The reason that merchant ships will not rush to return to Hormuz even when its opening is announced

Despite the announcements about the opening of the strait, from the information on the “Marine Traffic” website that monitors maritime traffic, it appears that as of Sunday morning only a few ships continued to cross the shipping lane. This means that there is still no flow of oil tankers, whose price has soared to new heights and is shaking the world economy since the start of the war in Iran.

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The little sailing in the Strait continued even though on Saturday a particularly unusual incident occurred, in which, according to reports, the Revolutionary Guards opened fire on tankers crossing the Strait of Hormuz – at least two of them Indian. Afterwards, the deputy speaker of the parliament in Tehran said at an event for supporters of the Ayatollah regime that local members of parliament had formed a team dealing with the war in Hormuz, and they were, according to him, ready to “take up arms” against the US. On Sunday, the Iranian “Tasnim” agency even reported that two oil tankers with the flags of Angola and Botswana were not allowed to pass through Hormuz.

There is no uniform line in Iran

Benny Sabati, an Iran researcher from the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), explains that unusually – no one knows who gave the order to attack the tanks. The emergency commander, Hatem al-Anbiya, did not provide any information regarding the incident. “This has become a pirate war not only at sea, but also between the Iranians themselves,” says Sabati, “The current situation illustrates the regime’s weakness. Anyone who says that the regime has grown stronger is wrong. They fight internally, and there is no foreign strategy either. They may be achieving small victories, but the regime’s path is not paved. They are now in a competition to see who is more radical, and causes more damage.”

According to him, it is evident from the conduct that the line in the leadership of the Islamic Republic is not uniform. The government news agency “Mehar” attacked Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, against the background of his handling of the negotiations with the US. At first, Araqchi tweeted on the X social network that “following the cease-fire in Lebanon, the passage for all merchant ships through the Strait of Hormuz is completely open.” After that, the “Mahar” agency rushed to criticize: “It is clear that the talks regarding the cease-fire are not completely managed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

“In the past there were events where the messages from the Ayatollah regime challenged each other, as happened during the nuclear agreement, but they did not contradict each other,” says Sabati. “At the time of the nuclear agreement, we would at most hear messages from the Revolutionary Guards that were horizontal, such as ‘We will protect Iran’s interests.’

The conflicting messages, whether on purpose or not, repeatedly shake the global energy market. Until the crisis, about 21 million barrels of oil and oil products would pass through the strait every day – about 20% of global oil consumption and about 25% of marine oil traffic.

If the ceasefire collapses, the immediate impact is expected to come again from oil. The Iranian announcement of the opening of the strait resulted in a 13% drop in oil prices, and for the time being they have stabilized at around $90 per Brent barrel – significantly lower than the peak of around $111 per barrel about a month ago. In the absence of a long-term solution or an extension of the ceasefire, a return to the price levels from February (about $65 per barrel Brent) seems like an unlikely scenario in the near future.

Unlike oil prices, an area that was not affected at all by the opening of Hormuz is security. Analysts in the field estimate that the premiums, which jumped by about 50% following the crisis and made sailing in the area more expensive, will remain high for a long time to come. At the same time, the routine extensive tanker traffic to the Persian Gulf will not be similar in scope to the one they have been used to for decades, both due to the concerns and the difficulty to “reset” supply chains. Just as happened as a result of the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, and the passage of ships moving from the Far East to Europe and vice versa, to the Cape of Good Hope. A longer path, but safer.

the main casualties

According to “Iran International”, about 89% of the export of oil and its products from the Gulf in the first half of 2025 was to the Far East, while continental Europe consumed about 3.8% and the USA only about 2.5% of exports from the Gulf. China led with 37.7%, followed by India (14.7%), South Korea (12%) and Japan (10.9%).

As a result, actors from the region, especially China, are trying to encourage Washington and Tehran to at least extend the two-week ceasefire that began on April 7, and return to the negotiating table in Pakistan. This was well reflected when the US President announced on Wednesday the “opening of the Strait of Hormuz”, and this “for China and the whole world”.

However, of course, the strait has not really opened, and it is clear that the Islamic Republic does not intend to comply with Washington’s demands regarding the removal of the enriched uranium and the limitation of enrichment inside Iran. Iranian President Masoud Pazkhian said in the first that Trump “has no right to deny Iran its nuclear rights”.

At the same time, the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Bacher Kalibaf, told one of the local television channels that a “process” had taken place in the talks with the American government, “but many gaps and significant points remain.” According to him, “we are far from a final decision.”

The words were said while the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford was crossing the Suez Canal and stationed in the Red Sea. This is the most expensive warship ever (about 13.3 billion dollars), which carries about 4,500 employees and about 75 aircraft – including F-18s and helicopters.