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For forty years the answer was always the same. Iran threatened to close the strait in nearly every flare-up since the 1980s Tanker War, and never did. Oil spiked on the headline, then gave it back within days.
The logic looked airtight. A fifth of the world's oil and a huge share of its LNG squeezes through a 21-mile channel. Closing it cuts off Iran's own exports and invites the U.S. Fifth Fleet, parked in Bahrain for exactly this. The threat was worth more unused.
Then it happened. On February 28, 2026, after U.S. and Israeli airstrikes, Iran shut the strait to commercial traffic. A ceasefire in April and a memorandum in June reopened it, toll-free, for a few weeks. That deal collapsed in July after attacks on ships. Traffic fell from about 85 transits a day to single digits.
Nobody needs a blockade line to close a strait. War-risk insurance does it. Premiums ran to roughly forty times normal, carriers suspended the route, and hundreds of ships sat waiting in the Gulf. The Saudi East-West pipeline, the main way around, was knocked out by drones in September.
So the old trade, short the fear premium because no tanker ever actually stops, is dead while this lasts. The base rate of a real closure is no longer zero. Watch the transit count above. When ships move again, the premium comes out. Until then, the chart is the only honest signal here.