Traffic in Strait of Hormuz skyrockets nearly 400%, as analysts say Iran’s grip on critical waterway weakens
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Iran appears to be losing its grip on the Strait of Hormuz while traffic through the critical waterway has exploded by nearly 400% over the last two weeks — as ships increasingly use a US-backed corridor to cross.
Nearly 200 ships navigated the strait last week, up from 150 the previous week and just 40 two weeks earlier, according to data from the UK Maritime Trade Operations Center.
The surge brings total traffic along the passage route to about 20% of pre-war levels, through which roughly 20% of the world’s seaborne oil flowed in peacetime.
Activity in Hormuz ground to a near halt after the Iran war began in late February, but vessels are now increasingly navigating through despite the ongoing standoff between Tehran and the US.
More than 80% of liquid cargoes transiting the Strait of Hormuz over the past two weeks have either taken the Omani route — a US-backed, UN International Maritime Organization-authorized channel Iran rejects — or gone “dark,” likely slipping through the same corridor, according to maritime intelligence firm Kpler.
“It increasingly looks like Iran has at least partially lost control of the strait,” Homayoun Falakshahi, head of crude oil analysis at Kpler, told CNN this week.
“The Oman route absolutely makes the most sense,” added Dan Pickering, founder of Pickering Energy Partners, noting it’s a way for vessels to avoid the possibility of paying a toll to Tehran.
Over the past seven days, 103 ships entered the strait and 89 exited it — a 27% jump from a week ago, when 76 ships entered and 75 exited.
The change is even more visible compared to two weeks ago — when just 18 ships entered and 21 ships exited the waterway at the center of the dispute between the warring countries.
Most vessels that passed through were US-flagged allies from Panama and Liberia — though the flags merely indicate where the ships are registered, not where the companies that own them are based. About half of the ships were oil tankers and the other dry cargo.
Five vessels were struck by Iranian projectiles over the past week, leaving two people injured or dead. The ships were reportedly damaged but not lost.
The US has been quietly shepherding oil tankers across Hormuz since May, using shadow fleet tactics like turning off their radars to sneak by undetected and navigating close to the coast of Oman.
A 60-day period for talks to end the war came to a close on Monday, and start-and-stop discussions to negotiate control of the Strait of Hormuz have sputtered.
Earlier this week, President Trump said the strait had been fully de-mined and reopened, in hopes of clearing the way for traffic to gradually resume — and announced that he plans to implement the “most crushing economic operation ever undertaken” on Iran in the form of sanctions.
“The Hormuz Strait is open and operating,” he declared on Truth Social Tuesday.
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Meanwhile, Iran’s security chief threatened the president with an “earthquake-like” retaliation against the US, which is about to unleash a set of new sanctions on Monday against the country.
“If Trump wants to take action, we will retaliate in an earthquake-like manner,” Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei said in a televised interview Saturday.
“We tell all the countries around us not to join the United States in its economic war, otherwise we will consider them enemies. If they cooperate with the Americans in the economic war, we will strike their interests.”