Tankers are being hit almost daily in Hormuz, and nobody has claimed a single strike

UKMTO said on X that a crude oil tanker was struck by an unknown projectile four nautical miles east of Oman on 2 October, with the master reporting the projectile hit the port side; it followed another tanker strike in the Strait of Hormuz earlier the same day, according to Iran International’s liveblog. The better-documented incident came the day before. At 1750 UTC on 1 October UKMTO relayed a third-party report of a tanker struck by an unknown projectile in transit, causing a fire. The vessel was identified by the security firm Vanguard Tech as the Kuwait-flagged VLCC Kazimah III, with ownership attributed to Kuwait Oil Tanker Co via Pole Star Global’s PurpleTrac database; all crew were reported safe, Seatrade Maritime wrote on 2 October. Note the chain: a military advisory without a name, a commercial firm supplying the name, a commercial database supplying the owner. No party has claimed the strike. Four tankers were hit in 24 hours on 28–29 September, and gCaptain reported further attacks surfacing through delayed UKMTO reports.

The attribution vacuum is being filled by institutions rather than by claims of responsibility. The Joint Maritime Information Center, quoted by Seatrade on conditions around the late-September strikes, said “IRGC attacks, attempted attacks, and/or harassment activity persisted including UAV overflight, targeted surveillance of merchant shipping, and occasional VHF hailing,” and that these “continue to demonstrate Iran’s intent to assert presence along key transit lanes and maintain pressure on transiting vessels.” Windward’s Maritime Intelligence Operations Center headlined its 2 October daily brief “Four Tankers Struck Transiting Dark Off Musandam” and offered an analytic judgement, not a finding: Iran “continues to strike dark-transiting tankers without reducing overall traffic — pressure on the shuttle fleet, not a bid to close the Strait.” Windward also reports Iran’s own sanctions blacklist grew by four entries between 14 and 28 September, to 81 vessels, and that of three listed ships transiting that week, the one inbound vessel was struck mid-transit.

Assessment: Resist the single killer number. Three counts are in circulation and each is defensible only on its own method: JMIC, relayed by the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran, logs 997 transits between 18 June and 30 September and 1,610 since the war began; IMF PortWatch records one transit on 27 September against a pre-crisis baseline of 85 a day; US Central Command says thousands of ships and a billion barrels have moved through in recent months. The 1-versus-85 figure is the most quotable and the least trustworthy — PortWatch’s own event page warns of GPS jamming, AIS spoofing and vessels going dark, and UANI notes ships running the southern corridor without broadcasting AIS, some of it facilitated by US forces. An AIS-based count in a jammed strait measures silence, not absence. The operative question is whether anyone fires once the third carrier is on station, because the current tempo is calibrated to be expensive without being a closure anyone has to answer.