Seven months into the Hormuz crisis, the IMF warns its own shipping numbers are being spoofed

The 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis has run since 28 February — seven months and one day. The IMF’s PortWatch platform maintains an active event page for trade disruption in the strait, logging reduced traffic since that date and listing the disruption as ongoing. It also tells users to treat its own AIS data with care, citing GPS jamming, AIS spoofing and vessels going dark. The commercial tracker Windward illustrates the problem: a VLCC struck on 20 July in the southern strait near Kumzar had been AIS-dark for eight days before the attack. UKMTO’s JMIC advisory note 080 of 4 August, stale but geographically unchanged, reported a tanker attacked at 0200 local by a suspected UAV, warned of drifting or uncharted mines in and near the Traffic Separation Scheme, and stated that “focus remains on Limah–Khasab axis.” United Against Nuclear Iran, an advocacy group campaigning against the Iranian government, said in its 1 October shipping update that Hormuz security remains highly volatile.

The southern front has the cleaner number. The Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a US Department of Defense–affiliated research institution, published around 30 September that following the reinitiation of Houthi missile strikes in July, Red Sea shipping contracted to 25 weekly vessel transits carrying 750,000 metric tons; the Center notes Houthi claims to be targeting only Saudi-flagged vessels. US primary documents fill in the method: MARAD advisory 2026-013 records the M/T AMZAN and M/T DAISY reportedly struck by Houthi missiles off Yanbu on 24 August, while 2026-006 lists the threat set as one-way UAVs, USVs, UUVs, ballistic and cruise missiles and small-arms fire from small boats. Two regional officials told the Associated Press on 16 September that Saudi Arabia is running short of interceptors and has asked France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan and Egypt to deploy air defences. The SCMP notes the United States has drawn down its own interceptor stocks because of the war with Iran.

Assessment: The interesting disclosure this week is epistemic, not kinetic. When the IMF attaches a spoofing warning to its own dataset, every transit count downstream — including the ones used to argue the strait is open or closed — inherits the uncertainty, and both governments gain room to assert whatever tonnage suits them. Read the tracker ecosystem accordingly: UANI is an advocacy organisation, Windward is a commercial vendor, and the Africa Center figure lacks a published pre-crisis baseline, so resist converting 25 transits into a percentage collapse. The Saudi interceptor story is the one with compounding consequences. A customer short of interceptors and a supplier short of interceptors is not a procurement problem; it is a ceiling on how long the air-defence phase of this war can be sustained.