Iran and the US loosen their grip on the Strait of Hormuz despite attacks and twists in negotiations

Despite all the difficulties, as numerous as they are, something is moving in the Strait of Hormuz. Even before the United States and Iran agreed to reopen it, the world’s most important energy shipping lane has shown signs of a slight loosening. Despite the double blockade — imposed first by Tehran and then by Washington — the number of ships managing to transit has grown in recent days. Some — the majority — do so with the permission of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Others are escorted by the U.S. Navy. A few take the risk on their own.

Unaffected by yet another stalemate in negotiations and the constant skirmishes in those same waters — the previous night Washington struck an Iranian tanker and Tehran retaliated by attacking a Liberia-flagged container ship — Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy and British maritime data and intelligence firm Lloyd’s List published figures pointing to an uptick in transits. The increase is especially pronounced in outgoing vessels toward the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Iranian authorities have also been reporting higher ship traffic for several days, exceeding 20 vessels per day both last Friday and this Tuesday. Data published Tuesday by Lloyd’s List Intelligence estimate that about 300 non-Iranian-flagged ships have transited after reaching agreements with the Revolutionary Guard. Many of them, Bloomberg reports, belong to shipping companies that had not passed the strait in either direction since the conflict began.

Those figures include only movements authorized by the Islamic Republic’s authorities; they do not count ships that transit with their transponders switched off to avoid detection. The latest data from Vortexa, another industry firm based in London, estimate that shadow transits made up more than 65% of crossings in May. In other words, vessels that crossed Hormuz without leaving a trace. That share rose from 54% in April.

“What began as behavior largely associated with Iran-linked tonnage has broadened substantially, with many non-Iranian operators,” Vortexa analysts wrote in a recent client note. “These movements are no longer solely a sign of evasion of sanctions [on Iran]; they have become a broad commercial response to keep flows moving. Exports from the Persian Gulf have not stopped, but a growing proportion of the physical flow is increasingly difficult to observe in real time.”

“Crossings are gaining pace,” Jana Sutenko of specialist firm Kpler said a few days ago, after a large LNG carrier owned by Emirati energy company Adnoc reached Omani waters en route to India. Shortly before, three Qatari LNG tankers had done the same, bound for China and Pakistan.

Despite the recent uptick — both in verifiable, visible movements and in opaque ones — the current volume of transits remains far below pre-war levels, when some days saw more than 100 ships pass through Hormuz. It does, however, mark an inflection point after the near-total drought in April and the first half of May.

‘Turning a blind eye’

“Ship traffic in Hormuz has been noticeably higher over the past two weeks; it is evident and verifiable. It’s as if the U.S. and Iran have reached a tacit agreement to open the tap slightly and ease the bottleneck,” Jorge León, vice president and head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy, told this newspaper by phone. “In a way it’s surprising, because Iran has an interest in pushing oil prices up to apply more pressure in negotiations, and the U.S. wants Iran to export less to reduce its revenues. Yet both appear to be turning a blind eye.”

León stresses that this higher flow of ships in the area is “clearly” helping to ease oil prices, which in recent days have fallen below $100 a barrel, and gas, which has also edged down. While the expectation of an agreement between Washington and Tehran is the main driver of any fluctuation, negotiating sentiment is not the only factor at play.

“Without this increase in transits over the past two weeks, the market would be much higher,” León, a former analyst at the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), explained. “Ship traffic remains highly volatile and varies day by day, but it is clear that, implicitly, both parties are allowing more vessels to pass.”

Donald Trump’s initial announcement in March that U.S. forces would escort Western ships so they could transit Hormuz has come to little. However, in recent weeks, the U.S. Navy has been guiding dozens of vessels attempting to transit the strait. The New York Times estimates that since mid-May about 70 ships have followed recommendations to leave the area — successfully. Most did so clandestinely, with their transponders off and therefore not added to official crossing lists.

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