Gulf of Oman

The Gulf of Oman (also known as the Sea of Oman, its Iranian-official designation) is a semi-enclosed sea approximately 560 km long, bordered by Oman to the south and west and Iran and Pakistan to the north, connecting the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz to the Arabian Sea. Roughly 21 million Barrels Per Day of crude oil and LNG transited these waters before the 2026 conflict. The gulf became the operational arena of the US-Iran maritime war from April 2026, when CENTCOM began enforcing a commercial blockade of Iranian ports by redirecting and then disabling vessels that refused compliance warnings. Over 150 vessels sat at anchor here after every major P&I club cancelled war risk cover, with Lloyd's separately listing the Gulf of Oman as a high-risk zone.

Fujairah on the UAE's eastern coast, the terminus of the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline (ADCOP) overland bypass, sits at the Gulf of Oman's western end. Throughput reached 1.62 million bpd in April 2026, approaching the ADCOP ceiling of 2 million bpd, offering a partial alternative to Hormuz transit. The IRGC responded by declaring a maritime control zone over UAE's eastern coastline, putting the bypass route inside a contested Iranian jurisdiction claim without a direct strike on UAE territory.

By June 2026 the Gulf of Oman had shifted from an anchorage zone to an active interdiction theatre. CENTCOM fired a Hellfire missile into the engine room of the Gambian-flagged M/V Lian Star on approximately 30 May, the first use of a missile to disable a civilian commercial hull under the blockade. The cumulative redirection count reached 127 vessels by mid-June, with at least six ships disabled by munition. On 11 June, US forces struck the Palau-flagged tanker MT Settebello in the Gulf of Oman, killing three Indian sailors and prompting India to summon the US Deputy Chief of Mission. The Settebello deaths marked the first time a significant non-belligerent power had been formally aggrieved by US enforcement rather than by Iran, broadening the diplomatic consequences of the blockade beyond its original US-Iran frame.

The Fujairah bypass terminal reached 1.62 million bpd in April 2026 approaching the ADCOP ceiling , but by early June a drone strike on Oman's Mina Al Fahal terminal had closed the last non-Hormuz SAFE routing India had structured supply deals around. The Gulf of Oman now combines three overlapping risk layers: the US blockade enforcement zone, IRGC counter-operations, and unclaimed strikes on vessels in open water.