Iran Closes Strait of Hormuz Again After US Strikes; Oil Supply Cliff Looms

Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz again early Thursday, retaliating against the latest U.S. airstrikes. The waterway normally carries about 20 million barrels of oil per day – roughly a fifth of global seaborne crude. This time the closure looks durable.

President Trump claimed Wednesday the U.S. had secretly moved more than 100 million barrels of Iranian oil through the strait over the past 40 days, with 200 commercial ships making the transit. His own energy secretary denied the claim the same day in congressional testimony. Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson called the numbers impossible, noting 100 million barrels is barely five days of U.S. consumption.

Tanker tracking firm Kpler reported an uptick in vessels sailing without broadcasting their location since late May. Oil market analyst Rory Johnston warned against reading too much into it. The dark transit uptick has been offset by a steep drop in official Iranian route passages. Overall traffic remains throttled by about 90% compared with pre-war levels, according to analysts cited by Drop Site News. Johnston called the dark volumes negligible and said they are being blown out of proportion.

Some traders see the Trump claim as a market manipulation gambit – an attempt to suppress crude prices as physical shortages mount. One analyst noted the disconnect between tightening fundamentals and collapsing paper volatility, calling the setup ripe for a violent repricing once the price cap breaks.

The physical market is already showing strain. Middle East crude differentials to Dubai benchmarks have widened. Refiners in Asia are scrambling for alternative supply from West Africa and the North Sea. The last time oil shortages hit this level – the 1970s – it took the Alaska pipeline and North Sea ramp-up to fix. No such supply response is in sight today.

Iran's IRGC said it struck dozens of U.S. military targets across five bases overnight in two large ballistic missile and drone waves. In Jordan, Iran claimed it hit F-35, F-15, and F-16 hangars at Al-Azraq Air Base with 12 ballistic missiles. In Bahrain, several P-8A Poseidon aircraft at Sheikh Isa Air Base and Patriot radar systems at the U.S. 5th Fleet HQ were hit with drones. Iran also struck U.S. installations at Ali Al-Salem and Ahmad Al-Jaber bases in Kuwait.

Aljazeera reported that Iran repaired damage from the U.S. strikes in 12 hours. Visual analysis by Christiaan Triebert suggested the U.S. hit two drinking-water facilities in southern Iran with precision-guided munitions. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime.

Former Trump ally Robert Barnes said in two interviews that the president's decision-making has deteriorated sharply since late summer 2025. Barnes described Trump as thinking like a toddler, confabulating constantly, and refusing to hear second opinions. He said Trump is driven entirely by fear – of humiliation, of the Israel lobby, of Fox News criticism – and is incapable of making a reasonable deal with Iran. Barnes argued the best hope for the U.S. and the world is a Trump exit, not a Trump deal.

The kinetic exchanges matter only insofar as they keep the strait closed. Iran has demonstrated it can shut the chokepoint and sustain the closure. The U.S. has not shown the ability to reopen it. Worsen the situation in line with the external factors discussed in our commodities analysis, and the oil supply cliff becomes the dominant market narrative for the second half of 2026.