11 June 2026.

Situation

The Strait of Hormuz is now formally closed on two competing legal claims: the IRGC announced closure until further notice citing repeated U.S. ceasefire violations (per Mehr News), while U.S. Central Command insists the waterway remains open to commercial shipping (per gCaptain). That jurisdictional standoff has a kinetic backdrop: U.S. forces disabled three merchant vessels in the Gulf of Oman this week for allegedly violating a U.S. naval blockade of Iran, with strikes on Tuesday killing three Indian seafarers aboard the tanker Settebello, whose manager has demanded an international investigation into the strike (per gCaptain). Iranian forces have not been passive; the IRGC struck 18 U.S. military targets across air bases in Kuwait and Bahrain before dawn Thursday, and Iran's army launched drone strikes against the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain (per Mehr News). Brent shed 7.11% over the past 24 hours, a move that likely reflects demand destruction and recession fear as much as supply disruption. The Hormuz Index state composite sits at 94 (extreme), driven primarily by physical transit deviation; the 30-day escalation forecast stands at 68 (high), a reading shaped heavily by Polymarket closure odds. Those two figures diverge meaningfully: extreme present stress does not yet translate into the highest tier of forward risk, a gap worth watching. PortWatch's most recent published day, 2026-06-07, recorded 2 transits; scraper-derived 24-hour arrivals at Gulf ports show 154 vessels, though the two datasets use different methodologies and cannot be directly compared.

Recorded