Iran has lost significant control of the Strait of Hormuz

Strait of Hormuz: Iran’s Grip on the World’s Most Critical Oil Chokepoint Is Slipping

Healfromzero.com – The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway barely 33 miles wide at its tightest point, has long served as the arterial gateway through which roughly one-fifth of global petroleum consumption flows. For decades, the question of who commands that passage has been answered by geography and the sheer volume of tanker traffic that makes outright closure economically suicidal. Yet since the outbreak of the current Iran war, that calculus has been thrown into chaos. What the shipping data now reveals is a waterway in which Tehran’s ability to dictate terms of passage has eroded dramatically over the past several weeks.

The Numbers Tell a Clear Story

Tracking firm Kpler, which monitors vessel movements through AIS transponders and satellite imagery, has compiled transit data showing that more than 80 percent of liquid cargo moving through the strait over the last fortnight has either followed the Omani corridor — a shipping lane authorized by the United Nations that Tehran has consistently rejected — or traveled as so-called “dark” transits, meaning vessels with transponders switched off, most likely also routing through the Omani side of the waterway.

“It increasingly looks like Iran has at least partially lost control of the strait,” said Homayoun Falakshahi, head of crude oil analysis at Kpler.

The shift is stark when measured against conditions just four weeks earlier, when Kpler recorded virtually zero traffic along the Omani corridor. The rapid migration of tanker flows away from Iran’s preferred northern route has, as a practical matter, stripped Tehran of its ability to impose transit tolls on passing vessels — a revenue stream it had collected during the spring.

Tolls, Threats, and the Expired MoU

This week marked the expiration of the Memorandum of Understanding between Washington and Tehran, a diplomatic instrument that had, in theory, constrained Iran’s authority to levy charges on shipping. With that instrument now lapsed, one might expect Tehran to resume toll collection immediately. The data, however, suggests otherwise. Vessels continue to flow through without paying.

“Iran’s request to collect tolls is something that most Middle East folks don’t want to do and haven’t been doing,” said Dan Pickering, founder and chief investment officer at Pickering Energy Partners. “So the Oman route absolutely makes the most sense.”

The economic logic is straightforward: for Gulf producers whose entire export apparatus depends on unimpeded tanker access, paying a toll to a belligerent power that has already attacked dozens of ships attempting to transit along the northern coast of Oman is a risk most operators simply will not accept.

Dark Transits and the VLCC Workaround

Complicating the picture further, a significant share of oil moving through the strait is invisible to conventional tracking systems. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have chartered Very Large Crude Carriers — the largest class of oil tanker in commercial service — to exit the Persian Gulf through Hormuz and then transfer cargo to customer-owned tankers waiting outside the danger zone in the Gulf of Oman, according to Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates. To minimize their exposure to Iranian fire, these vessels routinely switch off their transponders, sometimes for weeks at a stretch.

The result is a substantial volume of “dark” traffic that evades standard AIS-based monitoring. While satellite platforms can occasionally pick up such vessels, traditional tracking services struggle to account for them. This blind spot means that publicly available transit figures likely understate the true volume of oil still moving through the waterway.

Washington’s Claims Versus the Waterway’s Reality

Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated last week that combined oil transits through the strait and rerouted around it totaled approximately 15 million barrels per day over a given week — a figure considerably closer to the roughly 20-million-barrel-per-day average that characterized pre-war flows than most conventional estimates had previously indicated.

That statistic prompted President Donald Trump to declare on Monday that the United States exercises “total control over the strait,” a formulation he has repeated with frequency throughout the conflict. Yet the continued Iranian attacks on shipping and the fact that oil throughput remains well below pre-war norms suggest that neither Washington nor Tehran holds unambiguous command of the passage.

“If their goal is to be ‘in charge,’ then I’d say they were never completely in control to start with,” Pickering observed. “It feels like their goal is deterrence, in order to be validated as in-control. I think they are still deterring.”

Still, if tanker volumes are genuinely approaching the levels Washington describes, then Iran’s capacity to deter or dictate transit terms has contracted meaningfully compared with one or two months ago, when the strait was effectively a chokepoint Tehran could threaten at will.

Oman–Iran Talks Add a Wild Card

Adding another layer of uncertainty, Oman and Iran are reportedly conducting bilateral discussions aimed at restoring freedom of navigation through the strait — negotiations conducted without United States participation, to Trump’s evident frustration. How those talks will reshape transit patterns, toll arrangements, or the balance of naval presence in the waterway remains unclear.

“I would take all the information and headlines ‘under advisement,'” Lipow cautioned. “But it is fair to say that Iran has partially lost control of the strait.”

For global energy markets, the practical implication is one of reduced — but not eliminated — disruption risk. The strait remains the single most concentrated petroleum chokepoint on Earth, and any further escalation, whether from renewed Iranian attacks or from a breakdown in the Oman–Iran dialogue, could quickly reverse the modest gains in throughput that the past two weeks have shown. The era of unambiguous Iranian dominance over Hormuz appears to be ending, but the waterway’s future governance remains contested, fragmented, and far from settled.