CENTCOM counts 1,500 escorted ships through Hormuz; the trackers count about twelve a day

Admiral Charles Bradford “Brad” Cooper II, commander of US Central Command, says US forces have overseen the safe passage of 1,500 commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, and that mines were cleared using a combination of Navy divers, Navy SEALs and air power. ABC News notes that neither Cooper nor Trump specified how extensively Iran had mined the waterway. Trump said 10 million barrels of oil passed through Hormuz on Tuesday 25 August — a claim, not a confirmation. Kpler data reported by Al Jazeera on 20 August put total transits at 236 vessels of all types between 1 and 19 August, roughly 12.4 a day against a pre-war baseline of about 130 a day: under 10 percent. Windward counted eight completed crossings in the 24 hours to 21:00 UTC on 26 August, five outbound and three inbound, two of them “dark corridor” transits. Cooper’s 1,500 is cumulative across the campaign, not a rate.

What Tehran is building is not a reopening but a tollgate. Congressional Research Service report R45281 records that Iran established a “Persian Gulf Strait Authority” in May 2026 and claimed that “no vessel is permitted to pass through the Strait of Hormuz without a valid passage permit issued by the PGSA” — a claim CRS notes runs against the fact that the strait comprises both Iranian and Omani territorial waters. CRS also cites parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf saying on 23 June that “management of the Strait will never return to the way it was before the war.” The fee architecture remains unsettled: Reuters, via TASS, reported talks on transit fees of 3-7 percent of declared cargo value, with Washington opposed to any fees payable to Iran; Fars, relayed by IranWire, says fees would be service-based rather than a cargo percentage. Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told state television Tehran rejects Oman’s 50-50 division of routes.

Assessment: Both sides are publishing true numbers about different things. Escorted-convoy totals measure US naval effort; Kpler and Windward measure whether shippers will sail. Set them side by side and the gap is a decision by underwriters and owners, not by Iran’s mine inventory. Two things to distrust today. The IRGC’s claim of an agreed Iran-Oman revenue split reached us through a tertiary aggregator and should be treated as a claim. And the “list of conditions” for reopening Hormuz sits in a live-blog headline with no named official attached. Note also that Iran’s assembly is legislating a fee regime it is simultaneously negotiating.