Speaking in Athens on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted that Iran had lost all control over the strait — a claim that ship-tracking data from Kpler places in context: at least 16.5 million barrels of crude departed the Persian Gulf daily in September, a volume on par with the region's pre-conflict average when Iranian shipments are set aside. Trade restrictions and sanctions imposed by Washington have trimmed the volume of Iranian oil moving through maritime routes.
Maritime security sources, speaking to a named news outlet, reported that tanker incidents in the Strait of Hormuz had reached their highest weekly count since the seven-month conflict began. Kpler's data for Tuesday put the number of commodity vessels making the crossing at seven, a tally not seen since July 23. On a typical pre-war day, roughly 125 large vessels engaged in commercial trade passed through the waterway.
According to Kpler's tracking data, pipeline routes through Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates now carry roughly 40 percent of the region's crude oil exports — a share that had stood at just 17 percent before the war — allowing that volume to bypass the Strait of Hormuz entirely. Of the cargo that does make it through, the bulk ends up routed toward vessel-to-vessel exchanges out in the Gulf of Oman.
Naval vessels operating under Project Freedom have escorted commercial traffic through the strait since May, and analysts at Kpler now consider the waterway functionally open — describing any recovery as likely to proceed in fits and starts rather than steadily. Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, conveyed to clients this week that Iran's attempts to keep the strait closed have not achieved their aim; yet Iran has neither conceded the position nor wound down the campaign of interference it has been conducting there.
Between October 3 and 6, drone strikes and projectiles of unconfirmed origin hit five vessels — among them tankers and liquefied natural gas carriers — transiting the strait, according to data compiled by the Joint Maritime Information Center, a body led by the United States. Of the 12 crew members aboard one vessel, all sustained injuries, according to a statement from India's foreign ministry. A radio transmission from the Guards corps reached a sixth vessel, carrying an instruction to reverse course or face targeting. A course reversal followed.
Three drone strikes left a tanker damaged on October 7, roughly 51 nautical miles from the Qatari coast — the first vessel to be struck within the Gulf since September 9. No formal attribution has been made for the strikes, while the JMIC places the threat level across the strait at "severe," a rating it grounds in a pattern of attacks linked to Iran.
Shipments of crude oil through the strait dropped 27 percent against the prior week's peak recorded during the conflict, according to Kpler analysts speaking on October 6, yet volumes departing via the Gulf of Oman coastline and the Red Sea ran at more than twice their pre-conflict rates, leaving the area's combined output broadly unchanged. Figures from the oil trade point to a rebound shaped by deliberate intervention rather than any organic return to prior conditions.
Rerouted shipping lanes, hull wear, and the added freight burden those conditions impose are together expected by Kpler to hold delivered prices above normal levels until the underlying threat fades. According to Eurasia Group, the party in question treats the waterway not as a flashpoint for renewed escalation but as an arena for sustained, low-intensity pressure — channelled through increased interference with vessel traffic and broader disruption to the flow of goods across the region.
Unmanned aircraft originating in Iraq forced a halt to oil flow along Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline — the principal overland route bypassing the Strait of Hormuz — for a stretch of eleven days the previous month. Iran was named by Trump as the probable source of the incident, with the assertion framed as suspicion rather than confirmed finding.
Ahmed S. Hashim, an associate professor of war studies at Deakin University in Australia who has researched insurgency and counter-insurgency in Iraq, described how Iran restructured its military posture around a decentralised mosaic defence — integrating expanded weaponry, a broader operational theatre, and low-cost arms fielded in large numbers — and cautioned against underestimating the country's capacity to adapt, reconfigure, and devise new approaches, in remarks to a broadcast news outlet.
Rosemary Kelanic, who directs the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, characterised the continuing military campaign as a form of guerrilla warfare — hit-and-run strikes carried out with drones, missiles, fast boats, and mines, all relatively inexpensive and difficult to intercept — and told a broadcast news outlet that such asymmetric conflict is unlikely to be fully suppressed. Kelanic observed that U.S. forces had never fully dismantled the Taliban or brought Iraq's insurgency to an end.
Mona Yacoubian, director and senior adviser of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, described the current approach as a stopgap measure that Iran could potentially render ineffective by intensifying its rate of attacks during a broader conflict. The scope of those naval accompaniments, she pointed out, covers petroleum shipments alone — leaving out liquefied natural gas, helium, fertilizer, and container cargo. Kpler's tracking data puts Gulf refined-fuel shipments at roughly half the volume recorded before the war began.
Nate Swanson, who leads the Atlantic Council's Iran Strategy Project, assessed U.S. Central Command's handling of the crude movement as notably effective while questioning whether Washington possessed the tools to convert that battlefield advantage into a durable political outcome. Keeping the strait open had not featured among the stated objectives when Trump's campaign began.
One source's assessment holds that Iran's hand at the table has grown weaker, yet the calculation is muddied by oil prices running high and by the governing party's expected reverses in the coming midterm vote — losses tied, in large part, to the financial burden the war has imposed. Three possible trajectories emerged from Swanson's analysis: one in which economic and diplomatic pressure leads Iran toward concession or internal instability; another in which Iran moves against energy infrastructure in the Gulf region; and a third centred on how long Trump can maintain a costly operation that carries political risk, particularly if his party loses its congressional majority.
Swanson indicated that a deadlock is anticipated to persist until one party's resources are depleted, and noted that no side stands to come away whole under those conditions. Following a Thursday announcement in which Trump stated he would hold off on any strike against Iran ahead of the November 3 midterms — coming after reports that pre-election military options had been explored by the White House — he added that the blockade would continue operating at full strength.
Eurasia Group placed the probability of a notable escalation within the year at 35 percent, revised upward from 25 percent, with a prolonged standoff remaining the most likely outcome at 55 percent. Kelanic, who places the probability of a resolution within the year at under one-in-four, described a pathway in which sustained external pressure destabilises the government in Tehran to the point of collapse, leaving Iran fragmented and potentially allowing a breakaway faction to establish a foothold along the coastline near the Strait of Hormuz, from which it could disrupt maritime traffic indefinitely while no central authority remained available to enter into negotiations.
That August, with one carrier group already stretched across eleven months of continuous Western Pacific duty amid the conflict with Iran, the Navy repositioned its remaining flattop from the region to cover the rotation. On the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln — a vessel then completing what had been a deployment of record-setting length — President George W. Bush stood in 2003 to announce that large-scale combat operations in Iraq had come to an end.
