The islands of the Strait of Hormuz

The larger islands

Qeshm is the largest island in the Persian Gulf, a long, narrow landmass lying close to the Iranian coast and separated from it by the Khuran channel. Hormuz, which lends the strait its name, is small, round and famous for its red soil. Larak and Hengam sit nearby, both considerably smaller.

The smaller chain

West of the strait proper lies a scattering of much smaller islands and rocks. Several are little more than sandbanks. In our game these are the ones worth sailing close to, because salvage drifts around them — in reality they are mostly navigational hazards to be given a wide berth.

Contested islands

Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunb islands are the subject of a long-running territorial dispute between Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Both sides maintain claims, and the dispute remains unresolved.

We take no position on it, and the game deliberately does not depict those islands. In the game map they were replaced with invented names and invented shapes, because a piece of entertainment has no business rendering a live territorial dispute as scenery.