Iran's Tanker Strikes Hit a Wartime High on the Omani Side of Hormuz, Aimed at Ships on Its Non-Compliance List
The week of September 28 to October 5 was the worst for tankers in the Strait of Hormuz since the war began on February 28. Tracking sources counted at least 12 attacks on oil, LPG and LNG carriers in those seven days. The IMO, which is slower to verify, had confirmed nine. The previous worst week, in mid-July, had eight.
Where the ships were hit matters more than how many. Almost every strike in that stretch landed in the southern channel, a few miles off Oman’s coast. That is the lane shipowners moved to in June, when Muscat’s corridor offered a way past Iran’s tolled northern route. It was supposed to be the workaround. Iran is now treating it as a firing range.
The list does the explaining
Tehran has stopped pretending the attacks are random. Its Persian Gulf Strait Authority told Iranian media that the targeted ships included vessels on its non-compliant list, which stood at 82 names on October 2. Three of the tankers hit were UAE-controlled: Al Ruwais, Sinbad and Mersin Prosperity. The authority said each had made several unauthorized transits over the previous two months.
So the charge is skipping Iran’s rules for the strait, and the sentence is a projectile.
The list doesn’t cover everything, though. At least two Kuwaiti-controlled tankers were struck the same week without being on it. One was Kazimah III, a 317,250-ton crude carrier owned by Kuwait Oil Tanker Co., hit on October 1 about five miles off Oman and reported burning by Iran’s Fars agency. A Panama-flagged crude tanker was hit the next night 5.3 nautical miles off the Omani coast. On Peace, another Panama-flagged tanker, took a projectile that injured 12 crew, according to India’s foreign ministry. The pattern points to the channel itself, with the list serving as the justification after the fact.
The Revolutionary Guard is also enforcing the route without firing. On October 4 it hailed an inbound tanker about 11 nautical miles north of Khasab and told the master to turn back or be targeted. He turned back. The US-led Joint Maritime Information Center describes the routine: drone overflights, close surveillance, VHF calls on merchant ships along the transit lanes.
The strike off Qatar changes the map
On October 8 the Antigua and Barbuda-flagged tanker Acers was struck about 51 nautical miles north of Qatar’s Madinat ash Shamal, deep inside the Gulf. UKMTO reported multiple casualties. Attacks outside the strait had been rare since September 9, when the bunker tanker Hercules Star was hit at anchor off the UAE with two crew killed and the VLCC New Andros was struck off Iraq’s Al-Faw.
The JMIC still rates the threat “severe” in Hormuz and “moderate” in the wider Gulf. Acers suggests that gap is closing. A Gulf exporter that thought its risk ended once its cargo cleared the strait now has to price the voyage from the loading berth.
Traffic has already priced it in. IMF PortWatch counted four transits on October 4, against a pre-war baseline of about 85 a day. In mid-September the argument was whether the real figure was 40 a day, as Washington claimed, or about 12, as commercial trackers saw it. That argument is over. Brent is back above $100 a barrel.
What Tehran is buying with it
Iran’s own exports are close to zero. Kpler analysts say it has cut production and stopped loading floating storage, almost no large tankers have left the Gulf since Washington reinstated its blockade, and the Iranian crude parked in Far East storage is mostly gone. US Central Command said its forces had redirected 125 vessels under the blockade by September 30.
That is the logic of the southern-channel campaign. If Iranian barrels can’t move, Iran will make it as hard as possible for anyone else’s to move on terms it didn’t set.
It is also the bargaining position. On September 26 Donald Trump rejected Iran’s seven-day plan to reopen the strait, which Tehran had passed through Qatar. Its demands include an end to the US blockade, the lifting of oil sanctions, the release of frozen assets and a halt to fighting across the region, Lebanon and Yemen included. Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, called it a cynical attempt to put forward something Iran knew was unacceptable. On October 4 parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Tehran’s lead negotiator, said the strait stays shut until the conditions are met.
Washington is answering with force. A third carrier strike group and around 9,000 to 10,000 troops are reported to be heading for the region. More warships won’t make the Omani channel safe while a tanker can be stopped by a radio call, though. The corridor was built on the assumption that Iran wouldn’t shoot at ships on Oman’s side of the line. That assumption has been failing since September 23, when the strike on Cape Dao opened this offensive.
For the earlier phase of this fight, see how Oman’s southern corridor pulled tankers off Iran’s tolled route and the September dispute over transit counts.