Strait of Hormuz crossings fall to 13 ships per day as war drags on
The Trump administration has doubled down on economic pressure against Iran, making lower oil prices its top war aim and preparing new financial sanctions, even as Iran struck two United Arab Emirates ships in the Strait of Hormuz in a sign of defiance.
The escalation illustrates how both sides have moved further from the diplomatic off-ramp reached in a June agreement, raising the stakes in a five-month conflict now measured by economic endurance rather than battlefield gains.
Vice President JD Vance spelled out the administration’s priorities Thursday, telling Fox News that keeping energy prices down was “goal number one.” He identified preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon as the second priority. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Friday that both goals are “equally as important to the president.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the coming sanctions would form a “one-two punch” alongside the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports, telling Newsmax more measures would be announced next week.
Iran responded late Thursday by attacking two ships affiliated with the U.A.E.’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., according to Emirati officials. The strikes brought the total to six attacks on commercial shipping in August as Tehran has used force to keep vessels out of the strategic waterway.
The Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed. Ship-tracking data from Kpler shows 13 vessels crossed the waterway on Thursday, compared with more than 130 a day before the war. Nine of those 13 ships took the route administered by Iran. Traffic has slowed further from July, when an average of 26 vessels crossed daily.
The June agreement had set out financial rewards for Tehran if it reopened the strait and entered serious negotiations on its nuclear program. The deal’s collapse has left both sides pursuing maximum economic damage rather than diplomacy.
Iranian officials believe they have time on their side and have expanded their demands for reopening Hormuz. Tehran says the U.S. needs to end the war, lift the blockade and provide relief from sanctions and freezes on Iranian cash.
“Tehran has drawn a simple lesson from every game of chicken with Washington: Hold your nerve long enough, and America swerves first,” said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa. “For a system that believes it is fighting for survival … existential threats tend to harden resolve, not impose a price ceiling on resistance.”
President Trump said Friday he would soon declare the Hormuz Strait a U.S. territory “after we finish defeating Iran.” A White House official later said the remarks were made in jest. Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi responded on X that “The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian; this strait will only be closed and opened under Iran’s command.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday the Navy could sustain the blockade indefinitely. U.S. officials said the military is preparing to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the region with the USS George Washington, citing concerns over living conditions aboard the Lincoln and the strain on extended deployments.
Miad Maleki, a former senior Treasury Department figure now at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Iran’s oil exports have dropped from two million barrels a day before the April blockade to near zero recently. Iran has a shortfall of around 29 million liters a day in gasoline supplies that the blockade prevents it from filling.
“The blockade can bring the regime to its knees if Washington makes clear that it will not be lifted on a timetable Tehran can wait out,” Maleki said.
While Iran is suffering mounting economic pain, it is shifting into a survival economy designed to endure it. Tehran, which has endured years of sanctions, is pushing more of the burden onto households by rationing fuel and electricity, restricting scarce foreign currency and cutting investment while preserving essential imports and state resources.
International oil prices have oscillated under $90 a barrel in recent days. The flows from the strait remain curtailed, but the region’s producers have found workarounds beyond the chokepoint to keep their crude moving. Continued disruptions are running down global oil inventories and reducing the market’s ability to absorb shocks, according to Eurasia Group analysts.
“The latent tensions between the U.S. and Iran over the status of the waterway will keep the risk of another crisis—and another closure—relatively high through the rest of 2026,” Eurasia Group analysts wrote in a note to clients.
The central question of the conflict has now become which side blinks first under economic pressure.
The intensified sanctions push and Iran’s strikes on UAE vessels build on MSI’s earlier reporting on Trump’s pivot to a sanctions-based strategy and on vessel crossings through the strait falling to 14 per day.