From redirection to sinking
About 90 commercial vessels have been redirected as part of the blockade, with several more disabled or boarded. On Saturday three Iranian crude oil tankers were hit: one off Kharg Island, Iran's main oil export hub, another near Jask and a third in the Gulf of Oman. Centcom said two of them were permanently disabled and the third sank after extensive bombing.[1]
When this column first read the counts Centcom published on 11 August they stood at 55 redirected, 3 disabled and 2 boarded, and the argument then was that they measured traffic bound for Iranian ports rather than the strait's own closure. The redirection figure has since risen to about 90 while the disabling has turned into sinking, so the enforcement point has moved from the destination port to the cargo itself.[1], [3]
The strait keeps flowing; the barrels stay ashore
An average of 9 million barrels of oil a day were passing through the strait, and counting the pipelines that move oil through the region as well, flows are probably at two thirds or more of their pre-conflict level. That number comes from the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, which makes it the administration's own account of a waterway it has declared open.[2]
The export side reads differently. Crude oil exports from the Middle East during August were down 39 per cent since the January and February baseline of 18.5 million barrels per day, and Iran's own exports of 1.68 million barrels per day may likely remain at zero for the foreseeable future. The treasury secretary Scott Bessent put the stock that has not found a buyer at about 30 million barrels of Iranian crude that China has not bought.[1]
The two figures describe consecutive stages of one supply chain and part company at its end. The enforcement counts and the tanker strikes measure what leaves Iranian ports; the throughput figure measures what crosses the strait from every other producer. Iran's barrels are being separated from a waterway that keeps carrying other people's cargo, and the unsold stock is where that separation is currently visible.[1], [2]
Which series would show a change?
If another enforcement count is published before the end of October, the redirection number and the split between disabled and sunk vessels are the two entries that would show whether the campaign has moved further from interdiction towards destruction. A genuine reopening would show up instead in the unsold stock falling below the 30 million barrels named, rather than in a throughput figure that the administration supplies about its own operation.[1], [2]