12 July 2026.

Situation

The Strait of Hormuz is the site of sharply contested claims: Iranian state media and the IRGC assert the waterway is closed following Tehran's formal declaration, but the Combined Maritime Forces' Joint Maritime Information Center, UKMTO, and NAVCENT stated on 12 July that the southern Omani-coast route remains open and has been expanded to two-way traffic, with the threat level held at SEVERE. The physical transit picture is unresolved; PortWatch's most recently published transit count, covering 2026-07-05, recorded 34 vessels against a pre-crisis baseline of 88 per day, while scraper-derived 24-hour arrivals at Gulf ports registered 509 vessels, a figure that reflects a different methodology and cannot be directly compared with PortWatch data. Markets have priced in the ambiguity at the severe end: Brent rose +3.14% in 24 hours to $78.40. Iranian state media claims the IRGC struck a second vessel violating transit regulations and hit US carrier logistics and fueling platforms at Port of Duqm in Oman during a third retaliatory phase; per gCaptain, US strikes on Iran also entered a third round this week. Iran and Oman have separately agreed to continue talks on navigation security, per IRNA. The Crisis Pressure composite stands at 86 (extreme), driven primarily by event pressure, while the 30-day Escalation Forecast composite is 61 (high), anchored largely by Polymarket closure odds; the gap between those two readings signals intense near-term stress that forward markets are not yet fully pricing into the medium-term outlook.

Recorded