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Hormuz Shipping Traffic Hits 3-Week Low Amid Escalating US-Iran Military Strikes

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Commercial shipping activity in the Strait of Hormuz slumped to a three-week low on Thursday, as a heightened military confrontation between the US and Iran forces operators to prioritize security over trade routes, Kpler's shipping data showed on Friday.

"Confirmed crossings through the monitored Strait of Hormuz zone declined further on 16 July, falling to eight transits from 15 seen the previous day and reaching a three-week low," according to MarineTraffic, owned by Kpelr.

It noted that, of the total eight crossings, seven transits used the Iranian side of the waterway, indicating that routing was concentrated on the Iranian Route for the fourth consecutive day.

The traffic was evenly split between low-risk commercial vessels and sanctioned vessels, with no shadow fleet movements recorded, MarineTraffic said.

The International Maritime Organization's daily Strait of Hormuz incident tracker showed a total of five confirmed attacks this week. These incidents bring the total number of confirmed maritime security incidents in the region to 58 as of Friday.

The IMO tracker provides a daily log of verified strikes on ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz since the conflict began, with the earliest incident recorded on March 1.

The US and Iran intensified retaliatory military strikes on the sixth straight day of hostilities, increasing fears of a return to full war with no agreement reached over the Strait.

On Friday, the US military destroyed a surveillance tower belonging to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the country's southeastern coast overnight.

The destruction of the Chah Bahar Shahid Kalantari Port surveillance tower in the port city of Chabahar will degrade the IRGC's "ability to track and target commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz" and to attack civilian crews, the US Central Command said in a post on X.

The US army has so far redirected three commercial vessels attempting to breach its blockade of Iranian ports, disabled one vessel that failed to comply and boarded another to verify compliance, Centcom reported.

The security environment for commercial shipping across the Middle East remains volatile, with the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations reporting multiple incidents over the past 24 hours.

The UKMTO said on Friday that a vessel was boarded by unauthorized personnel while transiting through the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Yemen.

The maritime security agency also reported an attack on a tanker near Khasab, Oman, along with separate harassment incidents in waters near Iran's Kharg Islands and Duqm, Oman.

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