Iran’s military ordered the Strait of Hormuz fully closed early on Thursday. Any vessel that tried to pass would be shot at, Tehran said. The order followed several days of US strikes on Iranian territory, and Washington replied that some ships were still getting through.
The closure is not new. It is a second announcement of one that has been on and off since the war began. Under normal conditions, 20 million barrels of oil move through the strait each day, and in peacetime 20 percent of global oil and liquefied natural gas ships through it.
The trigger
On Tuesday, Iranian media reported explosions in the port city of Bandar Abbas and on nearby Qeshm island. They also said US strikes in the southern Sirik region destroyed water reservoirs that supplied 20,000 people. US Central Command (CENTCOM) called the strikes “self-defense”, a “proportional response to recent attacks on US forces and international commercial ships transiting regional waters”. Among those attacks it listed the downing of a US Apache helicopter over the strait on Monday. Iran denied targeting the helicopter deliberately, and the US said it is investigating.
Then it escalated. The IRGC said it launched a drone attack on the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, according to state media, and fired long-range missiles at an airbase in Jordan. Jordan’s military said it shot down five missiles. Kuwait reported “intercepting hostile aerial targets”, and sirens sounded in Bahrain.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed new US strikes on “key facilities” in Iran, which he called part of an effort to secure a permanent ceasefire. President Donald Trump said Iran had “taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them; now they will have to pay the price.” Iran’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attacks as “unlawful and criminal” and said they had made the ceasefire “useless”.
How the strait got here
On March 2, Ebrahim Jabari, a senior adviser to the IRGC commander-in-chief, declared the strait closed after the US-Israeli war on Iran began with strikes on Tehran on February 28. Oil jumped well above $100 a barrel from about $65 before the war.
A ceasefire on April 8 led Tehran to agree to reopen the waterway, which it did for a few hours on April 17. But Washington had announced a blockade of Iranian ports on April 13 after talks in Islamabad collapsed, and on April 18 Iran closed the strait again. The IRGC called the blockade and ship seizures “acts of piracy and maritime theft”.
Ships have crossed at times. Vessels from Malaysia, China, Egypt, South Korea and India were allowed through after separate talks. Lloyd’s List reported that at least two paid a toll in yuan. Kpler data shows 279 ships transited between February 28 and April 12, against roughly 100 a day before the war, and at least 22 ships have been attacked. Indian sailors died when CENTCOM disabled the tanker Settebello this week, the agency said it was trying to move Iranian oil.
What analysts say
Elijah Magnier, a Brussels-based military analyst, called the tit-for-tat attacks “dangerous” because they risk miscalculation. Samir Puri said the fighting is the worst since the ceasefire began in April. Foad Izadi, a University of Tehran professor, said the dispute needs a political solution: “I think it has a political solution, not a military solution.”
