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Six India-flagged vessels transited inbound on 18 May 2026 in a coordinated cluster under bilateral Iran-India arrangements. The chokepoint is now operationally bifurcated: a compliant fleet under PGSA-administered transit and a holding queue of about 2,000 vessels waiting for the institutional configuration the operator class can use. This post reads the bifurcation, the historical parallel of the 2018-2025 shadow fleet, and what a treaty-backed authority would do to consolidate it.

Between twenty and thirty thousand seafarers are aboard two to three thousand stranded merchant vessels in the Gulf today. Most are Indian nationals. Drinking water is running out. At least one onboard death has been attributed to medevac failure. Today two Indian flagged ships were fired on in the same waterway. A functioning chokepoint authority would treat their welfare as standing operations, not as a humanitarian footnote.

Russia sent 90 percent of its Q1 2026 crude exports to China and India. It is the commercial beneficiary of a crisis it helped block the UN from resolving. Understanding the Moscow windfall is understanding why any Hormuz governance regime that can actually work has to be designed to bypass Security Council veto dynamics.

The IRGC fired on a tanker and a projectile struck a container vessel in Hormuz today. Two of the ships are Indian flagged. India summoned Iran’s ambassador. CENTCOM has now turned back 23 vessels in the Gulf of Oman. A strait with a multilateral authority could have prevented all of this by design.

India is the world’s third largest oil importer. This month the US waiver on Russian crude expired on April 11 and the US Navy blockaded Iranian ports on April 13. Indian refiners lost about 3 million barrels per day of Hormuz transiting supply. Strategic reserves cover 30 days. China’s cover 300.