Tehran says Hormuz stays shut, yet Gulf crude exports ran above pre-war levels in late September

Reuters, in a Singapore-datelined story by Florence Tan on Monday, reported provisional Kpler figures showing Middle East crude exports exceeding pre-war levels on 24 September and again on 27–29 September, running between 19.5 million and 22.5 million barrels a day against a baseline of 18 million bpd averaged from March 2025 to February 2026. The seven-day moving average for crude stood at 18.5 million bpd as of 1 October; combined crude, products, chemicals and non-gas liquids averaged 22.4 million bpd over the week to 30 September. LNG cargoes leaving Hormuz hit their highest monthly level since February. Reuters prints its own caveat: the figures exclude vessels transiting with AIS transponders switched off. Before 28 February, roughly 125 large commercial vessels passed daily, carrying about a fifth of world crude and LNG supply.

The same story carries the counter-number. Marisks, a shipping intelligence firm, reported on Saturday at least seven tanker incidents in and around Hormuz, and UKMTO has logged at least one attack a day in the strait or the Gulf of Aden since 2 October. The VLCC Kazimah III was reportedly struck by an unknown projectile on 1 October and caught fire, with all crew evacuated safely; Kpler last tracked her discharging two million barrels of Kuwaiti crude at Ras Markaz, Oman, on 17 September. Kuwait Oil Tanker Company did not immediately respond to Reuters. Marisks describes a “heightened and increasingly unpredictable kinetic threat” and argues that incidents “may not necessarily represent deliberate targeting of individually selected merchant vessels” — suggesting instead that Iranian forces are firing into a predetermined “kill box” where weapons lock onto available radar signatures.

Tehran’s public position has not moved with the tonnage. Majlis Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on 4 October that the strait remains closed until Washington meets the seven conditions of the June interim agreement Iranian officials call the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, and that Iran’s UN General Assembly proposal could restore normal traffic within seven days of US acceptance. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told reporters the same day that Tehran had delivered an initial response through mediators with further points to follow, that the American proposal largely repeats previous US positions on the nuclear programme, and that no nuclear negotiations have begun. “For us, the priority at this stage is the Strait of Hormuz,” Baghaei said, adding that restoring security to the waterway requires concrete steps from Washington.

Assessment: Two measurement systems are being confused in public. Kpler counts barrels; the Joint Maritime Information Centre count cited by the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran — 997 transits between 18 June and 30 September, about 7.6 vessels a day — counts hulls. Both can be true if what moves is fewer, fuller, better-escorted ships, and if dark transits are invisible to one dataset. The political consequence is that “closed” is becoming a negotiating fiction Tehran needs and Washington can increasingly dispute. Treat the Marisks kill-box hypothesis as one vendor’s reading, not a navy’s finding: if UKMTO or CENTCOM adopts it, war-risk premiums reprice within days. Everything here is provisional data on a partisan subject.