A renewal of strikes by the forces of Iran and the United States is threatening the nascent recovery of shipping in the Persian Gulf, where traffic through the Strait of Hormuz recently rose to the highest levels since the start of the war.
The attacks that began last week and continued over the weekend showed that both countries were willing to use military force to gain the upper hand in the strait, prompting many ship operators to remain wary of the waterway, a crucial choke point for oil and gas shipments from the gulf.
“Shipping is literally caught in the crossfire as the U.S. and Iran battle for control of Hormuz strait,” said Michelle Wiese Bockmann, an analyst at Windward, a maritime intelligence firm. “This does little to restore confidence that security and safety can be guaranteed to get stranded ships out.”The escalation began on Thursday, when Iran attacked a cargo ship in the strait with a drone. The United States retaliated with strikes against Iran, which were followed by an attack Saturday on a tanker that U.S. Central Command said Iran had carried out.
The United States and Iran signed a preliminary peace agreement this month that included a provision to reopen the strait.
But the waterway has not returned to normal. After the Iranian attack on the cargo ship, Ever Lovely, the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, halted an effort to evacuate hundreds of ships stranded in the Persian Gulf.
Harry Vafias, chief executive of Stealth Gas, a shipping company, said on Saturday that of his three vessels stuck in the Persian Gulf for more than three months, one was able to exit the Persian Gulf in recent days. But the other two are still stuck and it is too difficult for them to exit at this time. He said the “situation in Hormuz seems to be deteriorating once more.”
Iran has in recent weeks tried to establish formal control over shipping in the strait, something it did not have before. Iran has been demanding that vessel operators gain its permission before going through — and it has threatened ships that have not done so. Many vessels have worked out arrangements with Iran.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Sunday that the country was solely responsible for managing the strait under the preliminary agreement it signed with the United States, and warned against “interference” in managing routes through the waterway.
Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told “Fox News Sunday” that the United States would not allow Iran to “illegally control an international waterway.”
United States Central Command is helping ships go through the strait, on routes close to Oman’s coast line, but it is not clear how much military protection it is offering. Central Command said it had assisted the passage of over 500 vessels since early May.
After the attack Saturday on the tanker, Kiku, Central Command said, “Commercial vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz continue. U.S. forces remain vigilant, lethal and ready.” And on Sunday, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, which tracks security at sea, said that “U.S.-assisted commercial transits continued uninterrupted despite the elevated threat environment.”
Before Iran’s first strike last week, ship traffic through the waterway had been increasing. On Wednesday, 73 ships went through and 54 on Thursday, according to data from Kpler, a maritime analysis firm. The attacks did not appear to cause a complete halt to ship traffic. At least 34 vessels transited on Friday, and at least 10 vessels on Saturday, but that count was incomplete and was expected to rise, according to Kpler.
The traffic numbers from earlier last week were higher than the minuscule daily totals that occurred during the war but still well below the roughly 130 ships that transited daily before the conflict. For oil and gas flows to return to normal, and bring relief to countries that are dependent on Middle East oil, ship traffic has to keep rising.
There have been essentially three types of traffic going through the strait: Iranian ships and those vessels that have obtained permission from Iran; the vessels transiting with U.S. assistance; and the ships that were part of the evacuation organized by the International Maritime Organization.
Arsenio Dominguez, the secretary general of the I.M.O., said on Friday that 115 vessels, with about 2,500 crew members, had been evacuated since Tuesday. Of the total, 51 exited on Thursday and 16 on Friday.
The I.M.O. has said that the ship attacked on Thursday had not been part of its evacuation, and Mr. Dominguez said he needed “additional information” to determine whether the ship was part of the Central Command effort. A spokesman declined to say whether the Ever Lovely, which was close to Oman when it was hit, had been part of its initiative.Some experts on the strait said that the Central Command operation was not doing enough to restore high ship traffic through the strait, and that the United States military might have to do more.
“It’s going to have to upscale those efforts,” said Martin Navias, the co-author of “Tanker Wars: The Assault on Merchant Shipping During the Iran-Iraq Crisis.”
But any big escalation may cause ship traffic to slow to a trickle again.
The United Nations evacuation effort appealed to ship operators who did not want to deal with Iran and who did not want to take the risk of going through with U.S. assistance and potentially become the target of an Iranian strike, shipping experts said.
After the Iranian and U.S. strikes, such ship operators will now most likely avoid the strait until conditions appear safer, which could delay a return to prewar traffic.
“Risks will remain high for shipping,” said Noam Raydan, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Iran is unwilling to halt its attacks on ships and threats — and this will continue requiring a response from the U.S.”