian rivalries, but in the Iran war that now threatens Indo-Pacific peace and prosperity. The conflict has exposed the world’s dependence on Gulf energy, but nowhere is that dependence sharper than in Asia. The United States has become a major energy producer, and Europe has diversified its supplies. Asia, by contrast, remains structurally tied to the Gulf: Nearly 70 per cent of its crude imports come from the region, with China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia all deeply reliant on uninterrupted flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s attempt to assert control over the strait — through which one-fifth of globally traded oil passes — has struck at the heart of Asia’s economic security. The prosperity of China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and India rests not only on Gulf energy but on the norms of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea that guarantee freedom of navigation through international waterways.
Asian states cannot accept Iran’s claimed right to regulate transit through Hormuz. Singapore’s foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, captured a widely shared sentiment when he insisted that transit passage “is not a privilege granted by the bordering state… it is a right of all nations’ ships to traverse” the strait. Others may be less outspoken, but they share Singapore’s conviction. The world also has much respect for Singapore’s significant role in the safe management of the Malacca Strait, through which nearly 40 per cent of global maritime trade moves between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. If Singapore has turned its sensitive location into an engine of economic growth, Tehran has sought to weaponise its strategic geography for disruptive political leverage.
India has consistently emphasised two principles since the war began: Energy security and unimpeded navigation through Hormuz. These concerns are shared across Asia, creating space for Delhi to build a regional coalition. While the US is currently doing the heavy lifting in the Gulf, Asian capitals recognise the risks of outsourcing their core interests to Washington’s shifting political moods. The region needs its own voice — and eventually its own capabilities — to uphold freedom of navigation.
Some analysts have proposed a cooperative framework that avoids framing the issue as a zero-sum defeat for Iran: An institutional mechanism involving Tehran, its Arab neighbours, and major international consumers to guarantee unimpeded transit. Such an arrangement could offer Iran a face-saving path to lift its attempted control over Hormuz.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung’s expected visit to Delhi later this month offers an opportunity to open a serious Asian conversation on Hormuz. In May, the BRICS foreign ministers — whose Asian members now include China, India, Indonesia, Iran, and the UAE, with Thailand and Vietnam as partner countries — will gather in Delhi. As the largest consumers of Gulf oil, these states have both the interest and the responsibility to impress upon Tehran the urgency of reopening the Strait. Taken together, these engagements create a rare diplomatic moment to reaffirm the core principles of the law of the sea.
For India and South Korea, the Gulf war presents an opportunity to inject real political content into a relationship long described as “strategic” but driven largely by commerce. For decades, Asian energy flows rested on American naval primacy and respect for international law. That foundation is now less certain. A more transactional US has revived an old demand: That partners assume greater responsibility for securing the commons they depend upon. Combined with the intensifying conflict in the Gulf, this shift has sharpened the sense of vulnerability in Asian capitals and heightened the appeal of intra-Asian cooperation.
Maritime security and energy security offer immediate areas for deeper India-Korea engagement. They can deepen maritime coordination through information-sharing, logistics agreements, and complementary deployments. This is not alliance-building but functional cooperation to protect sea lines of communication vital to both economies. India’s geographic position astride the Indian Ocean sea lanes and South Korea’s advanced naval capabilities create a natural — if still underdeveloped — synergy.
South Korea’s global leadership in shipbuilding adds an important industrial dimension. As India seeks to expand its naval and commercial fleet, partnerships with Korean firms could accelerate capacity-building in naval platforms, LNG carriers, and maritime infrastructure. The logic is straightforward: Those who depend on maritime flows must invest in the means to secure them. South Korea’s leadership in nuclear energy development makes it a valuable partner on small modular reactors, where interest is rising globally. Bilateral defence industrial cooperation carries significant promise; concrete policy initiatives are necessary to turn opportunities into outcomes. Indian and Korean industries can participate in the massive infrastructure projects now being undertaken by Gulf Arab states to reduce their own dependence on the Hormuz Strait. Pipelines, ports, and road and rail networks are being planned with unprecedented urgency to redesign the economic geography of the Arabian Peninsula.
Tehran may have killed the golden goose of Hormuz, but its Arab neighbours are not waiting for its rebirth. They are determined to reduce their vulnerability to the Islamic Republic’s leverage and will invest heavily in new technologies to neutralise Tehran’s threats. Delhi and Seoul have an opportunity to participate in this unfolding geoeconomic and geopolitical transformation. The Delhi-Seoul entente will not replace existing security architecture in the Indo-Pacific, but it can become an important pillar in the long-overdue transition toward greater Asian responsibility for Asian security.
The writer is contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express. He is a distinguished professor at the Motwani-Jadeja Institute of American Studies, Jindal Global University and the Korea Foundation Chair at the Council on Strategic and Defence Research
Domestic helpers like Champabai, who spend their entire lives looking after families — their own, and other families that slowly come to be their own — do not get remembered in large prayer meetings or elaborate obituaries. (Illustration: C R Sasikumar) 
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