Tanker transits through the Strait of Hormuz collapsed to about two on 9 July, from a near-pre-war rhythm of 35 to 51 a day earlier in the month . 1 Three vessels were struck overnight as they ran outbound: the liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Al Rekayyat, already reported , and the crude tankers Wedyan and Cyprus Prosperity, which earlier coverage never named. 2 The 7 July strike was therefore a wider, multi-vessel attack than first recorded.
The Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC), which advises commercial shipping, holds its Hormuz advisory at "severe", its highest tier. War-risk insurance now runs at 2 to 6 per cent of hull value, below a wartime peak near 10 per cent, but London brokers report fewer quote requests, not more. 3 Owners are abandoning the strait rather than paying to cross it: the cost is no longer a premium on a crossing but a route nobody will take.
Oil fell anyway. Brent went from $78.67 on 8 July to $76.97 on 9 July and about $75.80 on 10 July, handing back roughly a quarter of the strike gain. 4 Physical shipping data reads as crisis; the price reads as contained .
Article 5 of the ceasefire memorandum, over who controls Hormuz, is the sticking point stalling the Witkoff-Kushner Doha channel: Iran wants sole managerial authority, the US wants unrestricted transit. 5 With that channel frozen, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran's parliament speaker, says Iran and Oman have reached a separate Hormuz-management agreement based on the same memorandum, routing the strait's governance through Muscat rather than Washington. 6 That deal advances a bilateral Hormuz track Tehran and Muscat have been in continuous consultations over since May rather than opening a fresh one, and Ghalibaf had already declared the memorandum violated days earlier . The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) assesses that no military option can reopen the strait for either side, only negotiation. 7
