CENTCOM says it has redirected 99 ships while trackers log a Hormuz all but closed
The White House puts daily Hormuz crossings at around 30. Kpler, IMF PortWatch and independent trackers put them between five and thirteen. The gap is now the clearest measure of the war at sea.
US Central Command said on Friday that US forces had redirected 99 commercial vessels as of 11 September in enforcement of the blockade against Iran, and that the USS Boxer remains flagship of the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, according to a CENTCOM post on X carried by Iran International, a Saudi-linked outlet with a declared position on Tehran. The tracker straits.live logged the strait as “Closed, Day 195” on 11 September and recorded six transits on 6 September against a normal of roughly 85 a day, noting that Iranian media have declared the strait closed while Reuters and gCaptain report the same IMF PortWatch figure of six. Kpler data published by Al Jazeera on 3 September showed six crossings on the Wednesday, eleven on the Tuesday and five on the Monday, a ten-day average of thirteen. Trump says the US is helping around 30 ships across daily.
The traffic is thin because the water is dangerous. Windward records that Iran imposed new maritime transit regulations after its 60-day ceasefire expired, producing a fatal attack on the bulk carrier Minoan Dignity and the seizure of the tanker Amara; on 9 September Iran struck a Panama-flagged tanker in Iraqi coastal waters. CBS reported that US forces struck five IRGC-linked tankers after attempted Iranian attacks on a US warship, per CENTCOM. Al Jazeera’s 11 September live file is headlined on an IRGC attack on a US unmanned vessel and two ships hit. Prices reflect the squeeze without agreeing on a level: TradingEconomics put Brent at $106.11 on 11 September, down 1.41 percent on the day but up 58.40 percent year on year, after passing $108 on Thursday — its highest since 19 May. Fortune logged $105.82 at 9:15 a.m. ET; straits.live $104.76.
Tehran said on 7 September it would announce a new Hormuz shipping route within days. ABC News' live file, updated Saturday, is headlined on Tehran planning a new restricted zone; coordinates, effective date and issuing authority are not yet public. The diplomatic track that would have resolved this is dead for now: CBS states the 60-day deadline for the US and Iran to negotiate a peace deal and reopen the strait expired with no agreement in sight. Iranian negotiating committee member Saeed Ajorlu told IRIB in early August that “the basis of the negotiations is to establish Iranian arrangements because security, demining, and maritime services are handled by Iran,” describing a one-to-three-month arrangement “where Iran is dominant.”
Assessment: “Open” and “transited” are not the same claim, and the administration has been careful to make the first. A strait can be legally open, patrolled and escorted, and still empty, because the decision that counts is taken by underwriters and charterers, not by a navy. Thirty a day versus six is not a dispute about facts; it is a dispute about what is being counted. Watch the restricted zone rather than the rhetoric: a NAVTEX with coordinates moves war-risk premiums within hours, and premiums are what actually closed this waterway. Do not average the oil prints — different benchmarks, different timestamps, one direction.