A vessel attempts to transit Hormuz, negotiations fail, they turn around. On paper, a tactical decision. In reality, a captain and crew carrying the weight of global uncertainty.
Only a handful of non-Iranian vessels crossed the Strait of Hormuz since yesterday. 3 tankers made U-turns in the past few hours after the news that US-Iran negotiations in Pakistan ended without a deal.
It is unclear whether the operators changed their minds due to the outcome of the negotiations, whether the Iranians revoked their permit to transit or whether the tankers never had a permit in the first place. But the timing does appear to match the end of the US-Iran negotiations. These U-turns are shown in the screenshots from vesselfinder below.
3 container vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz. All were Iranian linked.
Two of them, the 5000 TEU “Taban 1” and the 6300 TEU “Flora”, are Iranian flagged and on the US OFAC sanctions list. The third, 1200 TEU “Reyfa”, is flagged in the Comoros. It is now returning into the Gulf, having done an Iran-India run over the past 3 weeks.
Today is day 875 of the Red Sea crisis and day 44 of the Hormuz crisis.
