Bloomberg Says Hormuz Traffic Is Up, NBC Says It Fell Back, and the IRGC Names No Ships
On the same morning two wire services read the strait in opposite directions, while Tehran’s account of turning back two tankers omits every verifiable detail.
The IRGC said in a statement on 30 July: “Last night, two oil tankers, encouraged by American aircraft, attempted to leave through the unsafe southern route of the Strait of Hormuz. After a major fire broke out on one of them, both vessels quickly turned back.” The statement, carried by AFP, asserted the strait “cannot be reopened” while US threats persist. As IranWire noted, it omits the tanker names, the location, the cause of the fire and the vessels' flags or owners; no independent corroboration was found. A day earlier the IRGC navy said it had “targeted and stopped” three tankers that ignored warnings — reported by Tasnim, the semi-official agency linked to the IRGC itself, again without names, owners or location. Tehran insists ships use an Iran-designated route, request permission in advance and pay service fees, and rejects the southern route along Oman’s coast. CENTCOM accuses the IRGC of dictating routes and says the passage remains open under US protection.
The traffic data do not agree. Bloomberg reported at 06:55 UTC on 30 July that Hormuz traffic “has picked up in recent days.” NBC News’s vessel tracker, updated 30 July at 10:57 ET, said traffic was “back down following a brief pick-up” and “nowhere near the hundred-plus ships a day that were traversing the strait before the war,” while cautioning that exact numbers may be imprecise. IMF PortWatch data compiled by Statista put average transits at roughly 25 ships a day between late June and early July, against about 100 a day a year earlier. CENTCOM said on 21 July that US forces had assisted the transit of about 900 commercial vessels carrying 450 million barrels of crude — a cumulative self-reported total with no stated start date.
Assessment: Both sides are producing numbers that cannot be audited, for the same reason: whoever controls the perceived risk of the strait controls the insurance premium and the price. The IRGC’s unnamed tankers and CENTCOM’s undated 900-vessel tally are the same instrument pointed in opposite directions. PortWatch is the only figure here with a stated method and sample, and it says the waterway is running at a quarter of normal — which is compatible with both the Bloomberg and NBC readings and is why neither is a lie. Report the disagreement; do not resolve it. And keep the Black Sea attacks on CPC loadings separate: those move the same price, but no reporting ties them to this war.