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Six transits on 3 May, five on 4 May — Project Freedom’s first day. The pre-war baseline is approximately 138 vessels per day. Five is roughly 3.6 per cent of normal and is probably the lowest single-day reading in the present crisis. The operational ratio of approximately 3,000 US service members per transit, against a Suez Canal Authority ratio of about 150 staff per transit, is the picture of a convoy operation rather than an institutional one.

Pakistan brokered the 8 April ceasefire, hosted the Islamabad Talks of 10-11 April, and now carries the 14-point Iranian proposal and the United States response between Tehran and Washington. Pakistan also imports more than 85% of its crude through Hormuz. This post reads the mediation as institutional infrastructure of a temporary kind, identifies what the mediation can and cannot do, and explains where Pakistan would sit in any working chokepoint authority.

Brent rose about 3.8 per cent on 4 May 2026 after the Project Freedom announcement and an Iranian missile claim, after pulling toward $108 earlier in the week on peace-proposal hopes. Earlier posts have documented the chokepoint risk premium as a level. This post documents it as a volatility — a directly priced cost in hedging premia, surcharge widths, insurance loadings, and rate-case adjustments that accrues every day the institutional state of the chokepoint is undefined.

On 4 May 2026, the United States Navy began Project Freedom, a 15,000-personnel convoy escort operation guiding stranded merchant ships out of the Strait of Hormuz. The operation does the urgent humanitarian work that needed doing. It is not, and is not designed to be, a chokepoint authority. This post reads Project Freedom on its own terms and explains why convoy and authority are sequential, not interchangeable.

Iran’s 14-point proposal, transmitted via Pakistan and made public on 2-3 May 2026, includes a numbered demand for ‘a new mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz.’ Whatever the substance Tehran has in mind, the form has changed: for the first time, the institutional question for the chokepoint is on the bilateral diplomatic record. This post reads only that one element of the proposal and examines what a working mechanism would have to address.

On April 30, three news items combined: the US carrier in theatre is expected to leave with the war’s cost approaching $25B; Trump is being briefed by CENTCOM Admiral Brad Cooper on options; and the Senate failed to advance an Iran War Powers Resolution for the sixth time. Standing military commitment is being scaled back. Institutional commitment — blockade, sanctions, payment rules — is being scaled up. Both sides are recognising that institutions outlast operations.

Brent touched $126 overnight on April 30 — highest since 2022 — before pulling back to about $114. Both halves of the move are informative. The spike priced an option that the Iranian new-chapter announcement and the US blockade extension might converge into further escalation; the pullback un-priced part of that option as the news cycle settled. The chokepoint risk premium is now the marginal component of global crude price.

On Persian Gulf Day, April 30, Iran’s Supreme Leader announced a new framework for managing the Strait of Hormuz: rial-denominated proceeds, surcharge for sanctions countries, the General Staff of the Armed Forces as administering body, and an invitation to GCC participation. Set side by side with treaty-backed practice at Suez and Panama, the framework is a unilateral authority claim that clarifies, rather than closes, the institutional gap.

On April 29, real-time tracking showed three to eight Hormuz transits in 24 hours against a pre-crisis baseline of about 60 vessels per day. Five per cent of normal. The post walks through what is and is not still moving, what a treaty-backed authority’s monthly statistical bulletin would record, and why the throughput floor is an institutional fact rather than only a military one.

The US Treasury has stated this week that payments to Iran or the IRGC for Hormuz passage, direct or indirect, are not authorised for US persons or US banks. Walked through at desk level for tanker owners, charterers, correspondent banks, and refiners, the rule closes the dollar payer set for the current toll arrangement. The four-leg architecture of the regime is now complete from the US compliance side.