Today I am in Khasab, Oman, the narrow chokepoint on the on the Straits of Hormuz, that little point of Arabia that juts up into and almost touches Iran. Officially, the country of Oman honors the trade sanctions placed on Iran. Unofficially, there is a thriving smuggling operation that takes place daily. Every morning, dozens of these speedboats jet the 40 miles from Iran to the harbor at Khasab. “Officially unobserved,” they unload their cargo of goats and saffron mostly to be exported to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. They hang around until late afternoon when they are loaded with electronics and other items needed in Iran and depart en masse north, back to Iran. I’m told that transactions exceeding $3 million a day are accomplished this way.
Other than the bustling docks, there wasn’t really anything of a marketplace or souk here just a few souvenir shops.
Khasab Fort and Castle Khasab were both built by the Portuguese in the 17th-century, who sought dominion over the maritime trade in the Straits of Hormuz.
