US Expands Iran Blockade Into the Gulf of Oman

The US blockade of Iran has moved beyond the Strait of Hormuz. On Tuesday, August 11, a US Navy MH-60 helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles into the engine room of the container ship Vela Nova in the Gulf of Oman, about 71 nautical miles (roughly 131 kilometers) off the coast of Pakistan, in international waters. For Serbia, which buys crude oil at world prices, the episode is not as distant as it looks: at the close on August 10, US WTI rose about five percent to $82.13 a barrel, and Brent also rose about five percent, to $87.72.

US Central Command, known as CENTCOM, said the target was the ship’s steering gear. The vessel lost the ability to steer after being hit, and a fire broke out at the stern and in the steering gear compartment. The full crew was accounted for, no one was hurt, and the sailors were preparing to move to another civilian vessel. According to the command, the crew ignored repeated warnings from US forces and kept heading toward an Iranian port.

“The vessel is no longer sailing to Iran in violation of the US blockade, which remains in full effect,” the command said in a statement.

Why a container ship this time?

So far, the campaign has stopped only one other container ship, Iran’s M/V Touska. Everything else has involved tankers, and closer to the strait itself. Vela Nova was hit hundreds of kilometers to the east, on the approach to the Persian Gulf, which shows Washington is not confining enforcement of the blockade to that one chokepoint.

The ship itself is neither Iranian nor new. It sails under the Panamanian flag, carries IMO number 9136228, was built in 1997, and was previously named Bal Boan. It is owned by Golden Valley Marine INV, managed under the safety management code by Sino Hellenic Ships Management, classed by the Korean Register, and insured since July 8 through a London P&I club.

Figures released by the command through August 11 show the scale of the operation:

• 55 merchant ships redirected
• three ships disabled after failing to comply with orders
• two ships boarded and searched

Vela Nova is the third ship disabled since the blockade was reinstated in July.

Trump: “We fully control” the strait

US President Donald Trump spoke to reporters the same day at Joint Base Andrews and offered a starkly different picture from the one coming out of shipping reports.

“It’s going very well with Iran, absolutely well,” he said. On the waterway itself, he made no qualifications: “We fully control the Strait of Hormuz.” He immediately added that he does not trust Tehran: “I don’t trust Iran. They’ve lied to me constantly.”

Tehran sent the opposite message the same day. Mohsen Rezai, Iran’s national security official, tied any reopening of the waterway to US concessions:

The Strait of Hormuz will not reopen until the United States ends the war and the blockade and releases Iran’s frozen assets.

The two statements describe the same strait, through which about 20 percent of the world’s seaborne fossil fuel trade passed before the war, and they cannot be reconciled on a single point.

The June 17 memorandum, and what is left of it

Washington and Tehran signed a memorandum of understanding on June 17 to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to merchant shipping. The agreement soon collapsed in a dispute over which routes ships would be allowed to use, and the blockade was reinstated in July. We have previously reported on that phase, in which Tehran sought compensation and Washington sought a way out.

Mediation has since shifted to secondary channels. Pakistan’s interior minister, Mohsin Nakvi, traveled to Tehran on Tuesday for talks with Iranian officials, while Iran negotiates new shipping routes with Oman separately from the question of reopening the strait.

For Serbia and the region, the consequences show up not in statements but in the price of a barrel, since crude oil is imported at world prices and the risk premium tied to the Gulf of Oman gets priced in every time the Iran blockade produces a new incident. The only signed document in this conflict remains the June 17 memorandum, and no date has been announced for a new round of talks.