{"id":164027,"date":"2026-06-17T04:35:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T04:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/164027\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T04:35:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T04:35:14","slug":"hormuz-tankers-reluctant-to-leave-gulf-despite-peace-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/164027\/","title":{"rendered":"Hormuz tankers reluctant to leave Gulf despite peace deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\tWednesday 17 June 2026 5:00 am
\n\t\t\t\t\t\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0Updated:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\tTuesday 16 June 2026 7:08 pm\n\t<\/p>\n

\"Iranian\t\tDonald Trump told shipping firms to ‘start their engines’ thanks to the deal\t<\/p>\n

Shipping firms remain reluctant to navigate the Strait of Hormuz sea passage despite this week\u2019s peace deal, according to a boss of the industry\u2019s lobby group who warned that trade volumes will not return to full capacity until next year.<\/p>\n

Peter Aylott, director of policy at the UK Chamber of Shipping, told City AM that firms would need to see a \u201cfairly robust string of evidence\u201d that tankers stuck in the Persian Gulf could leave free from before they would have the confidence to sail through the strait after the deal.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re grateful that we\u2019re moving in a positive direction, but to the same extent we\u2019re very cautious about returning vessels to moving through the Strait, given the activity that\u2019s been going on during the ceasefire, and given the fact that we\u2019ve been here before,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dozens of vessels have spent months marooned in the Persian Gulf ever since Iran chose to prevent traffic passing through the narrow Hormuz shipping lane in response to the US\u2019s air strikes in late February. The closure of the chokepoint, through which more than a fifth of seaborne oil and gas passed before the war, has caused fertiliser<\/a> and oil prices to skyrocket in the months since and has been a key tool in Iran\u2019s negotiations with the US.<\/p>\n

The eagerly anticipated agreement<\/a> had triggered hopes that the Strait of Hormuz may reopen to shipping traffic as soon as Friday, with President Trump urging seafarers stuck in the Gulf to \u201cstart your engines\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the terms of the deal \u2013 known as a Memorandum of Understanding \u2013 are yet to be published, with vice president JD Vance saying on Monday<\/a> that it \u201ca number of issues\u201d remain in the agreement, which is currently just a page and a half long.<\/p>\n

Shipping volumes won\u2019t return to normal \u2018this year\u2019<\/p>\n

The lack of clarity led Aylott to play down hopes of an immediate return to volumes that resemble pre-war levels, saying that while some of the industry body\u2019s members \u201cwill start to move as soon as the piece of paper has been signed\u201d, the majority will not.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe risk assessments of many of our members have stipulated that safe passage can only be enacted in the event of a clear and robust ceasefire,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Several of the UK Chamber of Shipping\u2019s members own ships stranded in the Gulf, a small minority of which have successfully bypassed the strait\u2019s closure and extricated their tankers from the bottleneck. Most, however, have remained stuck in the Persian Gulf, unable to leave for fear of being seized by the Iranian regime or encountering a sea mine laid down since the outbreak of the war.<\/p>\n

After the marooned vessels have largely escaped the gulf, any second phase of a return to normality will constitute the reinstatement of regular trade through the channel in both directions.<\/p>\n

But Aylott warned that, even being optimistic, it will take several months for members to have the confidence to engage in free-flowing trade through the strait.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cIf by normal trading one means 150 vessels in and out a day, I think, in reality, it\u2019s unlikely to be in that shape this year unless those discussions are incredibly successful. And given previous discussions between the US and Iran have taken an incredibly long time\u2026 you can see why I\u2019m being very cautious.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRead more<\/p>\n

\t\t\tIran deal is \u2018largely negotiated\u2019 as Trump teases Strait of Hormuz re-opening<\/a><\/p>\n

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\t\t\tPeople & Organisations\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wednesday 17 June 2026 5:00 am \u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0Updated:\u00a0 Tuesday 16 June 2026 7:08 pm Donald Trump told shipping firms…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[26],"tags":[328,16739,359,34,42,261,39,150,101,224],"class_list":["post-164027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-persian-gulf","tag-business","tag-fertiliser","tag-gulf","tag-iran","tag-news","tag-oil-prices","tag-persian-gulf","tag-shipping","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-us-iran-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116763592548779627","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}