MEFILES

Washington says thirty ships a day cross Hormuz. Ship trackers can count eight.

Two commercial maritime analytics firms, an independent tracker and a US-led coalition body are publishing incompatible figures for traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — and neither the White House nor CENTCOM has released a methodology.

Al Jazeera reported on 3 September, citing the marine analytics firm Kpler, that six vessels crossed the strait on Wednesday, 11 on Tuesday and five on Monday, putting the ten-day average at 13 vessels a day, with other tracking services showing a similar pattern. The same piece noted that President Trump says the United States is helping around 30 ships cross the waterway daily, and that ship-tracking data suggests the number is far fewer. Windward, an Israeli maritime AI firm, logged only eight transits in the 24 hours to 3 September — four inbound, four outbound — of which five broadcast no AIS signal at all, including a VLCC that surfaced briefly from an eleven-day blackout before going dark again on entering the strait. The independent reader-funded tracker straits.live, whose page was live on 5 September, records six transits on 30 August against a pre-war norm of roughly 85 a day, and answers its own question — is the strait open? — with “effectively no”.

The blockading side publishes different arithmetic. United Against Nuclear Iran, a Washington advocacy organisation campaigning for pressure on Tehran, relayed on 3 September figures from the Joint Maritime Information Center, a US-led coalition body: 877 vessels transiting since 18 June, 1,490 since the war began, with 54 transits on 24 June the highest single day of the conflict. Its 1 September edition put US enforcement at 84 commercial vessels redirected, three disabled for non-compliance and two boarded. Both the compiler and the underlying source are parties to the argument. Overlaying all of it is MARAD advisory 2026-006 of 26 March, which strongly advises US-flagged vessels in the Red Sea, Bab el Mandeb and Gulf of Aden to switch off their AIS transponders — a US government instruction to become invisible to the same systems now being used to score the blockade.

Assessment: Nobody in this dispute is counting the same thing. Kpler and Windward count what transponders broadcast; the JMIC counts what a navy sees; the White House counts escorts offered rather than voyages completed. Windward’s finding that five of eight ships went dark means the low numbers are themselves floors, not ceilings — and MARAD has been telling merchant masters to go dark since March. The honest read is that the strait is functioning at a small fraction of normal volume and that the true fraction is unknowable from open sources. That is precisely the condition in which a president can tell an Oval Office audience, as Trump did on 4 September, that the United States has “essentially” taken over Iran and that Iran is “small potatoes”. Ask for the methodology before accepting either figure.

A retaliation doctrine arrives in the Gulf, and a wedding party becomes its test case

US drones reportedly hit two Iranian government tankers in their engine rooms on 2 September under a declared policy of striking a tanker for every tanker Iran attacks. Neither the strikes nor the casualty claims have independent visual confirmation.

Axios reported on 1–2 September that Iranian government tankers anchored off Iran’s coast north of the US naval blockade line were hit in their engine rooms by drone-launched missiles, with IRGC air defence sites among the wider target set. JINSA, a Washington advocacy institute, characterised this in its 2 September war update as “a new policy of ‘tanker-for-tanker,' in which U.S. forces hit an Iranian tanker every time Iran attacks a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz”, and recorded a CENTCOM target list of “air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets and facilities, mine laying capabilities, and communications sites”. Trump wrote on Truth Social that the strikes were “in retaliation for the Iranians' failed attempt at adding sea mines” in the strait, a quote confirmed independently by NBC News. Windward, assessing media reporting, put the package at roughly 100 IRGC-linked targets and stressed there was no AIS or imagery confirmation of the tanker hits.

Iran’s answer came the same night. Gulf News reported the Revolutionary Guards announcing attacks on US bases in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain and Iraqi Kurdistan — an “intense ballistic missile attack” on Camp Titin in Jordan, air-raid sirens in Bahrain — in the heaviest exchange of the six-month war in weeks, and put the toll of the US strikes at 11 killed. Windward assessed the Iranian response at approximately 25 ballistic missiles and drones. An IRGC spokesperson, quoted by the Jerusalem Post and not named in that report, claimed a kamikaze drone strike on Sheikh Isa Air Base in Bahrain; neither Bahrain nor CENTCOM has confirmed it. NBC News reported that the escalation followed a US strike alleged to have hit a home hosting a wedding at Kuhestak, killing five and wounding dozens.

The Kuhestak claim is now a direct contest between two accounts. GlobalSecurity’s 4 September digest reports that a Reuters analysis by four weapons experts found the house was likely struck directly by a US munition, while Vice President JD Vance says he is “extremely skeptical” of the wedding reports. The Files has not seen the Reuters original and names no expert on the strength of a digest. Vance also set the terms for the diplomatic track in his 3 September briefing: no talks with Tehran until it stops shooting at commercial shipping, and “I wouldn’t call it a war.” Pressed on when the fighting ends, he told reporters, per ABC’s live blog: “I think the reality is, I don’t know the answer to that question. You would have to ask the Iranians.” President Masoud Pezeshkian, at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Kyrgyzstan, said Tehran would “immediately reciprocate” if Washington adhered to its commitments under the now-defunct Islamabad memorandum brokered by Pakistan and Qatar in June.

Assessment: A doctrine is a promise about the future, which is why it is worth watching rather than reporting as an outcome. Tanker-for-tanker only exists if there is a third round; if Iran strikes commercial shipping again and Washington does not answer in kind, the phrase was rhetoric for an American audience. Note what the target list contains — radars, communications, maritime sensors — and set it against ISW’s assessment that the IRGC has fallen back on fast attack craft using visual identification to find ships. That correlation suggests degradation, but it is inference from a hawkish think tank citing an unnamed adviser, not reporting. The Kuhestak file is the one that must resolve: a Reuters forensic finding and a Vice President’s scepticism cannot both survive.

OPEC+ meets on Sunday with the strait shut and Brent still below its own war peak

Seven producers review October quotas a day after Brent settled near $95. The market has already de-escalated from a 52-week high of $126.41 while Hormuz remains effectively closed.

Trading Economics recorded Brent at $95.23 a barrel on 4 September, down 0.31 percent on the day, up 19.86 percent over the month and 45.39 percent year on year; WTI closed at $91.20 on the same terms. Its note the previous day had Brent above $96 at six-week highs as investors watched the strikes and their effect on supply through Hormuz. Investing.com, quoting a different instrument, puts the 52-week range for Brent futures at $58.72 to $126.41 — meaning the market is trading some $30 below its own wartime peak with the strait still shut. Trading Economics attributes the softening to signs that crude is still reaching the market: Iraq’s exports rose in August and are expected to increase further in September. Readers should note that price publishers disagree by several dollars on any given day because they quote different contracts and timestamps.

The seven producers meeting on Sunday — Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman — have already finished the job they set themselves. World Oil reported on 2 August that OPEC+ approved a 188,000 bpd increase for September, completing the restoration of roughly 3.5 million bpd of cuts announced in 2023, while signalling quotas would likely hold steady through year-end; Energy Connects put the fully restored voluntary tranche at 1.65 million bpd. CNBC noted that although sources briefed a fourth-quarter pause before the August meeting, the communiqué said nothing about the last three months of 2026. “OPEC+ has finished unwinding its voluntary cuts,” Jorge Leon of Rystad Energy told CNBC on 2 August. “The next challenge is managing the surplus that could emerge as export flows normalize.” The National reported resistance inside the group, including from Iraq, which wants higher quotas.

Assessment: The interesting number is not the price but the distance from the peak. A market that can absorb a closed Hormuz, a naval blockade and a tanker-strike doctrine at $95 is telling producers that the war premium has a ceiling and that it is falling. That makes Sunday’s decision political rather than technical: holding output flat with Brent up 45 percent year on year is a choice by Riyadh about how much of a rival’s absent barrels it wants to replace, and how visibly. Watch the language on the capacity audit — the assessment of each member’s production ceiling is the fight that sets 2027 baselines, and it is proceeding under cover of the shooting.