Iran Announces No-Sail Zone Near Strait of Hormuz

A seven-week high in the global price of oil is not an abstract number for drivers in Belgrade: fuel at Serbian pumps tracks the world price of a barrel, regardless of the fact that Serbia does not import its oil through the Strait of Hormuz. That is why the announcement Tehran made on Sunday, of a new no-sail zone around the strait, reaches directly into the pocket of domestic consumers, just as it reaches into the flow of tankers between the Persian Gulf and the rest of the world.

Mohsen Rezai, the new secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, announced the zone on Iranian state television. According to him, it would start at the line of the US naval blockade, extend toward the Strait of Hormuz and further into the Persian Gulf, and cover both Iranian and Omani waters. Tehran has not yet published the exact boundaries.

How would the zone work?

“This zone will start from the line of the United States’ naval blockade and will encompass parts of the Persian Gulf,” Rezai told Iranian state television. Iran intends to register the zone with the International Maritime Organization in the coming days and weeks, which would formally fold it into international maritime regulations rather than leave it as a unilateral warning.

Rezai described the consequences for any ship caught inside the zone without ambiguity. “Any vessel that enters this area with the intention of passing through the Strait of Hormuz, and is identified, will be placed on our sanctions list,” he said. That would mark a shift from Tehran’s earlier pattern of individual attacks on ships and tankers to a system that, at least on paper, formalizes control over waters that do not belong exclusively to Iran.

The announcement came a day after a US strike on three Iranian tankers, one near Kharg Island, a second near Jask, and a third, empty, in the Gulf of Oman, whose crew had been ordered to abandon the vessel before the strike. US Central Command said the strikes followed Iran’s launch of ballistic missiles at a US aircraft carrier and a destroyer, which, according to the US account, were successfully intercepted. Admiral Brad Cooper, the commander of Central Command, summed up the logic of the response bluntly: “If you fire on two of our ships, we will impose an even greater economic cost by destroying three of yours.”

Why are oil prices rising?

The toll of months of conflict, and now of the newly announced zone, shows most clearly in the traffic numbers themselves. Only six ships passed through the strait on Sunday, just two on Saturday, and the ten-day average stands at 13 ships a day. Before the war began in late February, more than 130 ships a day passed through the strait. The Strait of Hormuz now carries a little over nine million barrels of oil a day, against 20 million before the conflict, still roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supply. Chris Wright, the US energy secretary, estimated that total flows, including pipelines that bypass the strait, amount to “two thirds or more of pre-war levels.”

The price of a barrel itself depends on which source is cited, and the spread says something about how jittery the market has become. CBS, on Tuesday morning, put Brent in a range of 96.95 to 99 dollars a barrel, describing it as a seven-week high, while Al Jazeera noted that Brent closed Friday at 96.28 dollars, its highest since July 24. US West Texas Intermediate crude topped 92 dollars a barrel for October delivery, against roughly 70 dollars a barrel before the war. The average US gasoline price is running between 4.14 and 4.15 dollars a gallon, and diesel hit a record 5.85 dollars a gallon on Friday, the highest ever recorded.

Iran, for its part, says it has also taken damage in the first phase of the war with the United States: Tehran claims 27 airports were hit, including runways, security buildings, navigation and inspection equipment, and passenger terminals. The US blockade of Iranian ports began in April, when Tehran first published its own approved shipping routes, while in June, through Oman and with mediation from the International Maritime Organization, a southern corridor was set up as an alternative. Iran’s representative to that organization, Ali Mousavi, maintains that the Strait of Hormuz is closed only to Iran’s enemies, a formulation that leaves plenty of room for interpretation over who exactly falls into that category.

This outlet has previously reported on the US strikes that destroyed three Iranian tankers and on Iran’s retaliatory missile fire at ships in Hormuz, so the new Iranian announcement is a logical next step in an escalation that has run for months, ever since the 60 day memorandum of understanding from June expired without a lasting resolution. Whether Tehran will actually publish the zone’s exact coordinates and try to enforce it militarily, or use it, like its previous warnings, mainly as leverage in negotiations with Oman over the shared corridor, will become clear in the coming days and weeks, when the zone is due to be formally reported to the International Maritime Organization.