Hormuz, escorted convoys and new attacks on Kuwait: accounting for the passage

The new development of the past few hours is not a bombing but an escort operation. According to the Spanish news agency EFE, citing US sources reported by CNN, on Tuesday American forces escorted forty merchant ships through the Strait of Hormuz, carrying a combined cargo of 18 million barrels of oil. The same source notes that before the conflict began, around 20 million barrels a day passed through the strait.

The two figures are not homogeneous and should be read with caution: one measures the cargo of a single escort operation, the other a daily average in peacetime. But the comparison explains why Washington keeps insisting on this point. This morning the paper recounted the sequence of attacks and the contested death tolls between Washington and Tehran; this afternoon the story that stands out more clearly is the one about the navigability of the strait.

Three figures that don’t fit in the same sentence

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC that on Monday over 17 million barrels passed through the strait, the highest figure since the conflict began, according to Teleborsa’s account.

The same source, however, reports data from the British center UK Maritime Trade Operations: at least two oil tankers were hit during the week in that same stretch of water. And estimates gathered by Focus America indicate crude oil transits still halved compared to pre-war levels, with a growing share of exports diverted to pipelines toward the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman.

This is not a contradiction that can be settled by arbitration: a daily peak and a period average can coexist. It is, however, the reason why claims of “control” over the passage cannot be verified with a single figure. Tehran, for its part, is demanding that commercial traffic be routed through a northern corridor within Iranian waters.

The military front

President Donald Trump stated that the United States exercises near-total control over the strait; Iran responded by announcing it had laid additional naval mines, reports the morning briefing of the Turkish agency Anadolu. The same briefing puts the toll in Iran from US attacks at 18 dead and 108 wounded: this is a count attributed to that source, not a sum compiled by us from the partial tolls circulated in recent days.

On the other side, Jordan stated it had destroyed ten of the thirteen Iranian missiles launched on Wednesday; attacks also hit Kuwait, Bahrain and Iraq, with no casualties reported, according to WORLD Radio’s newscast, which also reports the US president’s words on the reasons for the operation:

“We’re doing this to help the Middle East. We’re doing this to help Israel.” (transl. from English) — Donald Trump, President of the United States

Today Al Jazeera reported renewed attacks against Kuwait, placing the events on the 186th day since the start of the war between the United States and Iran and the 78th since the signing of the memorandum between Washington and Tehran.

An indicator of the war’s duration comes from the Pacific: the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has docked at the Thai port of Laem Chabang after 286 days at sea, including combat operations in the conflict with Iran.

What we don’t know

We don’t know how many ships pass through each day without military escort, nor what the current effective average volume of the passage is. We don’t know the outcome of today’s attacks on Kuwait, reported by a single source and not yet accompanied by official tolls. The Iranian count of dead and wounded remains an attributed figure, not confirmed by independent findings on the ground.