Count the sailings and the strait is barely moving. Trackers put recent daily transits through Hormuz in the low tens, with one early-July snapshot showing only a couple of tankers observed passing, a fraction of the 120 to 140 vessels that crossed each day before the war [E1]. A partial recovery in Japan-bound LNG cargoes is the main sign of life; the overall count stays deep below normal [E1].
The suppression is policy as much as fear. US forces struck roughly eighty to ninety Iranian military targets across two rounds on 7 and 8 July, hitting air defences, coastal surveillance, missile and drone sites, and the Treasury revoked the temporary Iran oil-sales licence it had granted under the earlier accord, ordering a wind-down to 17 July [E2]. The document that was supposed to keep the strait open is being unwound on a clock.
One ship has become the picture of the risk. The Qatari LNG carrier Al Rekayyat, struck on 7 July, remains abandoned off the coast of Oman, an emblem of a waterway that owners and insurers are treating as passable only at a price [E1]. Diplomacy is live but unresolved: Iran and Oman are reported to be discussing a protected "median lane" for traffic, even as the shooting continues [E1].
The read from the commodities desk is that traffic, not rhetoric, is the gauge, and traffic says closure by attrition rather than by decree. A couple of tankers a day is not a formal blockade, but it is not an open strait either, and oil holds its war premium while the count stays this thin [E1]. The single number to watch is the daily transit tally as the 17 July wind-down lands: back toward triple digits and the accord is holding, stuck in the low tens and the chokepoint is closing itself [E1][E2].