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On 20 June the strait was open and closed at once: the IRGC declared it closed, CENTCOM said traffic flows (55 ships, 17M barrels Saturday), Iran’s own Foreign Ministry said shipping was ‘operating normally,’ and the AIS showed vessels moving. Four answers, including two from one government. A chokepoint with no authority has no authoritative answer to the most basic question — are you open? This post reads the contested status as the symptom it is, and why this site has to run its own traffic light.

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.