Supply Chain Moves, July 15, 2026

The Strait of Hormuz story has entered a new phase, and it is one that most companies’ risk playbooks were never written for. More than 400 vessels are stranded, freight rates are up 75%, and analysts warn Brent crude could reach $150 a barrel if the closure holds through September. What began as a geopolitical shock that companies expected to wait out has become a sustained operational reality they now have to run their businesses inside of, and the organizations still treating it as temporary are the ones quietly accumulating the most risk.

The distinction matters because a crisis and an operating condition demand different responses. A crisis gets a task force, a war room, and a countdown to normal. An operating condition gets absorbed into how a company plans, sources, prices, and reports, and the Hormuz closure has crossed that line. Freight rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope, war-risk premiums layered onto every Gulf-linked lane, and fuel costs feeding into every mode of transport are no longer disruptions to the plan. They are the plan.

For risk leaders, the defining feature of this event is not any single exposure but the way exposures are stacking. Jim Wetekamp, CEO of Riskonnect, argues that the standard framing already undersells what is happening.

“This isn’t just a supply chain or geopolitical risk conversation,” Wetekamp said. “Multiple risk exposures are colliding in real time – supplier financial stability, cost volatility, sanctions compliance, cash flow pressure, and more. And the economic impacts are still expanding.”

That collision is exactly the scenario most corporate risk functions were not designed for, because those functions grew up in silos, with supply chain risk owned by operations, sanctions exposure owned by compliance, and cost volatility owned by finance, each looking at its own piece of the same event.

“This is a classic example of compounding risk, and siloed risk management was never built to handle it,” Wetekamp said. “The organizations navigating what’s unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz well are working from a connected view of their risk landscape that lets them see how risks interrelate, anticipate threats, and make better decisions faster to reduce their exposure and protect the business.”

Read the full article in Supply Chain Moves.