Hormuz Chokehold: Ship Traffic Plummets as U.S.–Iran Tensions Flare

When President Donald Trump announced a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in mid‑July, few expected the waterway to quiet down almost overnight. Yet, a week after the order took effect – around July 15 – the traffic numbers tell a different story.

According to Lloyd’s List Intelligence, only 53 vessels managed to thread the strait in the week ending July 20. That’s a staggering 66 % plunge from the 157 ships that passed just a week earlier. Even more striking is the collapse of tanker and gas‑carrier movements: they fell from roughly 90 trips to just 30.

Data from the analytics firm Kpler backs up the picture. Before the blockade, daily crossings routinely topped 20 ships. On July 15 the count dipped to 16, and by July 16 it was down in the single‑digit range. The numbers stayed stubbornly low for the rest of that week.

S&P Global’s figures line up with those trends. Between July 17 and July 19, only 40 vessels – about 13 a day – slipped through the narrow waterway, meaning weekly traffic was almost half of what it had been the week before.

What’s also clear is who’s still moving. More than 70 % of the remaining traffic consists of commercial vessels, yet only about one‑third of those are considered compliant with the new restrictions. The rest are largely Iran‑linked or otherwise sanctioned ships that seem to be finding ways to keep flowing.

“Things have slowed down significantly since the tensions reignited,” explains Bridget Diakun, senior risk and compliance analyst at Lloyd’s List Intelligence. “Every person has a different risk appetite, and traffic ebbs and flows accordingly.” Her comment captures the uneasy mix of caution and necessity that ship owners are grappling with.

From an energy‑market perspective, the dip is massive. The Hormuz corridor handles roughly a fifth of the world’s oil consumption, so any hiccup reverberates far beyond the Gulf. Saul Kavonic, head of energy research at MST Marquee, warns that flows have fallen to “around 15 % of pre‑war levels,” and adds that persistent fighting could push crude back up toward $100 a barrel.

Even as commercial ships sit idle off Port Sultan Qaboos in Muscat, the strategic importance of the strait remains unchanged. The tug‑of‑war between U.S. naval policy and Iranian resolve is now being measured not just in diplomatic statements but in the concrete count of hulls crossing a waterway that fuels a significant slice of the global economy.

For now, the lull appears to be holding. Whether it’s a temporary pause or the beginning of a longer‑term shutdown will depend on how quickly diplomatic efforts can calm the nerves of the world’s biggest oil‑transport route.