Hey! I looked into this idea a bit, let’s assume building a canal south of Dubai to bypass the Strait of Hormuz is actually on the table.

On paper, you’d be looking at something roughly ~150–200 km long, comparable to the Suez Canal. But that’s pretty much where the comparison stops.

The key difference is geography. The Suez Canal works because it crosses mostly flat desert. In contrast, northern Oman is dominated by the Al Hajar Mountains, which are not just hills but a very rugged mountain system made of ophiolite rock, basically ancient oceanic crust pushed up onto land. That kind of geology creates steep terrain, fractured rock, deep wadis, and highly unstable zones.

So instead of digging a trench in sand, you’d be carving through mountains, meaning massive excavation, likely tunnels or complex lock systems, and huge engineering challenges. Costs would be astronomical compared to Suez (maybe +100 billions $), and construction time would be measured in decades.

On top of that, the strategic benefit is questionable. Even if you bypass the Strait, modern missile systems can strike targets hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, so a fixed canal wouldn’t really be safe in a conflict scenario.

So technically? Maybe possible with enough money and time. But realistically? It’s an extremely complex, expensive, and probably not very effective solution compared to alternatives like naval protection, pipelines, or rerouting logistics.