The Pentagon's Hormuz Ledger Doesn't Add Up
U.S. Central Command says military assistance has enabled 660 million barrels of oil to move since May, while weekend traffic counts show fewer than twenty commodity vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Washington is rotating Pentagon stockpiles and pushing bypass routes — but aggregate tanker traffic remains depressed, and the barrel headline does not reconcile with the ship count.
ewer than twenty commodity vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend — a fraction of the roughly one hundred daily crossings that prevailed before the Iran war. At the same time, U.S. Central Command says American military assistance has enabled the passage of 660 million barrels of oil since May. Washington is rotating Pentagon-held stockpiles and pressing alternative routes to keep allied refineries supplied. Traffic remains low, and the urgency to reopen the strait has only intensified. The dominant read is straightforward, and largely correct: Hormuz has not been durably reopened. Military restrictions, conditional diplomacy, and war-risk insurance cancellations keep aggregate traffic depressed. Rerouting through Oman's southern lanes, ship-to-ship…
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