Iran lets an undisclosed number of Iraqi tankers through Hormuz as transit counts fall again

Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported on Saturday that Tehran has granted permission for “a number of” Iraqi oil tankers to transit the Strait of Hormuz, following repeated requests from Baghdad through several channels, and said the permission was one of Iraq’s main asks during Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s visit this week. Reuters carried the IRNA account. No cargo volumes, vessel names or transit dates were given in any version. Iraq’s president — rendered Nizar Amedi in the Reuters copy and Nizar Amidi by The National and Al Jazeera — confirmed the arrangement on the record: “There is facilitation for some tankers carrying Iraqi oil in the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, without elaboration, adding that Iraqi territory would not be used to launch attacks on any other state. Iraq has no national tanker fleet and depends on foreign vessels.

The traffic data behind the carve-out is thin and inconsistent, and the three main counts measure different things. Lloyd’s List Intelligence recorded 73 transits in the week of 10–16 August, down from 91 the week before, with at least 22 vessels entering the Gulf and 21 departing; it attributes suppressed volumes to Iranian targeting of Hormuz users and the US blockade of Iranian ports, while noting a small core of operators still active. Kpler, cited by Al Jazeera on 20 August, counted 236 ships of all cargo types transiting between 1 and 19 August, against a pre-war baseline Al Jazeera puts at roughly 130 ships a day before 28 February. Al Jazeera’s own read is that most vessels crossing are masking their identities, and that more appear to fear Iran than the United States.

The counter-claim is a US military figure, reported in a Trading Economics market note dated 21 August, that the military has helped move more than 660 million barrels of crude through Hormuz since early May. No CENTCOM release for it has surfaced. Prices, meanwhile, softened slightly into the weekend without giving back the week’s gains: Brent settled around $93.40 on Friday, down 0.3%, and WTI at $86.30, down 0.55%, both up roughly 5% on the week and a second consecutive weekly gain, with Brent having touched $94.24, its highest since July. Trading Economics attributes part of the Friday softening to Pezeshkian’s remarks and flags Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries and ports as a separate supply-side driver.

Assessment: Tehran’s permission is one gate of two. The reporting establishes that Iran has stopped blocking some Iraqi barrels; nobody has established that the US blockade clears the same hulls, and until someone does, the carve-out is a diplomatic gesture toward Baghdad rather than a proven export channel. Treat the transit numbers with care: Lloyd’s weekly counts, Kpler’s all-cargo tally and third-party dashboards quoting IMF PortWatch are not interchangeable, and the pre-war baselines cited around them differ by nearly half. The 660-million-barrel figure is a belligerent’s claim about its own performance, and cuts conveniently against the closed-strait framing.