Six months of war in the Gulf: UN maritime agency counts 6,000 seafarers stranded

The six-month tally is measured not in territory captured but in crews at a standstill. On August 28, 2026, the US military campaign against Iran, codenamed Operation Epic Fury, reached its sixth month since launching on February 28. On the same day the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency responsible for maritime transport, reported that at least 6,000 seafarers remain stranded aboard hundreds of ships in the Persian Gulf, that 19 of them have been killed since the conflict began, and that at least 70 attacks on international shipping have been recorded in the area (Fox News).

These are the agency’s figures, not independent estimates, and should be read as such: a partial accounting from an area where on-the-ground verification is difficult and where the number of stranded crews changes with every ship that manages to move. The figure reported here is the most recent verifiable at time of publication.

The second indicator is traffic. According to a navigation data analysis conducted by Al Jazeera and published on August 20, in the first nineteen days of August a total of 236 ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz. Before the war, passage stood at roughly 130 ships per day. The comparison between a nineteen-day total and a daily average is not straightforward, but the order of magnitude is unambiguous: traffic has fallen to a fraction of its normal level. Before the conflict, the strait carried about 20% of the world’s traded oil and natural gas.

From this stems the less visible part of the crisis. A ship at a standstill is not merely undelivered cargo: it is a crew that cannot be replaced when contracts expire, that remains on board beyond scheduled rotations in an area where attacks have occurred. The condition of seafarers falls directly under the UN agency’s mandate, which is why the six-month accounting comes from London and not from military commands. Neither of the two sources used provides a breakdown of attacks by responsibility: who struck each of the seventy ships does not emerge from the available material, and is not attributed here.

On the political front, the period was also marked by a symbolic skirmish. US President Donald Trump posted on his platform Truth Social an image depicting the Strait of Hormuz as being among United States territories; Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi publicly responded with a scornful comment. The exchange does not alter the legal status of the passage — Hormuz is an international strait between Iran and Oman — but it signals how much control of the corridor has become a matter of explicit claim rather than mere technical management.

The two sources used here are independent: the communication from the International Maritime Organization, carried with contribution from the Associated Press wire service, and the independent traffic data analysis carried out by the Qatari newsroom. The former is institutional and primary on the figures for casualties and attacks; the latter covers the volume of transits.

Three elements remain unverified that will weigh on the coming months: how many of the stranded ships have an available port of refuge, what share of crude has been diverted to alternative routes, and whether August’s drop in transits represents a low point or a new normal. On none of the three does the available material offer a verified answer. The one certainty as of today is that six thousand people are working in a stretch of sea through which, before February, a fifth of the world’s hydrocarbon trade once passed.

Sources: Fox News (communication from the International Maritime Organization, a UN agency, with contribution from the Associated Press); Al Jazeera (analysis of naval traffic data).