{"id":207174,"date":"2026-04-10T10:20:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T10:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/strait-of-hormuz-shipping-traffic-is-effectively-at-a-standstill-despite-iran-ceasefire-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T10:20:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T10:20:23","slug":"strait-of-hormuz-shipping-traffic-is-effectively-at-a-standstill-despite-iran-ceasefire-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/strait-of-hormuz-shipping-traffic-is-effectively-at-a-standstill-despite-iran-ceasefire-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Strait of Hormuz shipping traffic is effectively at a standstill despite Iran ceasefire – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz<\/a> was at a virtual standstill Thursday, with only a handful of ships passing through the vital waterway since the announcement of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire.
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Just five bulk carriers had transited the waterway in the first 24 hours of the deal, according to data from the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic and Kpler, a data and analytics firm, while S&P Global Market Intelligence said nine vessels had passed through across Wednesday and Thursday.
But the exact numbers are unclear, as some ships turn off or spoof their GPS trackers during transit. Yet the current traffic is a trickle compared with the prewar average of more than 100 vessels sailing through the strait daily. It is also far from the \u201ctotal reopening\u201d that President Donald Trump had demanded as a condition for the truce.
Oil prices rose again Thursday above $100 a barrel<\/a> as initial optimism about a truce gave way to uncertainty.
Throughout the war, Iran attacked several vessels and vowed to hit any that it viewed as connected to the U.S. or Israel, effectively blocking a route through which 20% of the world\u2019s oil and natural gas once passed.
Ships trapped in the Persian Gulf<\/a> \u201cwill be interested in leaving as soon as it is safe to do so,\u201d said Jakob Larsen, chief safety and security officer at BIMCO, a leading organization for shipowners, charterers, brokers and agents. But the industry, he said, was awaiting \u201ctechnical details from the U.S. and from Iran on how to transit the Strait of Hormuz safely.\u201d
Iran has insisted that ships wanting to transit the strait must secure its permission and has suggested it retains the right to impose a fee for passage.
The Iranian navy released a map<\/a> late Wednesday indicating it may have mined the strait and outlining the designated shipping lanes vessels should use to transit safely. It directs outbound ships leaving the Persian Gulf along a route just south of Larak Island, while inbound vessels must follow a route north of the island \u2014 both closer to Iran\u2019s mainland than the route often taken before the war.
A large portion of the strait, marked in a rectangular box that also includes Oman\u2019s territorial waters, is designated in the map as \u201chazardous.\u201d
\u201cWe have to be very careful for the security and safety of tankers and vessels,\u201d Saeed Khatibzadeh, the country\u2019s deputy foreign minister, told ITV News in an interview published Thursday.
This language from Tehran contrasted with that of American officials, who at one point insisted the strait had reopened.
Frustrations are clear in the Gulf, whose economies are hugely dependent on the waterway and energy exports.
\u201cThis moment requires clarity. So let\u2019s be clear: the Strait of Hormuz is not open. Access is being restricted, conditioned and controlled,\u201d Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of Abu Dhabi\u2019s national oil company and a United Arab Emirates government minister, said in a post on LinkedIn<\/a> on Thursday.
Israeli strikes on Lebanon threaten U.S.-Iran ceasefire
Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Jean-No\u00ebl Barrot said the European Union and its partners were \u201cfinalizing\u201d plans to set up a mission to escort ships.
\u201cWork is well advanced\u201d for the mission to be deployed \u201conce calm has been fully restored,\u201d he told France Inter radio, though it was unclear how this mission might interact with Iran\u2019s stance.
Uncertainty and fear continued to scramble the global shipping industry on the second day of the truce.
Chinese ships were among a long line of vessels waiting for clearance to leave the strait, said Muyu Xu, a Singapore-based analyst with Kpler. She said that the overall picture was still confusing and cited how last week Iran said it was accepting Chinese yuan as payment for transit, but then changed to a preference for cryptocurrency.
Ships \u201cdon\u2019t know whether they need to pay first, or they go past first and then Iran sends a bill? It\u2019s just a lot of uncertainty,\u201d she said.
It was also unclear whether paying Iran could put shipping companies in violation of international sanctions. While President Donald Trump suggested in an interview with ABC News that the U.S. and Iran could establish a \u201cjoint venture\u201d to charge tolls, U.S. allies in the Gulf and a succession of European leaders made clear Thursday there should be no tolls or restrictions on the critical shipping route. Europe is dependent on energy imports from the region.
\u201cFull restoration of freedom of movement in the Strait of Hormuz is needed, and it must not be subject to any restrictions,\u201d said Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
The seemingly selective system for the passage of ships across the strait has been dubbed Iran\u2019s \u201ctollbooth\u201d system, the legality of which was questioned by maritime law experts.
\u201cThe charging of fees or tolls would be an extreme outlier and would set a dangerous precedent,\u201d said John Stawpert, marine principal director at the International Chamber of Shipping. \u201cThe reopening of the Strait of Hormuz must respect maritime law and custom, and not restrict freedom of navigation and innocent passage through tolls,\u201d he said.
Iran has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) guaranteeing the right to transit passage, however, which complicates the legal questions.
\u201cIran is claiming a right to restrict traffic flow that contravenes its interests,\u201d Mark Chadwick, a principal lecturer in law at Nottingham Trent University, said in an email. But he said it was \u201cunclear what international law has to say about this, given its fragmentary and horizontal (consent-based) nature.\u201d
He pointed to the Bosphorus Strait, where Turkey charges a toll of $5.83 per ton under a system that has global agreement.
\u201cIf something similar were to be introduced in Hormuz, it would likely also require broad international agreement,\u201d said Chadwick, who deemed it unlikely.
It is also unclear how such a toll system would sit with Oman, which lies directly across the strait from Iran. Oman is a party to UNCLOS and is therefore obligated to allow uninterrupted transit through the strait.
\u201cBoth the inbound as well as the outbound traffic in that particular area crosses the Omani territorial sea,\u201d said Alexander Lott, a research professor at the Arctic University of Norway\u2019s Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea.
An arrangement that sees Iran splitting the collected toll with Oman is also highly unlikely, experts say. Oman is closely aligned with its Gulf neighbors, whom analysts view as determined to ensure the strait\u2019s return to prewar status.
\u201cOman simply doesn\u2019t have a relationship with Iran that it would sacrifice the world for it,\u201d said Mehran Haghirian, director of research and programmes at the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, in a phone interview. \u201cIt will not put itself in danger with five of its most important partners in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council).\u201d
All of this leaves the situation unresolved and difficult to predict for markets, firms and the legion of seamen and women on which the world relies.
After weeks of haggling with authorities, Rex Pereira secured three emergency visas to leave the oil tanker where he had been stranded for over a month.
The shipman embarked on Sunday for an over 48-hour journey that would take him from the Iraqi port where his vessel was anchored to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, before finally meeting his wife and parents in his hometown of Mumbai.
\u201cThe ships which are already stuck near the Strait of Hormuz, they just want to escape from there,\u201d Pereira, 28, said. \u201cMost of the seafarers, I feel they didn\u2019t sign up for all this. They just want to be home,\u201d he said.
NBC News previously reported <\/a>on Pereira\u2019s journey, which included witnessing an endless barrage of missiles flying overhead.
He arrived home Tuesday. But many others like him, and the ships on which they\u2019re stuck, are still waiting.
Mithil Aggarwal is a Hong Kong-based reporter\/producer for NBC News.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeTraffic through the Strait of Hormuz was at a virtual standstill Thursday, with only a handful of ships passing through the vital waterway since the announcement of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Just five bulk carriers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":207175,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-207174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}