11SEP

IMO logs three new merchant casualties

2 min read

09:25UTC

The IMO added Horizon 1, Hercules Star and New Andros to its confirmed-incident register. One hull appears on that register and on CENTCOM's list of successes on the same day.

← Back to 23 to 3: Iran goes to the Security Council Jump to analysis ↓

ConflictAssessed

Key takeaway

Three named merchant casualties join a register that neither belligerent controls.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the United Nations agency responsible for the safety of international shipping, added three merchant casualties to its confirmed-incident record through 10 September ¹. Horizon 1 was damaged on 8 September. Hercules Star was damaged on 9 September, and its charterer reported one crew member killed and a second missing ². New Andros was damaged the same day while carrying fuel oil ³.

Every entry on that register carries a vessel name, a date and a location, and neither US Central Command nor the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps compiles it. That independence is the whole of its value. Both belligerents issued competing accounts of the same water this week, and an underwriter setting a war-risk premium for the Strait of Hormuz cannot price either one. The register's limits show up in its own entries. An unclaimed projectile killed a crew member aboard an outbound vessel on 18 August, and no name, flag or operator was ever published for the ship . A casualty that can be counted but not attributed tells an owner what happened and nothing about what to avoid.

Horizon 1 is the awkward case. CENTCOM named it as one of the crude carriers its forces disabled, and the IMO recorded it as damaged on the same date, which means a single hull is counted as a victory in Tampa and as a casualty in London. Neither entry is wrong. They are two institutions measuring different things about one event, and the gap between them is where the human cost of this war goes uncounted: a disabled vessel is an achieved military objective to one and a crew in a lifeboat to the other.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is the United Nations agency that sets global shipping safety rules and keeps an official count of attacks on commercial vessels. By 10 September, the IMO's confirmed count reached 75 attacks and 22 deaths among ship crews since the war began. Three ships were newly added to that list in this period: Horizon 1, Hercules Star, where one seafarer was killed, and New Andros. These are ordinary merchant sailors, not military personnel, caught in a conflict between states. The IMO's own plan to evacuate around 6,000 of the most exposed seafarers has been on hold, even though roughly 20,000 people working at sea in the region remain exposed to the risk.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

IMO's own evacuation plan for at-risk seafarers, targeting roughly 6,000 people, has remained paused since before this reporting period, even as the organisation estimates about 20,000 seafarers, port workers and offshore crews remain exposed. The gap between the exposed population and the paused evacuation capacity is structural, not a resourcing shortfall from this week alone: the last full evacuation, in June, moved only 2,900 of the seafarers now again at risk.

The toll rose by five confirmed incidents and three deaths in the 13 days to 10 September, a faster rate of increase than the prior stretch of the war, without any new mechanism, coalition escort, evacuation, or ceasefire, entering the record to explain the acceleration.

What could happen next?

Consequence
The confirmed toll rose by five incidents and three deaths in 13 days, a faster pace than the previous reporting window, while the IMO's own evacuation plan for at-risk seafarers remains paused.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: The Red Sea shipping crisis of 2023 to 2024 saw the same UN body, the IMO, track a rising incident count against Houthi attacks on merchant shipping, with confirmed casualties accumulating week by week against a chokepoint no single naval force could fully secure.

Counter-parallel: The Somali piracy campaign of 2008 to 2012 also produced a rising IMO incident count at first, but a multinational naval coalition, Combined Task Force 151, drove attacks down over several years through escort convoys and onshore disruption. No equivalent coalition currently escorts merchant traffic through Hormuz; the current toll has risen in every IMO update since the war began, with no comparable turning point yet visible.

Sources:International Maritime Organization·Reuters, via Investing.com

Mentions:International Maritime Organization →Tampa →London →Red Sea →United Nations →Strait of Hormuz →CENTCOM (US Central Command) →Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) →

First Reported In

Update #177 · 23 to 3: Iran goes to the Security Council

International Maritime Organization· 11 Sept 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

Five tankers for two failed missiles

The five tankers CENTCOM disabled on 8 September feed directly into the IMO's updated confirmed-incident and casualty count reported through 10 September.

Occurred 7 Sept 2026

Read story →

This Event

IMO logs three new merchant casualties

The IMO register is the one count neither belligerent compiles, which is why an insurer reaches for it when CENTCOM and the IRGC disagree.

Different Perspectives

Turkey

Golden Global Portfoy Yonetimi closed three funds to new money a day after telling regulators they were legally separate from its sanctioned parent, and the central bank held its rate at 37 per cent citing energy-driven inflation risk. Ankara is absorbing balance-sheet and monetary costs from a war it is not fighting.

Qatar

Qatar's foreign ministry said it was coordinating with China during a Beijing visit to restart negotiations, while filing hundreds of letters at the UN documenting Iranian strikes on its own civilian facilities. Doha is mediating for a neighbour it is also formally accusing, a contradiction the referral's clean vote count does not show.

China and Russia

China and Russia voted against the IAEA referral alongside Niger, and Iran's ambassador told the Board that inspections were impossible during a war Iran did not start. Beijing is separately mediating between Doha and Tehran, meaning the same power blocking the West's legal track is running the diplomatic one that might actually end the war.

Jordan

Jordan said it intercepted 18 of the 20 Iranian ballistic missiles fired at its territory on 8 September, the war's first sustained salvo against a state that is not a combatant. Amman's 90 per cent interception rate held, but a tenfold jump in missiles fired in a single volley raises what the next one might carry.

United States

CENTCOM said its strikes disabled five Iranian tankers only after two failed missile attempts on a US warship, and Treasury moved the same week to a presumption of denial on all Iran licences. Washington now treats commercial shipping and financial plumbing as one enforcement front rather than two separate tracks.

Iran / IRGC

Iran's foreign ministry called the CENTCOM tanker strikes a war crime and a breach of the UN Charter, while the IRGC named two US destroyers it says it damaged without releasing images. Tehran expects the claims, unverifiable either way, to sustain domestic morale after losing five tankers in a single day.