The Strait of Hormuz has become one of the world’s most dangerous waterways since March, when Iran began attacking shipping vessels as a pressure tactic in its ceasefire talks with the United States. Still, though a significant proportion of the global oil trade bottlenecks at the strait, shipping traffic never completely halted.
With the United States and Iran issuing conflicting statements as to whether the Strait of Hormuz is open, DW analyzed public data sources to track how shipping traffic has changed during the course of the war and which vessels are still taking the risk of transiting the maritime choke point, which connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman.
As Iran’s strikes on and interception of vessels in the Strait of Hormuz continue, mines have also been reported in the prewar shipping lanes.
The Joint Maritime Information Center (Jmic), a project of the US-led Combined Maritime Forces, assesses the threat to shippers as “severe,” its second-highest warning level. However, according to one of JMIC’s latest advisory notes, issued after attacks resumed on July 6 and 7, “commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained at reduced levels, with vessels transiting via both the southern Omani corridor and the northern Iranian-controlled route.”
Jmic added that shippers remained cautious of transiting the strait amid the attacks on vessels in recent weeks.
DW’s analysis of data from the open-source platform Global Fishing Watch showed that, nevertheless, several shipping companies have navigated their vessels through the Strait of Hormuz throughout the war. Though the platform’s primary purpose is to monitor fishing efforts, it also collects data on all other vessels using satellite imagery and relying on signals transmitted by ships’ automatic identification systems (AIS).
As ships can switch off their AIS transponders — and have reportedly repeatedly chosen to while transiting the Strait of Hormuz — the number of vessels is likely higher than shown.
Based on AIS signals, a combined total of at least 84 ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz in two periods of the conflict: from the start of the war on February 28 until the announcement of a ceasefire on April 7 and following the renewed attacks on July 6 and 7. This aligns with reports of the United States saying it gave passage to about 70 ships and adding that not all of them transmitted signals.
For comparison: In the same periods of 2025, more than 900 ships crossed the strait.
Of these 84 ships, 34 moved from east to west into the Persian Gulf and 50 crossed the strait in the opposite direction, moving out of the gulf.
As part of the AIS signal, ships transmit which flag they are sailing under, but this information is entered manually aboard the vessels. In only a few cases investigated for this story did the flag reflect the actual country of origin of the registered owner or the ship manager of a vessel. This information can still be looked up manually in different databases using the ship’s international ID number and its name.
Only nine Iranian- and two Pakistani-owned ships transited under their respective national flags. All of the other 73 ships hoisted a flag different from the vessel owner’s country.
Analysis of this data shows that a wide variety of companies operating in the region continue to cross the Strait of Hormuz.
At the top of the list is the United Arab Emirates, which neighbors the strait. The UAE’s Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline (ADCOP) runs overland parallel to the waterway in the south. 13 cargo ships registered in the United Arab Emirates transited the strait during the shutdown, as well as two liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tankers and three support vessels.
Most of the UAE-based ship owners in the dataset appear to have only one to five vessels in their fleet. One of the UAE-registered vessels that was detected passing into the Persian Gulf on July 11 is managed by Lubeck Shipping LLC, a company associated with an Iranian oil tycoon that has been sanctioned by the United States.
Also sanctioned by the United States is Salina Ship Management PvT Ltd., a company from the Indian state of Maharashtra that US officials accuse of helping Iran move petrol. The company manages one of the four Indian oil and LPG tankers that Global Fishing Watch recorded entering the strait.
India, like many Asian countries, is heavily reliant on the Strait of Hormuz for energy supply. China, Pakistan and Vietnam, too, had oil and LPG tankers in the Persian Gulf that they moved out of the Strait of Hormuz before a ceasefire was announced on April 7.
All seven vessels owned and managed by companies from Greece, the world’s biggest shipping power, were freighters, typically carrying unpackaged dried goods such as iron, coal and grains.
The primary motive for continuing to move oil and other goods via the Strait of Hormuz despite the threat of attacks by Iran is financial — “simply because the reward seems higher than the risk,” said Matt Smith, director of commodity research at Kpler, a business intelligence company headquartered in Belgium that specializes in analyzing global commodity flows.
“The key point is that producers of oil (or gas, aluminum, and other products) within the Strait of Hormuz essentially have only two options,” economist David Wech wrote in an email. Wech monitors the flow of energy commodities such as oil and refined products for the British company Vortexa.
“Option 1: to halt production and earn no money at all — or even incur losses due to operating expenditures,” Wech wrote. “And option 2: accept the risk of transiting the strait and thereby earn 90% or more of their normal revenue. With an oil price of currently more than $80 per barrel, we’re talking about billions of USD.”
With hostilities hot again as of July, the Brent Crude oil price is on yet another upward trend, perhaps one of the most perceivable global effects of the war and the near shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz.
In prewar times, roughly 25% of the global maritime oil trade passed through the Strait of Hormuz. Alternative routes have limited capacity to compensate for the loss of oil flow through the strait, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Two pipelines are currently used to bypass the Strait of Hormuz: the UAE’s Adcop and another in Saudi Arabia.
The Adcop in the United Arab Emirates would allow ships to land and load in the northeastern port of Fujairah and transport oil out of the Persian Gulf without transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
The Abqaiq-Yanbu crude oil pipeline system (East-West Crude Pipeline or Petroline) in Saudi Arabia has some capacity left, the IEA reported in February. Publicly available shipping data for Yanbu show an increase in oil-related ship traffic from May through June, compared with previous years.
“Combined, Yanbu and Fujairah have been able to reroute over 4 million barrels a day of crude from having to pass through the Strait of Hormuz,” Smith said. “This has been able to act as a release valve to keep barrels flowing to key customers in Asia — but only offsetting 4 of the total 15 million barrels per day that typically passes through the strait.”
The alternative routes have their own risks. Reports are increasing of piracy and attacks on ships by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the narrow choke point between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. “Bab al-Mandeb has the potential to add further supply woes to a global supply picture that is already severely constrained,” Smith said.
So, the release valve to the Strait of Hormuz might soon become a maritime choke point of its own.
