US Blockade of Iran Takes Hold as Tankers Burn in Hormuz
The US naval blockade of Iran’s ports came into force from Tuesday evening, US Central Command said, after the interim ceasefire collapsed. Iran answered by firing cruise missiles at two supertankers, the UAE-linked al-Bahiya and Mombasa, in Omani waters at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, setting both ablaze; at least one crew member was killed and several others, mostly Indian, wounded. Iran also claimed retaliatory strikes on US-linked sites in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan. Traffic through the strait has fallen to a near-standstill as owners refuse the passage.
A blockade is an act that admits no ambiguity: Washington is now stopping ships to and from a country it is bombing, and Tehran has made the sea-lane that carries a fifth of the world’s oil the front line of its reply. The strike on the tankers is the human face of it — the crews who move the world’s trade are the first to pay, and a seafarer is dead for having been aboard a ship in the wrong stretch of water. Whatever each side claims about whether Hormuz is open or closed, owners are voting with their hulls and staying away, which is a closure in all but name and the real driver under the oil price. Britain’s forces sit inside that map, at the Bahrain naval base and the Qatar air hub, and its households feel it through the pump and the gas bill. Watch the war-risk insurance market, whether any navy moves to escort tankers through, and whether the blockade forces a confrontation with a Gulf state.