Kpler counts thirteen ships a day through Hormuz; Trump says the US is helping thirty across
The traffic figures are the least rhetorical thing in this war, and they do not agree with the White House. A second dataset says most transits are now running dark.
Al Jazeera, reporting marine analytics firm Kpler on 3 September, recorded six vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz on the Wednesday, 11 on the Tuesday and five on the Monday, with the 10-day average standing at 13 vessels per day; other ship-tracking services showed a similar pattern. President Donald Trump has said the United States is helping around 30 ships cross the waterway daily. Four days later, on 7 September, an Al Jazeera live page recorded Hormuz traffic falling while the US insisted the waterway was “fully open,” with Tehran signalling it would announce a new Hormuz shipping route in coming days. Two weeks on, the desk has found no record that any such route was announced — a non-announcement that is itself a data point about how much control Tehran can actually assert over the Strait.
A second, commercial dataset describes a different problem. Windward Daily Intelligence, a maritime AI firm whose methodology is not publicly disclosed, reported that 12 vessels transited the Strait on 16 September, twice the previous day’s six, and that 11 of the 12 transited without AIS, including three VLCCs of 310 metres or more running dark inbound. Windward describes this as a 10 percent jump in dark transits over 24 hours — a characterisation that does not obviously reconcile with 11 of 12, and which the desk flags rather than repeats as settled. The same firm attributes new Iranian maritime transit regulations, imposed after a 60-day ceasefire expired, to a fatal attack on the bulk carrier Minoan Dignity and the seizure of the tanker Amara. Neither vessel has been independently confirmed here.
Assessment: Vessel counts are the one metric in this conflict that neither belligerent controls, which is why they are worth more than any statement issued on either side. Thirteen against thirty is not a rounding dispute; it is the difference between a strait that functions and one that is being narrated as functioning. Note also what dark transits do to the numbers themselves: a fleet that switches off AIS degrades the very tracking that Kpler and Windward depend on, so both figures should be read as floors. Bloomberg’s 10 September framing supplies the mechanism to watch next — Hormuz risk pushes Saudi barrels to the Red Sea, where the Houthis are waiting.