The Eye of the Needle 针眼

Most of the world's oil that travels by sea travels through here. The narrowest navigable channel inside the strait is about 39 kilometres across. Big tankers don't have a third of that to manoeuvre in: the international Traffic Separation Scheme gives outbound and inbound traffic a single 3-kilometre lane each, with a buffer between.

What that geometry means is that a small country with a long coastline on the right side can interrupt one of the planet's biggest economic arteries with relatively little. Iran's Bandar Abbas sits just inside the channel; the islands of Qeshm, Larak and Hormuz give it close-in vantage. The two seizures this week were both within visual range of those islands.

Cartographically the choice I made on this map is the small one: I kept the view flat and tight. Newsroom maps of the same week reach for a tilted satellite perspective; that style is good for the eye but bad for measuring. A flat top-down map lets a reader put a finger on the seizure pin and a finger on Khasab and see, without help, how short that distance really is.

A small disclosure. The seizure pins are placed from open AIS reports and may shift as positions are corrected. The shipping-lane drawing follows the Traffic Separation Scheme but is sketched, not survey-grade.

全世界海上运输的原油，大部分都从这里过。海峡里可通航的最窄处约 39 公里宽。 可大型油轮真正能动的水面远没有这么宽：国际航道分隔系统给进、出两个方向 各划出 3 公里宽的单向航道，中间留一条缓冲。

这条几何形状意味着：一个海岸线正好长在'对的那一边'的小国， 只需要很有限的力量，就能切断地球上最重要的几条经济动脉之一。 伊朗的阿巴斯港正好就坐在水道边，外加格什姆岛、拉腊克岛、霍尔木兹岛 构成的近距离观察哨位。这周的两次扣船，都发生在这些岛屿的视野之内。

在制图上我做的选择只有一个小决定：保持正射、平面、贴近。 这一周新闻里那些图，多数喜欢用倾斜卫星视角——那种风格悦目，但不便于测量。 一张正俯视的图，让读者一根手指按在扣船标记上、另一根按在哈萨布上， 不用任何辅助就能看见——这两点之间的距离究竟有多近。

附注：扣船标记按公开 AIS 报告放置，未来如有修订两侧同步更新。 航道走向参照国际航道分隔系统，但为示意性绘制，并非测绘等级。