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Saudi Arabia will run out of oil stocks for exports if it doesn't restart its major pipeline to the Red Sea within days, leading to a loss of up to 4% of global supply, Saudi oil buyers and traders said. A further decline in Saudi flows will worsen the global supply crunch, which has already pushed global fuel prices to record highs, spurred inflation around the world and sent U.S. bond yields to the highest levels since the 2008 financial crisis. Since drone attacks forced Saudi Arabia to shut its huge east-west oil pipeline on Friday, Riyadh has not given...

ADEN/DUBAI, Sept 12 - Saudi Arabia has shut down its East-West pipeline after the vital oil conduit came under aerial attack in the widening Middle East war. The world’s largest crude oil exporter temporarily closed the pipeline after a drone attack that both Baghdad and Riyadh said had originated in Iraq, where Iranian-backed militias operate. Iraq dismissed a military commander on Saturday in response to the attack. The 1,200-kilometre (745-mile) pipeline running across the Arabian Peninsula had helped Saudi Arabia to bypass a shipping logjam in the Strait of Hormuz, where tanker traffic has slowed to a trickle due to...

Iran announced Monday it will establish a new “restricted zone” near the Strait of Hormuz within the coming days — as the flailing nation desperately tries to expand its control over the critical chokepoint. The exclusion zone will span from where the US blockade of Iran begins to other areas of the Gulf, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Sunday in an interview with state TV. Rezaei said that any ship that sails into the restricted zone will be placed on a sanctions list. “Any ship that enters this area with the intention of...

Strategic patience for the win? Iran's regime leaders thought they could force the US to buckle by strangling the global economy at the Strait of Hormuz. The US, however, has an actual blue-water navy, and that tends to matter in blockades involving a country entirely reliant on sea trade for its only valuable export economy. As the Wall Street Journal concedes, Donald Trump's Hormuz blockade is a lot less "leaky" than the IRGC's. And as Trump himself pointed out yesterday, the Strait may not matter for very much longer anyway:By squeezing the Strait of Hormuz, both the U.S. and Iran...

The United States military destroyed three Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps crude oil tankers in the Persian Gulf Saturday – after Iran launched ballistic missiles at two US Navy vessels. Footage shows large tankers blown up in flames, as a thick plume of black smoke rise off the sea. A US military aircraft crew can be heard over radio warning an oil tanker near Kharg Island, before unleashing a barrage of missiles that lit the vessel in flames. “I’m preparing to fire. …You have three minutes to clear the crew,” the US is heard in a video filmed aboard a nearby...

If you've looked at gas prices lately you already know the conflict with Iran is still having a big impact on prices at the pump. However, there's a genuine disagreement over how much oil is currently making it through the Strait of Hormuz. This week the Trump administration has claimed that the total amount of oil passing through the strait is approaching pre-war levels. Here's a CNN report from yesterday.The US military escorted 40 commercial vessels carrying 18 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, marking a wartime high as Iran and the US exchanged a new round...

WASHINGTON — Oman has quietly rejected Iran’s request to jointly charge service fees on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, The Post has learned — averting a clash with President Trump, who has threatened to rain down bombs on the US ally. A high-ranking regional official said that Muscat declined to consent to charging fees — even on a voluntary basis — for environmental and security services, contrary to a statement last week from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The terms of a proposed revenue-sharing deal had not been finalized, even by Tehran, a US official told The Post...

U.S. forces attacked two Iranian launchers on Larak Island on Sunday, carrying out the first publicly known American strikes inside Iran since late July, Reuters reported. A U.S. official said Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel appeared to be preparing the launchers to fire rockets carrying sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz. The official said U.S. forces targeted both launchers before they could be used. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the attack killed and wounded several military personnel and civilians, according to state media. Tehran threatened retaliation. The semi-official Tasnim news agency described the operation as a U.S. drone strike. For...

🚨 Recent satellite imagery suggests that the Department of War has conducted a covert dredging operation to open up a never-before-used shipping corridor through the Omani side of the Strait of Hormuz.The corridor in question is an approximately 1,600-foot-wide waterway with a natural depth of about 93 feet, meaning that only a small amount of dredging would have been necessary to make it safe for VLCCs (Very Large Crude Carriers). Worth noting, ships navigating this corridor remain completely outside the Iranian regime’s line of sight due to the Omani island of Jazirat Musandam and the curvature of the Earth. Follow:...

The US Central Command shared a video in which Admiral Brad Cooper, the combatant command's Commander, shared recent " milestones" the US military has reached during its war on Iran. Among these, he mentioned extensively the US military operations which cleared sea mines from shipping lanes and more broadly spoke of the claimed effectiveness of the naval blockade the US re-imposed in mid-July on Iran.

WASHINGTON — A purported deal between Iran and Oman to control the Strait of Hormuz and share revenue from fees is “not even close to done” and would be meaningless so long as President Trump’s blockade of Iran remains in effect, a US official told The Post. A spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed Wednesday that the two nations had agreed to terms to control the shipping bottleneck — but The Post’s source said that ill-defined terms are still believed to lack full approval from Iran’s leadership. “The deals don’t mean anything unless we approve it. It...

Among information provided, Oman and Qatar report achieving 80% of pre-war production of oil through the Strait. That leaves Iran out - and that's good.

Iran’s supreme leader is under mounting pressure over the war — as the regime’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz weakens, cash finally starts to get tight and top political leaders publicly urge the Islamists in charge to find a way out of the conflict. The latest phase of the conflict has seen more and more ships quietly slipping through Hormuz, with nearly 200 vessels sailing through the strait last week, according to data from the UK Maritime Trade Operations Center. The flow represents a 400% spike in the last two weeks, with maritime analysts Kpler noting that the traffic...

Iran appears to be losing its grip on the Strait of Hormuz while traffic through the critical waterway has exploded by nearly 400% over the last two weeks — as ships increasingly use a US-backed corridor to cross. Nearly 200 ships navigated the strait last week, up from 150 the previous week and just 40 two weeks earlier, according to data from the UK Maritime Trade Operations Center. The surge brings total traffic along the passage route to about 20% of pre-war levels, through which roughly 20% of the world’s seaborne oil flowed in peacetime. Activity in Hormuz ground to...

The U.S. Navy’s effort to establish a new route through the Strait of Hormuz and to shuttle tankers through it under cover of darkness appears to be a success so far. A lot of preparation went into this, involving both the destruction of Iranian surveillance and naval assets as well as clearing mines the Iranians had already emplaced in the straits. The U.S. naval presence likely prevented the Iranians from mass mine-laying using dedicated ships. Instead, they turned to small boats that could carry a single mine and would simply drop it at random. As a result, Iran has no...

As I wrote at the time, Pres. Trump made a good deal in June, got the oil flowing, and left the Iranians with no leverage and few benefits. So the IRGC reneged on it in a few weeks and started shooting. Now we learn the U.S. Navy has set up a stealth convoy system for Hormuz that is taking 9-15 million barrels a day out of the Gulf, according to Energy Sec. Chris Wright. When you combine that with the 7-8 million barrels from the Hormuz bypass pipes, we are getting back to the pre-war normal of 20 million barrels...

🚨 The Islamic Republic says Arab states should not be allowed to build pipelines that bypass the Strait of Hormuz.Hamidreza Haji Babaei, Second Deputy Speaker of the regime’s parliament, warned on state TV that pipelines circumventing Hormuz are as dangerous to the Islamic… https://t.co/3q2l7AqeUS— The Iran Watcher (@TheIranWatcher) August 20, 2026

It feels like it's not very often that the NY Times says something positive about an operation taking place under the direction of President Trump. But today they did just that with a story that notes an ongoing operation to help ships full of oil clear the Strait of Hormuz which is working, though obviously the total number of ships is still down compared to the situation prior to the war. Only a few oil tankers braved Iran’s attacks to go through the Strait of Hormuz for much of the war, leading to a drastic reduction in how much crude...

The Strait of Hormuz "will not be opened," Iranian warned on Tuesday, "Until the U.S. commitments in the memorandum—including lifting the blockade, releasing frozen assets, lifting oil sanctions, ending threats and military operations on all fronts, and the other conditions to which the U.S. committed—are implemented." I guess that settles it — the Strait is firmly in the Islamic Republic's grip. Not so fast. On the flip side, President Donald Trump said earlier this week that the U.S. naval blockade against Iran "remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been...

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