Movement through the vital Strait of Hormuz has come to an almost complete halt following recent assaults on two additional vessels. The United States announced it might sustain a naval blockade on Iran for an indefinite period.
An Iranian official reported stalled negotiations aimed at solidifying a pact from June intended to conclude the ongoing conflict.
Since the ceasefire established in June unraveled, Iran has resumed targeting ships it claims attempt to navigate the strait without seeking its consent.
The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, based in the United Arab Emirates, disclosed that two of its ships were targeted while crossing the strait on Thursday night. The UAE accused Iran, which has yet to respond.
According to the ship tracking company Kpler, two vessels did brave the narrow passage on Friday: a grain ship entering Iranian waters and an empty dry bulk carrier heading in the opposite direction.
A separate empty liquefied petroleum products tanker was sailing into the Gulf via the strait, the data showed. There were no crude oil shipments visible on Friday.
Nine vessels passed through the strait on Thursday, up from five on Wednesday but below the average of 12 for August.
Some ships may pass through undetected with their transponders off, but the figures are nowhere near the more than 130 ships that traversed the Strait of Hormuz daily before the war launched by the US and Israel on Iran in February.
US threatens to escalate war
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters the US military has the capability to maintain a naval presence in the region to enforce its retaliatory blockade of Iran, which has inflicted severe economic damage on the country.
“Indefinitely, the United States Navy can maintain a blockade like that because we’ll rotate ships in and out, as we have, and we’ll continue to,” he told reporters during a trip to Panama.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US planned to inflict more financial damage on Iran.
“Watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country,” he said in an interview on Newsmax.
US President Donald Trump is under pressure at home to end an unpopular war, with high fuel prices dragging down his approval ratings and potentially eroding his party’s control of Congress in midterm elections in November.
Trump has repeatedly asserted the US has “total control” over the strait, through which one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flowed before the start of the war.
Iran rejects that, and has said it will not allow the waterway to reopen until its conditions are met. These include removing economic sanctions and releasing frozen Iranian assets.
The US lifted its blockade of Iran’s shipping and ports for a month in mid-June but has since reimposed it, cutting off Tehran’s primary source of hard currency and compounding earlier losses from wartime strikes on its energy infrastructure.
Washington previously said it would lift the Iranian blockade once Iran and Oman, which sit on either side of the strait, reach an agreement to restore commercial shipping.
Trump has also repeatedly threatened to escalate military strikes and “hit Iran hard”, although he has thus far resisted deploying ground troops or seizing strategic islands and bombing desalination plants.
Earlier this week, he suggested he would rely on economic means, rather than military action.
The US has tightened economic sanctions against Iran and other individuals and entities that it says are helping it procure weapons, but the pressure campaign has not brought Tehran back to the negotiating table.
Reports that Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis had targeted a Saudi Aramco refinery with drones on Thursday renewed concerns about a widening regional war.
Global economists have forecast a sharp drop in global growth, and potentially a swing into recession in some areas, warning that the impact would grow if the war was not ended soon.