Over 80% of liquid cargo now bypasses Iran's preferred route through the Strait of Hormuz.
That jaw-dropping statistic, according to reports, comes from ship-tracking company Kpler, which found that in the last two weeks, vessels carrying liquid cargo either took an Omani shipping lane or switched off their transponders entirely during the crossing. Those going dark almost certainly used that same Omani passage while hiding their location.
This is a MASSIVE problem for Tehran. And it gets worse for the regime by the day.
The Omani channel runs along Oman's northern coastline and carries authorization from the United Nations. It has quickly become the go-to path for shipping companies that want nothing to do with Iranian interference. Just four weeks ago, Kpler recorded almost zero traffic using this alternative route. Now it dominates the waterway.
Talk about a dramatic reversal.
Homayoun Falakshahi, who leads crude oil analysis at Kpler, put it bluntly. He said it increasingly appears that Iran has partially lost its hold over the strait. That's a stunning admission about one of the planet's most strategically critical chokepoints.
Tehran has gone after dozens of ships trying to use the Omani lane, claiming the entire waterway falls under its authority. But shipping companies are increasingly ignoring those threats because U.S. naval forces are actively patrolling and protecting vessels in the area.
Here's where Tehran really takes it on the chin financially. During the spring, Iran was collecting tolls from ships traveling its preferred channel. That cash flow has essentially dried up as traffic plummeted. A memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran expired this week, which theoretically allowed Iran to start charging tolls again. But Kpler's data shows Tehran simply cannot enforce those payments anymore.
Dan Pickering, who founded Pickering Energy Partners, noted that most players in the Middle East have no interest in paying Iran's tolls and have refused to do so. The Omani route, he said, simply makes far more sense.
Meanwhile, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have cooked up their own clever workaround. These nations are chartering enormous tankers called VLCCs to haul crude through the strait before transferring it to customer vessels in safer waters in the Gulf of Oman. Many of these supertankers go dark for weeks at a time, making them extremely difficult for Iran to locate and target.
The Pentagon, which has deployed significant naval assets to the region, maintains a much more comprehensive picture of vessel traffic than commercial trackers. Energy Secretary Chris Wright revealed last week that oil shipments moving through or around the strait totaled roughly 15 million barrels daily over a recent one-week stretch. Before the conflict, approximately 20 million barrels flowed through each day.
That means oil volumes are creeping back toward pre-war levels, and Tehran's grand plan to choke off one of the world's most vital energy corridors is crumbling in spectacular fashion. Iran wanted to hold global energy markets hostage. Instead, the world found a way around them.
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