13JUN

Seven VLCCs at Chabahar, three at Hormuz

3 min read

11:07UTC

Lowdown Wire

← Back to Europe bids for the AUKUS seabed layer Jump to analysis ↓

TechnologyDeveloping

Key takeaway

Seven VLCCs gathered at Chabahar on 20 April while only three vessels transited the strait the same week.

Windward detected seven Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs, the standard two-million-barrel oil tankers that carry Gulf crude) near Chabahar on Iran's Makran coast on 20 April⁠¹. Chabahar is Iran's only deep-water port on the Arabian Sea and sits east of the geometry Admiral Brad Cooper's narrower port-interdiction order covers. The same Windward log counted three strait transits the day before, a fraction of the 135-per-day pre-war baseline and the lowest count since the blockade began.

Earlier mid-transit reroutings from India to Chinese ports ahead of the OFAC General License U lapse established the Chabahar-routing adaptation; seven VLCCs at anchor there indicate the same workaround now running at capacity. The USS Spruance's firing into the Touska's engine room earlier in the same window hardened the Hormuz risk premium on the kinetic side, but the structural story is sideways: vessels avoiding the strait do not need the strait reopened to clear cargo.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The US Navy has been blocking oil tankers from using the strait of Hormuz, the narrow sea passage through which most Gulf oil normally flows. Iran has responded by loading oil onto tankers at a different port, Chabahar, which sits on Iran's other coastline , the Arabian Sea side , and has no connection to the strait at all. Windward, a maritime tracking company, spotted seven large tankers near Chabahar on 20 April. Only three vessels transited the strait in the same period. This matters because it shows the blockade has not stopped Iran from shipping oil , it has just changed which port the oil leaves from. Chabahar is operated under a 2016 agreement with India, which adds a political complication: any US attempt to block Chabahar would directly affect India's interests.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

CENTCOM's written blockade order was drafted around the strait of Hormuz and Iranian Gulf ports, reflecting the operational assumption that Iranian crude exports require the strait. Chabahar sits on the Makran Coast, outside the Gulf, accessible from the Arabian Sea without any Hormuz transit.

The legal gap was present from the order's inception: Iran never ratified UNCLOS, leaving its domestic maritime law , updated in 2024 to claim jurisdiction over 'hostile-linked vessels' , as the operative legal text on the Iranian side, while the US order covers only Iranian-port traffic rather than the full territorial sea.

India's 2016 Chabahar agreement, originally designed to give Delhi access to Afghan and Central Asian markets bypassing Pakistan, created an operational control structure that places Chabahar partially inside Indian sovereign jurisdiction, complicating any US enforcement action.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Chabahar routing at capacity would reduce the blockade's supply-disruption component while leaving the kinetic risk premium intact, potentially splitting the oil price signal into two separable factors.
Short term · 0.72
Risk
Any CENTCOM attempt to extend interdiction to Chabahar creates a direct India-US collision over India's 2016 operational rights agreement with Tehran.
Medium term · 0.78
Precedent
The Chabahar bypass establishes a template for sanctions evasion at ports outside written enforcement geometry, applicable to any future blockade scenario.
Long term · 0.8

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources from Israel

Israel

Primary parallel: During the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, Saudi Arabia and Iraq routed exports overland via the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (Tapline) and the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to bypass tanker interdiction risk in the Gulf of Suez. The embargo's price effect was sustained not because all physical flow stopped but because the diversion routes lacked the throughput to replace lost Gulf volume , the same arithmetic now being tested at Chabahar.

Counter-parallel: In 1984 Iraq began the 'tanker war' phase of the Iran-Iraq conflict specifically because Iran had identified and was exploiting Kharg Island's offshore loading capacity as a bypass around Iraqi interdiction.

Iraq's response , attacking Kharg Island itself , escalated the conflict rather than closing the bypass. The 2026 situation differs in one critical respect: Chabahar is Indian-operated under a 2016 bilateral agreement, making a direct CENTCOM strike against the port a three-way diplomatic incident.

Seven VLCCs near Chabahar represent approximately 14 million barrels of potential lift capacity at the VLCC standard of 2 million barrels each. Even at 50% utilisation and a single loading cycle per week, the route could sustain 7 million barrels per week of Iranian crude flow , roughly 1 million barrels per day.

Brent's refusal to settle below $96 across five consecutive sessions reflects the market pricing the kinetic risk premium at Hormuz, not the physical supply gap. If Chabahar throughput scales to even 500,000 bpd, the price signal loses its supply-disruption component and becomes a pure risk premium , a structurally different and easier-to-exit pricing regime.

Consensus view: IISS maritime analyst Nick Childs and Kpler's head of tanker analytics Homayoun Falakshahi both conclude that seven VLCCs at Chabahar demonstrate the blockade has displaced rather than halted Iranian crude exports: the physical flow continues through a port outside CENTCOM's written enforcement geometry, meaning the price signal is being sustained by kinetic risk and insurance withdrawal, not by physical interdiction.

Counter-view: The Russian Institute of World Economy notes that Chabahar's infrastructure constraints , single deep-water berth, limited storage, Arabian Sea swell exposure , cap throughput at roughly 300,000 barrels per day even at maximum utilisation, well below the 1.8 million bpd Iran was exporting before the war, so the route is a partial relief valve rather than a blockade-replacement.

Key tension: Whether the Chabahar routing is already large enough to break the price signal that underpins the blockade's coercive logic, or whether CENTCOM will be forced to extend interdiction geometry east into the Arabian Sea , a move requiring additional force posture and risking direct India confrontation.

First Reported In

Update #76 · Trump posts an exit Iran can't reach

Windward· 22 Apr 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

Ping Shun diverted from Vadinar to Dongying

Ping Shun's mid-transit diversion to China ahead of GL-U lapse established the Chabahar-routing adaptation now running at capacity with seven VLCCs.

Occurred 15 Apr 2026

Read story →

US warship seizes Iranian cargo ship Touska

USS Spruance firing into the Touska's engine room on 19 April hardened the Hormuz risk premium, reinforcing Chabahar as the safer export route.

Occurred 19 Apr 2026

Read story →

This Event

Seven VLCCs at Chabahar, three at Hormuz

Iranian crude is leaving through a port outside CENTCOM's written enforcement geometry while Hormuz legitimate traffic collapses to 2 per cent of its pre-war baseline.

Led to

Five vessels, no AIS: Hormuz goes dark

The all-dark AIS transit day on 23 April advances the dark-fleet dominance pattern documented by Windward on 19-20 April, where only 3 transits were recorded and 7 VLCCs were held near Chabahar.

Occurred 23 Apr 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

DNV and Fassmer

Signed a memorandum at SMM in Hamburg, announced on 10 September, to seek an approval in principle for autonomous naval vessels. DNV's Rasmus Stute said autonomy is "becoming one of the key pillars in defence".

Belgian Ministry of Defence

Awarded Exail Robotics Belgium €9.87m on 14 September, without competition, for three TRIDENT systems carrying the K-STER C mine-disposal vehicle for Ukraine. It had tendered separately in July for twelve tethered ROVs, not yet bought.

IRGC Navy (Iran)

IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said the IRGC Navy seized a US Kingfish mine-hunting vehicle in the Strait of Hormuz on 27 September, valuing it at several million dollars. US Central Command calls the claim "clearly desperate"; no verified imagery exists.

UK Defence Intelligence and Kraken

Defence Intelligence said the 12 September clash "almost certainly marks the first time" Russian and Ukrainian USVs engaged directly. Kraken meanwhile trialled an unarmed Saab radar picket boat on 5 and 6 October.

Ukrainian forces and ARX Robotics

A Ukrainian Sargan-3000 destroyed a Russian robot boat on 12 September, and the first ARX GEREON ground robots reached Ukraine on 29 September. The Sargan-3000 carries a mounted gun.

Indian Register of Shipping

Certified Accurate Industrial Controls' ISACA collision-avoidance software to IMO standards after five audited milestones and 2,500 hours of trials. The firm plans to use it converting six Indian Navy patrol boats.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.