This is not about politics. It is about arithmetic.
When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in the opening days of Operation Epic Fury, it did not close it equally for everyone. India negotiated a corridor. Twenty-two Indian ships are scheduled to transit. Nine have already exited. Prime Minister Modi called Iranian President Pezeshkian on March 12 and came away with something no other South Asian leader has — a designated route, a permitting process, and passage for vessels carrying energy that India needs.
Pakistan got nothing.
And the numbers explain exactly why that asymmetry — between India’s Hormuz access and Pakistan’s complete lack of it — is not just a diplomatic embarrassment for Islamabad. It is an existential energy crisis building in slow motion.
Pakistan’s Oil Dependence — The Baseline Numbers
Pakistan imports approximately 80 to 85 percent of its crude oil and petroleum products. Unlike India, which has diversified its energy sourcing aggressively over the past decade — adding Russian oil, US LNG, African crude, and domestic renewables to its mix — Pakistan remains overwhelmingly dependent on Gulf supply chains for the fuel that keeps its economy moving.
In a normal year, Pakistan imports crude oil and refined petroleum products worth approximately 15 to 18 billion dollars annually. That number represents a crushing burden on a country whose total foreign exchange reserves have at various points in the past two years fallen below three billion dollars — enough to cover less than a month of imports.
The Gulf — and specifically the sea lanes that pass through or near the Strait of Hormuz — is not one of Pakistan’s oil supply options. It is essentially the only option at scale.
What the Hormuz Closure Is Already Doing to Pakistan
Between February 23 and March 16, 2026 — the three weeks covering the opening of Operation Epic Fury and the initial Hormuz disruption — petrol prices in Pakistan rose 25 percent. That is the fourth highest increase of any country in the world over that period, behind only Laos at 32.99 percent, Australia at 32.43 percent, and Vietnam at 32 percent.
A 25 percent petrol price increase in three weeks in a country with Pakistan’s economic profile is not just inflationary. It is destabilising. Pakistan’s inflation was already elevated before the conflict began. Its IMF programme requires fiscal discipline that limits the government’s ability to subsidise fuel prices. Its rupee has been under sustained pressure. And its industrial base — particularly its textile export sector, which is the primary earner of the foreign exchange Pakistan needs to pay for its oil — runs on energy that is now 25 percent more expensive than it was three weeks ago.
If the Hormuz closure continues through Phase 2 of the Iran conflict — which Israeli officials have signalled will last at least three more weeks and potentially beyond Passover in mid-April — Pakistan’s cumulative fuel price increase could reach 40 to 50 percent from pre-war levels. At that point, the social and economic pressure becomes very difficult to contain.
The Foreign Exchange Trap
Here is where Pakistan’s situation becomes truly precarious — and where the numbers tell a story that no amount of political positioning can paper over.
Pakistan needs foreign exchange to buy oil. It earns foreign exchange primarily through textile exports and remittances from Pakistanis working abroad — a significant proportion of whom work in the Gulf states that are themselves being disrupted by the Iran conflict.
The Gulf disruption is simultaneously raising Pakistan’s oil import bill and threatening the remittance flows that help pay for it. Disruptions to Dubai’s airport, evacuations at Gulf energy facilities, and the broader economic uncertainty in the region are creating headwinds for the Pakistani workers and businesses whose remittances are a critical pillar of the country’s external financing.
Pakistan’s IMF programme, which has been the lifeline keeping the country’s external finances from collapsing entirely, has strict reserve targets that the country must maintain to keep receiving programme disbursements. A sustained oil price surge that drains foreign exchange reserves faster than the IMF programme can replenish them creates a funding gap that has no easy solution.
The arithmetic is brutal. Pakistan needs more foreign exchange to buy more expensive oil. Its primary sources of foreign exchange are under pressure from the same conflict that is making oil more expensive. And it has no Hormuz corridor.
India’s Position — The Numbers Behind the Leverage
Now look at India’s position in the same crisis and the contrast could not be starker.
India imports approximately 85 percent of its crude oil — a similar dependence level to Pakistan on paper. But the similarity ends there. India’s oil import bill, while enormous in absolute terms at approximately 100 to 120 billion dollars annually, is manageable within the context of a 3.5 trillion dollar economy with foreign exchange reserves of over 600 billion dollars. India has more than a year of import cover in its reserves — a buffer that gives it the time and financial stability to navigate supply disruptions that would be catastrophic for a country with Pakistan’s reserve position.
More importantly, India had already spent the years since the Ukraine war diversifying its energy supply away from the Gulf and toward Russia. By early 2026, Russian oil accounts for a significant portion of India’s crude imports — purchased at a discount and largely insulated from Gulf supply chain disruptions. India entered the Hormuz crisis with a more diversified supply base than any other major South Asian economy.
And then Modi called Pezeshkian on March 12. And India got its corridor.
The twenty ships currently scheduled to transit India’s Hormuz corridor are described as critical to India’s energy security. But twenty ships carrying Gulf crude and LPG to India, in the context of an economy that has already diversified significantly toward Russian supply, represents a manageable supplement to existing supply chains — not a desperate lifeline.
For Pakistan, twenty ships carrying Gulf oil would represent the difference between functioning and not functioning.
The Diplomatic Numbers — Why Iran Said Yes to India and No to Pakistan
The contrast in Iran’s treatment of India and Pakistan is not arbitrary. It is the product of specific, measurable diplomatic and economic relationships that have been built over decades.
India was one of Iran’s largest oil customers before US sanctions forced a reduction in purchases after 2018. At peak, India was buying approximately 25 million tonnes of Iranian crude annually — making it Iran’s second largest customer globally after China. That commercial relationship built goodwill, created mutual economic dependency, and established Iran as a country that had concrete reasons to view India favourably.
India maintained the Chabahar Port development project in Iran even under intense US pressure to abandon it — arguing successfully for a sanctions exemption on the grounds that Chabahar serves Afghan connectivity and regional development goals. That persistence sent a clear signal to Tehran that India would not simply abandon its Iranian relationships when Washington told it to.
India never publicly condemned Iran in the current conflict. While Western nations issued statements condemning Iranian aggression and supporting Israel’s right to self-defence, India’s official position has been a call for dialogue, restraint, and diplomatic resolution — the kind of language that Tehran can live with even if it is not the endorsement Iran might prefer.
Pakistan’s relationship with Iran tells a different story numerically. Pakistan-Iran trade is a fraction of India-Iran trade. Pakistan has no Chabahar equivalent — no major joint infrastructure project that gives Iran a concrete economic reason to value the relationship. And Pakistan’s deep military and financial dependence on Saudi Arabia — which contributed 3 billion dollars to Pakistan’s IMF bailout and has been a consistent financial lifeline for Islamabad — makes Pakistan structurally aligned with Iran’s regional rival in ways that Tehran cannot ignore.
The numbers on bilateral trade, investment, and diplomatic engagement explain Iran’s decision as clearly as any geopolitical analysis. India built a relationship worth preserving. Pakistan did not.
What Pakistan Would Need to Ask India — And What That Would Cost
If Pakistan’s energy situation deteriorates to the point where it needs to approach India for help accessing the Hormuz corridor — whether directly, through commercial arrangements with Indian shipping companies, or through a regional energy trading mechanism — the diplomatic cost of that approach would be extraordinary.
It would require Pakistan to acknowledge, implicitly or explicitly, that India has something Pakistan needs. In a relationship defined for seventy-five years by competition, suspicion, and the refusal to acknowledge any form of Pakistani dependence on or vulnerability to India, that acknowledgement represents a psychological and political hurdle of enormous proportions.
Pakistani politicians who have publicly advocated normalising trade with India have faced severe domestic backlash. The political cost of appearing to beg India for oil access — in the context of an energy crisis whose roots lie partly in Pakistan’s own diplomatic choices — would be measured in electoral consequences, street protests, and accusations of surrendering national sovereignty.
And yet the arithmetic does not care about politics. Pakistan needs oil. India has corridor access. The two facts will eventually require a response regardless of the political cost.
The Sri Lanka and Bangladesh Dimension
Pakistan is the most dramatic case but it is not the only vulnerable South Asian economy watching India’s Hormuz corridor with urgent interest.
Sri Lanka imports approximately 3 to 4 million metric tonnes of petroleum products annually — virtually all of it dependent on Gulf supply chains. The country’s 2022 economic collapse was triggered partly by a foreign exchange crisis that made fuel imports impossible. Sri Lanka’s recovery is fragile, its reserves are still below comfortable levels, and its ability to absorb a sustained Hormuz closure through alternative sourcing is essentially zero. Sri Lanka’s entire economic stabilisation programme could be threatened by a prolonged energy supply disruption that raises its import bill beyond what its limited foreign exchange can cover.
Bangladesh’s situation is less immediately critical but structurally similar. Bangladesh imports approximately 6 to 7 million tonnes of petroleum products annually. Its garment export sector — which generates 80 to 85 percent of the country’s export earnings — is energy intensive. A sustained fuel price surge driven by Hormuz disruption feeds directly into production costs that erode the price competitiveness Bangladesh’s garment industry depends on.
Neither country has anything approaching India’s diplomatic relationship with Iran. Neither has a Hormuz corridor. And both are watching the same map that Pakistan is watching — a map that shows India’s ships moving through a route that theirs cannot access.
The Russia Parallel — India Has Done This Before
The template for what could happen next already exists. It was written between 2022 and 2025 in the context of Russian oil sanctions.
When Western sanctions effectively closed direct Russian crude purchases for most countries after the Ukraine invasion, India took a different path. It bought Russian crude at a discount, absorbed the diplomatic friction with Western partners, and became one of Russia’s largest oil customers at precisely the moment when Russia needed buyers most.
But India did not stop there. Indian refineries processed Russian crude and sold refined petroleum products — diesel, petrol, jet fuel — into global markets including markets that could not buy Russian crude directly. India became, in effect, a processing and transit hub for Russian energy. Countries that could not touch Russian oil directly could buy Indian refined products with no questions asked about the crude that went into making them.
The same architecture could emerge around the Hormuz corridor. India moves Gulf crude through its designated corridor. Indian refineries process that crude alongside Russian supplies. Indian petroleum products move outward to South Asian markets including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh — no Iranian flags, no Hormuz transit required for the end buyers, no diplomatic complications for anyone involved.
India did not announce the Russian oil processing arrangement. It simply happened through commercial channels, driven by price signals and supply availability. The Hormuz corridor version could follow the same quiet, commercially driven path.
The Bottom Line in Numbers
Pakistan — 25 percent petrol price increase in three weeks, 80 to 85 percent oil import dependence, foreign exchange reserves insufficient to cover more than a few weeks of imports at elevated prices, no Hormuz corridor, no meaningful diplomatic relationship with Iran, deep financial ties to Saudi Arabia that make Iranian goodwill structurally impossible.
India — Hormuz corridor secured, 22 ships scheduled to transit, 9 already through, 600 billion dollars in foreign exchange reserves, diversified oil supply including significant Russian crude, direct leader-to-leader diplomatic channel with Tehran operational.
The gap between those two positions — built over decades of divergent foreign policy choices — is now being measured not in diplomatic abstractions but in ships moving through a strait and petrol available at a pump.
Pakistan will not publicly ask India for help. Its politics will not allow it. But the numbers suggest that quietly, commercially, and with as much deniability as both sides can maintain, some version of that conversation is already inevitable.
The arithmetic demands it. And arithmetic, unlike politics, does not negotiate.
Analysis based on publicly available trade data, TRAI subscriber reports, Lloyd’s List Intelligence reporting, Global Petrol Prices data, and publicly available diplomatic statements as of March 20, 2026. This article is for informational and analytical purposes only.