The United Arab Emirates said it came under attack for the first time since the early April ceasefire, and a British military monitor said two cargo vessels were ablaze off the UAE. There had been warning signs around the U.S. military-aided effort to guide ships through the strait, as Iran called it a violation of the fragile, three-week ceasefire.

Few ships had appeared to take advantage of “Project Freedom,” announced Sunday by President Donald Trump, though the U.S. said two U.S.-flagged merchant ships safely transited with its help.

Caution, even skepticism, is growing among shippers, and markets, over the lack of details from Washington. Who would risk their crew and cargo to possible Iranian fire?

Here’s what to know.

U.S. appears to be going it alone

Iran’s grip on the crucial waterway has left hundreds of commercial ships and tens of thousands of sailors stuck since the war broke out over two months ago. The U.S. military says 87 countries are represented among the vessels.

Backed up in the strait are weeks’ worth of supplies of globally needed oil, gas, fertilizer and other goods. This has been Iran’s strategic advantage in the war, one that has pinched economies and dimmed the outlook for the Republican president’s party in this year’s midterm U.S. elections.

Oil prices rose Monday as uncertainty continued around the strait and the U.S. effort, which Trump has described as a humanitarian one to help countries that have been “neutral and innocent” in the war.

While countries in Europe and elsewhere have fretted over the strait and have been urged by Trump to help solve the issue, it was not immediately clear whether any other nation was involved Monday.

The U.S. military, which has been blockading Iranian ports for weeks, said the initiative involves guided-missile destroyers, more than 100 aircraft and 15,000 service members but did not say how they are deployed.

Trump warned that interference in the effort “will, unfortunately, have to be dealt with forcefully.”

The U.S. military on Monday said it sank six small Iranian boats that were targeting civilian vessels, and said Iran launched missiles and drones at ships the U.S. was protecting.

Adm. Brad Cooper, who heads U.S. Central Command, said Iran initiated the “aggressive behavior.” He declined to say whether the ceasefire was over.

Iran calls the effort part of Trump’s ‘delirium’

Iran effectively closed the strait by attacking some ships over the past two months, and told others not affiliated with the U.S. or Israel that they could pass if they paid a toll.

Iran’s military command on Monday said ships still must coordinate with Tehran to transit the strait and warned that “any foreign military force — especially the aggressive U.S. military — that intends to approach or enter the Strait of Hormuz will be targeted,” the state broadcaster reported.

Iranian news agencies claimed that Iran struck a U.S. vessel southeast of the strait, accusing it of violating “maritime security and navigation norms.” The U.S. military denied it.

Concerns remain about Iranian mines in the waterway. Cooper said the U.S. military had cleared a pathway in the strait, and set up a “defensive umbrella” that includes helicopters and fighter planes to protect freighters leaving it.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency has called Trump’s plan to reopen the strait part of his “delirium.”

Wary shippers say security situation is unchanged

The threat level around the strait remains critical, according to the U.S.-led Joint Maritime Information Center, even as it issued an advisory on the new U.S. effort.

The head of security for the Baltic and International Maritime Council, a leading shipping trade group, said no formal guidance or details about the effort had been issued to the industry.

Without Iran’s consent for safe transit, “it is currently not clear whether the Iranian threat to ships can be degraded or suppressed,” Jakob Larsen, BIMCO’s chief safety and security officer said in a statement.

Larsen questioned whether the U.S. effort is sustainable in the long run or is envisioned as a limited operation, and said there is a “risk of hostilities breaking out again” if it goes ahead.

“There’s not much clarity at this point,” United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told journalists.

The Joint Maritime Information Center has advised ships to cross the strait in Oman’s waters, saying the U.S. has set up an “enhanced security area.” It warned that passing close to usual routes “should be considered extremely hazardous due to the presence of mines that have not been fully surveyed and mitigated.”

The center urged mariners to coordinate closely with Omani authorities “due to anticipated high traffic volume” — a forecast that on Monday seemed unlikely to play out.

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A U.S. official said there was continued engagement with Iran, and forward motion on trying ‌to get to an agreement. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also said efforts were still under way to resolve the conflict.

But oil prices climbed back over $100 per barrel, with no sign of a swift reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to ease the biggest ever disruption in supplies and broader concerns over the durability of a two-week ceasefire agreement reached last week.

Trump said Iran had been in touch on Monday and wanted to make a deal but that he would not sanction any agreement allowing Tehran to have a ​nuclear weapon.

“Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We can’t let a country blackmail or extort the world.”

Since the United States and Israel began the war on February ​28, Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz to all vessels except its own, saying passage would be permitted only under Iranian control and subject to a fee.

Trump ⁠has said Washington would block Iranian vessels and any ships that paid such tolls and that any Iranian “fast-attack” ships that went near the blockade would be eliminated.

Brigadier General Reza Talaei-Nik, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Defence, warned ​that foreign military efforts to police the strait would escalate the crisis and instability in global energy security.

NATO allies including Britain and France said they would not be drawn into the conflict by taking part in the blockade, stressing instead ​the need to reopen the waterway, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil normally passes.

CEASEFIRE UNDER STRAIN

The ceasefire that halted six weeks of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes looked in jeopardy, with only a week left to run. Washington said Tehran rejected its demands at weekend talks in Islamabad, the highest-level discussions between the two nations since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The U.S. military’s Central Command said the blockade would be “enforced impartially against vessels of all nations” entering or leaving Iranian ports in the Gulf and Gulf of ​Oman.

“The blockade will not impede neutral transit passage through the Strait of Hormuz to or from non-Iranian destinations,” Central Command said in a note to seafarers seen by Reuters on Monday.

Two Iranian-linked tankers, the Aurora and New Future, left the ​strait laden with oil products on Monday before the deadline, according to LSEG data.

An Iranian military spokesperson called any U.S. restrictions on international shipping “piracy,” warning that if Iranian ports were threatened, no port in the Gulf or Gulf of Oman would be ‌secure. Any military ⁠vessels approaching the strait would violate the ceasefire, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said.

Trump said Iran’s navy had been “completely obliterated” during the war, adding that only a small number of “fast-attack ships” remained.

“Warning: If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea. It is quick and brutal,” Trump, much of whose communications are on social media, wrote on his microblogging site.

He was apparently referring to the U.S. strikes carried out against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. The strikes, which began in September, killed more than 160 people. The U.S. military has not provided ​evidence that the vessels were ferrying drugs.

LEBANON FACES ATTACKS

Trump ​has also lashed out at U.S.-born Pope Leo, who ⁠has spoken out against the war, denouncing him as “terrible” in a rare direct attack by a U.S. president on a pontiff.

With the war unpopular at home and rising energy prices causing political blowback, Trump paused the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign last week after threatening to destroy Iran’s “whole civilisation” unless it reopened the strait.

Israel has continued to bombard Lebanon and ​on Monday Israeli troops launched an attack it said was intended to seize a key south Lebanon town from Iran-backed Hezbollah. Israel and the U.S. have said the ​campaign against Hezbollah was not part ⁠of the ceasefire, while Iran has insisted it is.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Monday it was deeply concerned about attacks on medical workers in Lebanon after a deadly strike on a Red Cross center in the country.

Iran has brought new demands, including recognition of its control of the waterway, lifting of sanctions and the withdrawal of forces from U.S. military bases across the Middle East.

Trump has declared victory, despite failing to achieve the objectives he set out at ⁠the start of ​the war: to eliminate Iran’s ability to strike its neighbours, end its nuclear programme and make it easier for Iranians to topple their ​government.

Benchmark oil prices, which had eased last week after the ceasefire was announced, traded around 6% higher on Monday, off the day’s peaks but still above $100 a barrel.

Traders say the main benchmarks – used to set prices for trillions of dollars’ worth of commodities worldwide – actually understate the severity ​of a disruption with no precedent in modern times.

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The first reason is simple: volume. In the first half of 2025, about 20.9 million barrels per day of oil moved through the strait, equal to roughly one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption and about one-quarter of all maritime oil trade. More than 20% of global LNG trade also passed through Hormuz, much of it from Qatar. The International Energy Agency describes the strait as one of the world’s most critical oil transit chokepoints and warns that alternatives can reroute only a portion of what normally moves through it.

At first glance, that might sound more important to Asia than to the United States, and in direct import terms, it is. The EIA says the United States imported about 0.4 million barrels per day of crude and condensate through Hormuz in the first half of 2025, just 7% of U.S. crude and condensate imports and about 2% of U.S. petroleum liquids consumption. But that statistic can be misleading. Oil is priced in a global market. When a waterway carrying one-fifth of the world’s oil supply is threatened, the United States does not get a pass because it imports less directly from the Gulf than it used to. American drivers, trucking companies, airlines and consumers still feel the shock through higher global crude prices and higher transportation costs.

That is exactly what recent events have underscored. Reuters reported this month that the EIA expects U.S. gasoline prices to remain elevated for months even after flows through Hormuz eventually recover, and AP reported oil prices jumping sharply after the latest U.S. move involving Iranian ports, with U.S. crude rising 8% and Brent gaining 7% in early trading. In other words, Hormuz matters to Americans not only because of where the oil goes first, but because of what happens to the price of energy everywhere when the route is disrupted.

The second reason Hormuz matters to the United States is alliance politics. Most of the oil and gas moving through the strait is headed to Asia. The EIA estimates that 89% of the crude and condensate that transited Hormuz in the first half of 2025 went to Asian markets, while the IEA says Japan and South Korea, both close U.S. allies, are particularly reliant on crude flows passing through the strait. A serious interruption there does not just threaten energy supply; it threatens the economic stability of countries that anchor the U.S. alliance system in the Indo-Pacific. That gives the passage strategic importance well beyond America’s own direct imports.

There is also a military reason. The U.S. does not just see Hormuz as an energy corridor. It sees it as a test of whether international waterways remain open to civilian commerce. CENTCOM has called the strait “an international sea passage and an essential trade corridor,” and said roughly 100 merchant vessels transit it on a typical day. That language matters. For Washington, freedom of navigation is not an abstract slogan. It is a principle tied to deterrence, maritime order and the credibility of U.S. power. If a hostile actor can threaten or close a chokepoint like Hormuz, the concern in Washington is not limited to fuel markets; it extends to the broader question of whether the rules of global commerce can still be enforced.

Shipping itself is another part of the story. The International Maritime Organization notes that the strait operates through an established traffic separation scheme designed to manage dense vessel movement and reduce collisions. When security deteriorates, the problem is not only that fewer ships move through. Insurance costs rise, crews face greater danger, routes become less predictable and delays ripple outward into supply chains. The IMO said in March that attacks and threats in and around Hormuz were endangering commercial vessels and seafarers, underscoring how quickly a military crisis can become a trade crisis.

Then there is the spare-capacity problem, which gets less attention but may be just as important. The IEA notes that a prolonged disruption in Hormuz could strand not just oil exports, but much of the world’s usable spare production capacity, most of it held by Saudi Arabia. That matters to the United States because spare capacity is one of the few real shock absorbers in an oil crisis. If the route that carries both supply and emergency backup barrels is compromised, markets become more fragile and price spikes become harder to contain.

So why is the Strait of Hormuz important to the United States? Because it sits at the intersection of energy, inflation, military deterrence and alliance stability. America may no longer depend on Gulf oil the way it once did, but it still depends on a world economy that does. As long as a fifth of the world’s oil and a major share of LNG pass through that narrow channel, events there will continue to shape U.S. policy, U.S. prices and U.S. strategic calculations. The strait may be thousands of miles away, but for Washington, it is never really distant.

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