Two navies, two blockades, and one narrow channel that much of the world’s energy still depends on. That is the picture in the waters off Iran after an American warplane opened fire on a merchant vessel on Saturday.
The target was the Ocean Molica, a bulk carrier registered in Panama that also sails under the name Arika Sun. US Central Command says the ship had left an Iranian port, brushed off a series of warnings and tried to slip through the cordon Washington maintains around Iran. A fighter jet then hit its stern with a guided weapon. According to CENTCOM, the strike knocked out the engines while sparing everyone on board.
Since the US reimposed the blockade on July 14, its forces have turned back 135 vessels and disabled four merchant ships, the command says. Ten tankers it ties to a smuggling network run by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been destroyed in the same period. Not everyone in Washington is convinced. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy asked on X why taxpayers were funding attacks on commercial shipping, calling the whole approach “a disaster”.
Iran, for its part, insists on policing the waterway itself. The Guards claimed to have struck a large LPG carrier that had chosen what they called an “illegal route” along the southern edge of the Strait of Hormuz, where captains increasingly try to avoid Iranian checkpoints. Britain’s UKMTO separately reported that a tanker heading out of the strait on Sunday was hit by an unidentified projectile and caught fire; its crew is said to be safe. On Thursday, another ship north of Qatar came under fire, with casualties reported.
Roughly 20 percent of global oil demand used to flow through Hormuz before the US-Israeli war on Iran began in late February. Traffic has now dropped to its weakest level in over two months, a squeeze that keeps crude prices elevated.
