11 June 2026.

Situation

The Strait of Hormuz is the center of an active and escalating dispute over who controls the waterway. U.S. Central Command publicly rejected Iran's closure declaration, asserting the strait remains open to commercial shipping, even as the IRGC announced it closed the passage until further notice, per gCaptain and Iranian state media (Mehr News, IRNA). The physical picture is ambiguous: PortWatch recorded only 2 transits on 2026-06-07, its most recently published day, against a pre-crisis baseline of 94 per day; separately, a scraper-derived 24h arrivals count at Gulf ports logged 147 vessels, though that figure uses a different methodology and cannot be directly compared to the PortWatch number. Vessels anchored or stopped total 348. Brent dropped 4.75% in 24 hours to $89.05, reflecting the market's uncertainty rather than a resolution. The site's Crisis Pressure index sits at 94, rated extreme, with physical transit deviation as the primary driver. The 30-day Escalation Forecast stands at 68, rated high, driven largely by Polymarket closure odds; the gap between those two numbers reflects the difference between current operational stress and the probability of further deterioration. Overnight, Iran's army launched drone strikes against the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, and the IRGC struck 18 American military targets across Kuwait and Bahrain, per Iranian state media. Three Indian seafarers died in a U.S. Navy strike on the tanker Settebello, per gCaptain, with the ship's manager demanding an international investigation.

Recorded