Iran reaffirmed on Friday its claim to being a central authority in managing marine traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a day after its forces struck a container vessel there, temporarily halting shipping through the critical waterway.
The strike on the vessel, the Ever Lovely, a container ship that was passing near the Omani side of the strait, appeared to be the first known Iranian attack on a commercial vessel since the signing of a preliminary peace agreement between Tehran and Washington last week. It laid bare the challenges to restoring prewar levels of traffic through the strait.
Although the United States and Iran agreed to restore access to the strait — with President Trump declaring the waterway open to unrestricted navigation — the preliminary accord does not stipulate exactly how that should happen.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday, carried on state media, that the strait lay within Iranian and Omani waters, and cited a section of the U.S.-Iran deal that Tehran says allows it to manage marine traffic in the strait, a crucial conduit for oil and gas shipping.
The agreement says that Iran would “make arrangements using its best efforts” for the safe passage of commercial vessels. That wording is vague, leaving room for differing interpretations, according to Jakob Larsen, chief security officer at BIMCO, a global shipping association.
Mr. Larsen said that some shipping companies might conclude that, after the Thursday attack, the situation was too risky to proceed with plans to pass through the strait. “There are real fears that hostilities will break out again,” he added.
The strike on the container ship came hours after Iran, demonstrating its hold over the strait, warned that the only way through was via its waters. Many ships, like the Ever Lovely, had been using a U.S.-backed route on the southern side of the strait, hugging the Omani coast.
Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, wrote on social media on Friday that safe passage through the strait was “not guaranteed under vague arrangements, parallel routing systems or decision-making processes that exclude Iran as a coastal state.”
The White House has not commented on the attack Thursday. It came shortly after Secretary of State Marco Rubio left the Persian Gulf, where he had met with foreign ministers from the Gulf Cooperation Council as he sought reassure regional allies about the preliminary deal with Iran.
In a joint declaration after the meeting, the United States and the Gulf countries in that organization called for “free, unconditional and unrestricted navigation” through the strait and rejected tolls, fees or attempts by any country to assert control over the waterway.
The attack prompted the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, to suspend an effort to help hundreds of stranded vessels leave the Persian Gulf. At least two tankers turned around after Iran’s warning earlier that day, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence, while the number of ships passing through the strait fell to 54 on Thursday from 73 a day earlier, according to Kpler, a maritime data firm.
Oil markets largely shrugged off the escalation. Prices rose after the strike on Thursday, but they fell on Friday as the continued movement of tankers appeared to ease concerns about supply disruptions. Brent crude, the global benchmark, dropped to roughly $73 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, fell to between $69 and $70.
Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.
