It would suit the Soviets far more than the west to block it during the war, but wold they go all out and nuke it? Not immediately I don't think.
I always imagined a 2-tier blockage from the Warpact side. If the Middle East states are still more friendly to the Soviets than the Americans then they would still be trying to keep same onside. The chance to get tens of thousands of allied troops behind the RDF alone would be worth avoiding too much infrastructure damage. If they assume they will win the war, or at least not lose, the Soviets will want the canal back in service asap. Either way, setting off nukes would be a bad move. However, if the war starts to go badly for the Soviets, or the west wins the ME states over, then the gloves come off and it goes to the second tier and in a fit of pique the canal gets obliterated.
Blocking it via sabotage, strategic strikes etc would be easier than clearing it when there is a global war ongoing.
As an aside, in my TL I relocated most of the RDF and allied forces. It was as they said when the RDF was formed, 'too much to lose, too little to win'. I felt that to deploy those forces, probably well out on a limb, was too risky and they would be better used in Europe or Korea. Keeping them supplied would have been far too much effort given the state of the rest of the world, especially if any of the states around there were actively pro-Soviet. With a war still ongoing in China, and in Europe, I'm not sure the Soviets would have been able to commit enough troops to bull through Iran anyway, again not without a lot of active support from Iraq and others.
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