The United States imposed its own naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, moving to choke off traffic to and from Iranian ports and cut the revenue that Iran has long drawn from the waterway. By Wednesday, Kpler said no ships linked to Iran had been spotted leaving the region, and at least two appeared to have turned back toward the Persian Gulf.
More than 12 American military vessels were stationed in international waters in the Gulf of Oman beyond the strait on Tuesday, underscoring how quickly the blockade was being enforced. The Rich Starry, a Chinese tanker, was seen moving eastward through the strait toward open water before making a U-turn, while other ships without links to Iran kept to the Omani coast as they passed.
The move comes after vessel traffic in the strait slowed almost immediately when the United States and Israel launched the war in late February, with the volume falling from around 130 ships a day to just a handful. Two weeks into the conflict, ships began avoiding the official lanes and instead crossed shallower waters near Iran, while the few that did use the strait early on stayed in the long-established deep-water route off Oman.
For Iran, the waterway has already been a battlefield in its own right. During the war, Tehran allowed ships carrying its own cargo to pass while attacking commercial vessels and effectively shutting down shipping from almost everyone else, even as the U.S. had previously let Iranian-linked oil tankers keep transiting the strait.
The latest accounting is still incomplete. Kpler is the vessel-tracking company cited for the ship movements, but a precise count is difficult because ships can hide or falsify where they are. Even so, the pattern since Monday points to a hardening blockade and a route that is now being used far less freely than it was before the fighting began.
