18 July 2026.

Situation

The Strait of Hormuz remains the focal point of a rapidly escalating military confrontation, with the U.S. now conducting its seventh consecutive night of strikes against Iran, per BBC, after Iranian forces killed two American troops and left one missing in a ballistic missile and drone attack on a base in Jordan, per the Boston Globe and CENTCOM. Iran's IRGC has declared the strait fully closed, according to Iranian state media, a claim the U.S. and CENTCOM categorically dispute, citing vessels still in transit and no confirmed physical closure; the site's carrier-posture verdict is a cautious closed, but the physical picture remains contested. PortWatch's most recent published data, covering 2026-07-12, recorded 10 transits against a pre-crisis baseline of 88 per day, a figure that predates the latest escalation by six days; separately, scraper-derived 24-hour arrivals at Gulf ports reached 634 vessels under a different methodology that cannot be directly compared to PortWatch counts. At the time of writing, 449 vessels were anchored or stopped in the region, with 40 indexed events logged in the past 24 hours. Brent crude stood at $88.10, up just +0.01% over 24 hours, a muted price reaction that sits in tension with an extreme Crisis Pressure reading and a high 30-day Escalation Forecast, the two indices diverging in what they measure: present operational stress versus forward risk probability. A sanctioned tanker is also leaking oil near Oman, per gCaptain and Reuters, adding an environmental dimension to an already complex operational picture.