Ships pass through the Strait of Hormuz near Bandar Abbas in southern Iran on Monday. [AFP]
Ships pass through the Strait of Hormuz near Bandar Abbas in southern Iran on Monday. [AFP]

President Donald Trump insisted Wednesday that the United States has "total control" of the Strait of Hormuz, but ship traffic through the waterway has plunged from more than 130 vessels a day before the war to just 14. Most of those that do pass through are using Iran-managed routes, suggesting Tehran holds de facto control over passage through the strait.

Trump posted on Truth Social that "the United States has total control of the Strait of Hormuz" and said he believed the US would "continue to maintain this." He added that America's maritime blockade of Iran "is being called an 'Iron Wall' by everybody" and that "Iran can do nothing about it."

The Wall Street Journal pushed back on that claim the same day, publishing an analysis showing that ship traffic through the strait has collapsed — a picture the paper said reflects only the Trump administration's view of the situation. The Journal's analysis of vessel-tracking data found that just 14 ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday. Before the war, more than 130 vessels transited the strait daily — a drop of roughly 90 percent. Of those 14 ships, 11 used Iran-managed routes. The shift appears to have come after Iran attacked vessels attempting to use the Omani side of the strait, pushing operators to switch to the Iranian-controlled corridor.

The Journal said Iran has managed to severely curtail shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — a critical chokepoint for global energy supply — using relatively limited military force. Rachel Ziemba, a senior visiting fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said Iran "is using the fear of real physical danger to maintain a degree of control" and that "for global tanker operators, the reward isn't worth the risk."

The International Energy Agency has assessed that the strait is effectively closed again after a reopening agreement reached in June collapsed last month, with the renewed disruption halting a recovery in crude oil supply from the Gulf region.

While the US Navy has been escorting tankers through the strait, analysts say the effort has not been enough to restore overall traffic. According to vessel-tracking firm Kpler, roughly half of the ships that transited the Strait of Hormuz this month chose Iran-managed routes. The remaining half operated with their Automatic Identification System transponders switched off, making their exact movements impossible to verify. Dimitris Maniatis, CEO of maritime risk management firm Marisk, said "the southern Omani route cannot currently be considered reliably protected."

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright claimed Tuesday that 9 million barrels of crude oil were being shipped through the Strait of Hormuz each day, but private vessel-tracking data offers little support for that figure.

JPMorgan Chase estimated that crude oil exports through the strait amount to about 4 million barrels per day. CNN said the current level of ship traffic makes it difficult to see how the 9 million barrels per day Wright cited could be moving through the waterway. Matt Smith, Kpler's head of commodities research, said "it is impossible to reconcile the gap between the numbers we are observing and the numbers the secretary has put forward."

The Department of Energy stood by its figures, saying its data is more accurate than that of private firms. A department spokesperson said that working with the US military, "the Department of Energy has access to the most accurate data available on crude oil and petroleum products leaving the Arabian Gulf."

However, Wright's separate claim that pipelines bypassing the strait carry between 5 million and 7 million barrels of crude per day was found to broadly align with the actual situation.

Since the US-Iran war began, Saudi Arabia has been routing a significant portion of its crude exports through the East-West Pipeline to Yanbu and then via the Red Sea. That pipeline alone is diverting more than 5 million barrels per day away from the strait toward the Red Sea.

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