India's Great Nicobar Island Project Amid Hormuz Blockade

The bottleneck in the Gulf has disrupted the provision of vital supplies of oil, gas and fertilisers to Asia, underscoring the fragility of global supply chains and the significance of trade chokepoints. Great Nicobar, a 921 sq km (356 square mile) island wrapped in dense prehistoric rainforest, sits at the southernmost edge of India in the Andaman and Nicobar island chain – some 1,200km (746 miles) from the Indian mainland but less than 150km from the Strait of Malacca’s western entrance. Amid the Hormuz blockade, supporters of the Indian project, including some of the country’s military veterans, argue it would enable New Delhi to “control” or disrupt Chinese supply chains and worsen its “Malacca dilemma”.