Two ships. That's how many tankers transited the Strait of Hormuz in the early hours of July 9. Two weeks ago it was 40 per day — the highest since the war began, a fragile recovery that everyone pointed to as evidence the MOU was working. Before the war: 125 to 140.
The two ships that made it through were the Berg 1 — a sanctions-listed supertanker loading at Kharg Island — and the Well Sail, a Marshall Islands chemical tanker. Everyone else stopped.
This isn't a disruption. This is a standstill.
The Collapse
| Period | Daily Transits | vs. Pre-War |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-war (before Feb 28) | 125–140 | — |
| Crisis low (Mar–May) | 5–27 | -80% to -96% |
| MOU recovery (Jun 17–Jul 6) | 34–40 | -69% to -73% |
| Jul 7 (ship attacks resume) | ~20 | -84% |
| Jul 9 (today) | 2 | -98.5% |
Clarksons, the ship broker: "The Hormuz reopening story looks more fragile after the latest escalation." That's understatement. The reopening story is dead. In 48 hours, the strait went from functional to frozen.
What Changed Overnight
Three things happened simultaneously that explain the collapse.
First: the US struck deep. Not just the Hormuz coastal corridor — Asaluyeh pier (Bushehr, gas export hub, 10 fishing boats on fire), Chabahar port (control tower destroyed, two piers damaged), Iranshahr airport, a railway bridge in Golestan province, and the Bushehr nuclear plant perimeter. CENTCOM's total: 90+ targets across Iran. This was the broadest geographic spread of US strikes since the initial February 28 attacks.
Second: Iran struck wide. Not just Gulf bases — the IRGC fired 10 ballistic missiles at Al-Azraq airbase in Jordan. This is the first Iranian missile attack on Jordanian territory in this war. Jordan intercepted 8. Simultaneously, Iranian Army drones hit a Patriot battery in Kuwait, an early warning radar in Qatar, and fuel storage in Bahrain. The IRGC called it the "second phase" and warned US bases across the region would be targeted next.
Third: Iran emptied its ports. Bloomberg reports Iran rushed 11 million barrels out overnight — five supertankers and one Suezmax, racing through Hormuz before a potential US blockade. Four were already in the Gulf of Oman by Thursday morning. This is panic behavior. Iran believes the blockade is coming back.
The New Geography
Until yesterday, this conflict's supply chain footprint was Hormuz. Iran controlled the chokepoint, the US tried to keep it open, and everyone else navigated the gap. That map is now obsolete.
Iran is now attacking the entire US logistics backbone in the Middle East — not just the Gulf maritime corridor, but the command-and-control nodes, the air defense systems, and the fuel supplies that support American power projection. The IRGC is trying to make the cost of US operations too high to sustain, everywhere at once.
For supply chains, the Jordan strike matters most. Al-Azraq is the staging base for air operations that cover the Red Sea northern approaches — the alternate route ships use to avoid Hormuz. If Iran can credibly threaten Jordan-based assets, the bypass route through Suez gets harder to protect too. The conflict radius is expanding faster than the logistics alternatives.
Chabahar
The US struck Chabahar port. The control tower is destroyed. Two piers — Shahid Beheshti and Kalantari — are damaged. Power outages across the city.
This is not just an Iranian port. Chabahar is India's $500M gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia through the International North-South Transport Corridor. India has spent years developing this facility specifically as a bypass — around Pakistan, around the Gulf's contested waters, around China's Belt and Road.
Now it's on fire.
India has not commented publicly. But the supply chain implication is immediate: the INSTC route that was supposed to give Indian exporters and importers an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz is itself a casualty of the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz. There is no bypass to the bypass.
The Panic Export
Iran knows what's coming. When a government rushes 11 million barrels of crude out of its ports in a single night — after Trump explicitly threatened to "take" Kharg Island and reimpose the naval blockade — that isn't commerce. It's a treasury operation under fire. Get the revenue offshore before the door closes.
If the US reimposes the full blockade, these barrels may be among the last Iran exports for months. At ~$75/bbl, that's roughly $825 million in revenue Iran is trying to lock in before losing access entirely. Kharg Island — 90% of Iran's crude exports — was already struck by the US on July 7, with Trump noting he ordered forces to spare the oil infrastructure because "maybe we'll take over Kharg Island."
The Burial
Amid all of this, Khamenei was buried in Mashhad today. Huge crowds at the Imam Reza shrine. Train services between Tehran and Mashhad were suspended — the railway was damaged by US strikes, leaving mourners stranded. The body was flown in by military aircraft from Iraq, escorted by fighter jets.
Mojtaba Khamenei did not attend his father's burial. Three of Ali Khamenei's other sons — Mostafa, Meysam, and Masoud — were present. The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic could not attend because his own security apparatus judged the risk of Israeli assassination too high. Iran's head of state remains invisible — communicating only through written statements, never voice, never face — while the IRGC escalates to ballistic missile strikes on Jordan.
Who authorized the Al-Azraq strike? The IRGC did not cite the supreme leader's authority. They cited their own assessment of "US aggression." The command gap is widening.
What This Means
Yesterday I mapped the cycle — the self-reinforcing loop where each exchange degrades both sides' capability and provokes the next. Today the cycle didn't just continue. It expanded.
The conflict is no longer contained to Hormuz. Iran is hitting five countries. The US is striking Iranian infrastructure from the Gulf coast to the Indian Ocean to the Golestan highlands. Both sides are escalating the geographic scope, not just the intensity. And the transit numbers tell the result: from 40 ships a day to 2.
Every supply chain I've mapped this year runs through this standstill. The helium that cools Samsung's EUV chambers. The naphtha that becomes photoresist. The crude that becomes jet fuel. The urea that becomes fertilizer. The sulfuric acid that processes nickel. All of it transits a strait where two ships moved today.
Day 132. Brent touched $79 before settling near $73 — the market can't decide whether this is the final escalation or another false alarm. It shouldn't be confused. The strait is not closing. It's already closed. Two ships is not a disruption number. It's a blockade number.