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The crisis taught the world’s shipping to go dark. By May, more than two-thirds of non-Iranian transits through Hormuz were switching off AIS, carrying legitimate UAE, Qatari, Kuwaiti, and Iraqi oil through Gulf-of-Oman transfers with transponders off. The dark-fleet tactic, pioneered for sanctions evasion, became a commercial norm for allied oil, and the transparency the market depends on broke in a way that cannot be unseen. A governed strait makes identified transit a condition of passage. This post reads the opacity the vacuum normalized.

Iran re-declared the strait closed on 20-21 June; on 22 June the market rebounded to 25 visible transits in open defiance, French and Qatari LNG carriers and Chinese VLCCs crossing with transponders ON rather than dark. The market is starting to treat Iran’s closures as noise rather than law, which erodes Iran’s leverage. But a market improvising authority by aggregate behavior is not the same as a governed strait, and it is fragile. This post reads both edges.