Strait of Hormuz has immediately become the first major flash point of Trump’s ‘fragile’ ceasefire

A two-week ceasefire in Iran began Wednesday with some immediate breakdowns between the Trump administration and Iran over the contours of the deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Trump announced the deal as including a “complete” reopening of the waterway, while Iran’s initial statement promised passage only “via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces.” But that truce appeared to be in immediate jeopardy on Wednesday as Iran’s semiofficial ‌Fars news agency claimed that tanker traffic was “halted” over Israel’s continued strikes in Lebanon and the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran had told mediators it would limit the number of ships crossing to around a dozen a day — a fraction of the more than 130 that passed each day before the war. It added new uncertainty for shippers just hours after independent traffic service MarineTraffic reported “early signs of vessel activity” following the announcement. In a briefing with reporters on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the Fars claims about a halt in traffic false and said any closing of the strait would be “completely unacceptable.” She also said the US is supportive of Israel’s position that Lebanon is not part of this ceasefire. The Strait of Hormuz — which Iran has used as a major point of leverage since the beginning of the conflict — is just one point of disagreement, but it’s likely the first major flash point of the ceasefire that Vice President JD Vance has called “a fragile truce.” A related issue is Iran’s intent to charge tolls for use of the 21-mile-wide waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes. The Financial Times on Wednesday reported that Iran is moving forward with plans to charge shipowners a fee of potentially $1 per barrel of oil, paid in cryptocurrency. As Capital Economics summed things up in a note on Wednesday, “for markets, the most critical issue remains the status of the Strait of Hormuz.” Iranian plans for fees, the analysts wrote, may “have only a modest impact on global energy prices though, in practice, it could amount to a de facto partial nationalisation of the shipping route.” Put another way, “the specifics of the Strait’s reopening will be key to watch,” Raymond James said in their note, to answer the larger question of “where could this fall apart?”

Starkly different plans for the strait

For the moment, the Trump administration and the Iranians are taking public postures around the strait that are irreconcilable. Trump announced overnight that the US “will be helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz … in order to make sure that everything goes well,” with Leavitt later adding it was a signal that the US aims to be “helpful in any way that we can.” without providing further details about whether that meant placing US warships near Iranian military installations. Iran, meanwhile, made promises to shippers but only at the behest of Iran’s military. The Tuesday language from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council promising “safe passage” under their supervision reads like a description of the status quo during the war, in which Iran has proven able to decide who passes while vetoing other ships. A senior Iranian official on Wednesday also described the reopening as “limited, under Iran’s control” in an interview with Reuters. While an uptick in traffic has been in evidence for days now, it remains far below the 130-plus ships that passed daily through the strait on an average day before the war. That could mean a continuation of the current situation, where, according to MarineTraffic, “hundreds of vessels remain in the region … effectively stranded.”

Energy industry remains skittish

The dynamic has many in the shipping industry suggesting that the resumption of energy flows will be slow and limited, even if the two nations can get past their initial disagreements. Wood Mackenzie senior vice president Alan Gelder wrote Wednesday that vessels filled with oil “have every incentive to transit the Strait of Hormuz as quickly as insurance and security assurances allow, but it is unclear what rate of transits can be achieved safely.” He added that the traffic in the Persian Gulf may, for the time being, be on “a ‘just in time’ logistics basis” to avoid “becoming trapped if hostilities resume.” Allianz chief economic adviser Mohamed El-Erian added on social media that shippers are likely to be “far more inclined to get our equipment and colleagues out of there than to send them in.” It led many observers watching another gyrating day in the stock market to conclude that the market’s focus on developments in Iran is unlikely to take a break, even with the ceasefire. Terry Haines of Pangaea Policy called it “the new normal, deal or no deal.”