Hormuz tanker traffic grinds to halt as U.S.-Iran tensions reignite

The Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most critical chokepoints for energy, had ground nearly to a halt by Thursday morning. Only two vessels had made the crossing in the early hours—the Berg 1, a crude supertanker loaded from Iran's Kharg Island, and the Well Sail, a chemical tanker that had picked up cargo near Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. The near-total absence of traffic was not accidental. It was the visible consequence of a conflict that had reignited just days earlier, when the United States launched fresh airstrikes on Iranian targets, prompting Tehran to retaliate with attacks on American military installations across the Gulf.

What made the standstill particularly striking was how quickly the fragile recovery had collapsed. For three weeks, a tentative truce had held. In that window, daily traffic through the strait had climbed to an average of 40 ships—still a fraction of the pre-war normal of 125 to 140 vessels per day, but a sign that commerce was beginning to resume. The broader conflict had erupted on February 28 with coordinated U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. Now, less than five months later, the latest escalation had undone weeks of cautious progress in a matter of hours.

Shipping companies were responding to the danger in ways that made the true scale of disruption invisible to public tracking systems. Vessel operators were increasingly switching off their automatic identification system transponders—the public-facing signals that allow anyone to monitor ship movements in real time. This meant the two tankers recorded by Kpler's analysis likely represented only a portion of actual traffic, but the broader message was unmistakable: the strait was no longer a safe passage. Jorge Leon, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy, captured the sentiment bluntly: tanker traffic had essentially stopped, and that silence spoke louder than any official statement from Washington or Tehran about the state of risk.

The immediate trigger for this week's escalation had been three separate attacks on tankers in the strait, which the United States attributed to Iran. One of those vessels, the Al Rekayyat, a Qatari liquefied natural gas tanker flying the Marshall Islands flag, had been struck by a projectile late Tuesday that ignited a fire in its engine room. The ship remained stranded off Oman, awaiting salvage operations. Though industry sources assessed the risk of explosion as low and the LNG cargo as secure, the incident exposed the vulnerability of high-value vessels to the conflict's expanding reach. The Marshall Islands registry reported no injuries or environmental damage, but the damage to confidence in the route was already done.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards Navy responded to the American strikes with their own attacks on U.S. military infrastructure in neighboring Gulf states, putting the three-week truce under severe strain. The Guards issued a warning that further U.S. intervention in the strait would draw a "crushing response," framing American actions as interference in the gradual reopening of one of the world's most important shipping lanes. The Strait of Hormuz handles roughly a fifth of global oil supplies, making even temporary disruptions consequential for energy markets worldwide.

The insurance industry was already adjusting to the new reality. Some marine war underwriters had advised shipping companies to suspend voyages through the strait entirely, while others were reviewing their policy terms in light of the fresh attacks on vessels. Clarksons, a major ship broker, noted that the narrative of Hormuz reopening now looked far more fragile. One anonymous marine war underwriter, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of ongoing negotiations, warned that the market faced the prospect of "potentially severe losses involving vessels of substantial value." The economics of shipping through the strait—already strained by insurance premiums and the risk of attack—were becoming untenable for many operators.

What remained unclear was whether this latest flare-up would hold or whether the two sides might find their way back to the negotiating table. The truce had been fragile from the start, a pause rather than a resolution. The attacks this week suggested that the underlying tensions had never truly subsided, only been temporarily contained. For now, the strait sat nearly empty, a stark reminder that even the world's most essential trade routes can be held hostage by geopolitical conflict.