As US President Donald Trump lashes out at allies after failing to secure naval backing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, calling them “cowards,” the scale of the disruption is becoming clearer.
Only a trickle of vessels — most of them Iranian — has passed through the strait since the United States and Israel bombed Tehran on Feb. 28, leaving global shipping gridlocked and energy markets on edge.
Between March 1 and March 19, commodities carriers made only 114 crossings of the strait, according to shipping analytics firm Kpler, 95% less than prewar traffic. Only 39 of those transits occurred after March 2, indicating that most ships cleared the waterway in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, before conditions sharply deteriorated.
Shipping data company Lloyd's List Intelligence reported Wednesday that several governments, including China, India, Pakistan, Iraq and Malaysia, are negotiating vessel transit arrangements directly with Tehran, where officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have begun setting up a registry for “approved” ships to secure safe passage. Turkey, too, has been negotiating with Iran. On March 13, Turkish Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said that a Turkish-owned ship had been allowed to pass through the critical waterway, and Ankara continued to negotiate with Tehran regarding the situation of the 14 remaining Turkish-owned vessels there.
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