Iran says it struck ten ships near Hormuz as Washington keeps calling the strait fully open

GlobalSecurity’s Day 195 situation report, covering 10 September, records Iran stating it attacked ten vessels near the Strait of Hormuz, which Reuters characterised as the largest declared wave of shipping attacks by either side since the war began. The word doing the work is declared: this is Tehran claiming ten strikes, not ten verified hits. The incident-level detail is thinner than the headline number. A vessel was sighted listing at anchor 24 nautical miles from Port Rashid in the UAE, possibly taking on water after an unidentified projectile; a cargo ship was struck roughly 28 nautical miles southeast of al-Faw, Iraq. Middle East Eye’s live file reported UKMTO saying projectiles hit two vessels near Khasab, Oman, though the advisory numbers have not been pulled directly. On the other side of the ledger, US Central Command claims to have destroyed five Iranian oil tankers; Khaleej Times reported the M/T Riesco sank in the Gulf of Oman on 8 September, a sinking CENTCOM attributes to its own response to attempted IRGC attacks on a US Navy warship.

The traffic figures are where the dispute becomes measurable. Kpler data reported by Al Jazeera on 3 September counted six vessels crossing the strait on Wednesday 2 September, eleven on Tuesday and five on Monday, for a ten-day average of thirteen a day, with other ship-tracking services showing a similar pattern. President Trump says the United States is helping around thirty ships cross daily. The independent monitoring site straits.live, which is not an institutional tracker and should be read as an assessment rather than a record, went further on Day 194, calling the strait “effectively closed to commercial shipping as of 10 September 2026” on six transits on 6 September against a normal it puts at roughly 85 a day. Al Jazeera’s 7 September file was blunter about the gap in its headline: Hormuz traffic falling while the US insists the waterway is “fully open.” Even the price screens disagree — Trading Economics printed Brent at $101.25 on 10 September; straits.live quoted $108.95.

Assessment: Three separate claim-machines are running here and none of them is a count. Tehran benefits from a large declared number whether or not the ships were hit, because the insurance market prices announcements. CENTCOM benefits from tanker kill totals. The White House benefits from thirty transits a day. The only party with no stake is the ship-tracking data, and it says thirteen. Watch the spread between Kpler’s figure and the official one rather than either alone: it is the cleanest available index of how much of this war is being fought in press releases. The Brent discrepancy is the tell — when benchmark prints diverge by seven dollars, the market has stopped believing the reporting too.