Iran regional confrontation

Hormuz transits fall to about ten ships a day, the lowest since May

ASSESSMENT
Location
Strait of Hormuz
Actors
Iran · United States
Importance
Major

An average of ten commodity ships a day crossed the Strait of Hormuz over the ten days to Sunday — the lowest rate since May — after a week of US strikes on Iranian tankers and Iranian attacks on shipping. Two vessels transited on Saturday and six on Sunday, most of them using the Iranian-controlled route. Before the war the strait carried about 130 ships a day.

Reuters, citing the analytics firm Kpler, reported the ten-day average at ten vessels on Sunday, down from thirteen on Saturday and more than fifteen on Friday. Iran International carried the figures, noting that Iranian crude loadings ran at roughly 220,000 to 255,000 barrels a day in August against close to two million before the conflict. CBS put the pre-war baseline at about 130 transits a day. The count is of commercial transits observed by ship tracking, not of cargo delivered, and it does not distinguish vessels that turned back inside the strait from those that never approached it.

Why it matters

The blockade and the counter-blockade are now measurable in one number: at ten ships a day the strait is not a contested waterway but a closed one, and the traffic that still moves does so on the route Tehran polices.

  • Maritime: Best 10 transits_per_day_ten_day_average · Confidence: Probable · Evidence: Hormuz traffic hits lowest level since May — Reuters, U.S.-Iran War Updates: U.S. forces hit IRGC-linked oil tankers as oil nears $100 a barrel · Kpler via Reuters, ten days to Sunday 6 September; thirteen on Saturday, more than fifteen on Friday.
  • Economic: Low 220000 · High 255000 barrels_per_day_iranian_crude_loadings_august · Confidence: Estimated · Evidence: Hormuz traffic hits lowest level since May — Reuters, U.S.-Iran War Updates: U.S. forces hit IRGC-linked oil tankers as oil nears $100 a barrel · Iran International, against close to two million barrels a day before the conflict.

Verification: Probable

Evidence: Hormuz traffic hits lowest level since May — Reuters, U.S.-Iran War Updates: U.S. forces hit IRGC-linked oil tankers as oil nears $100 a barrel

Ship-tracking figures from one analytics provider (Kpler) reported by Reuters and carried by Iran International; the pre-war baseline is CBS’s. No independent count of the same ten days is published.