According to Bloomberg, on 26 June 2026 Omani officials - who, together with Iran, can control transits through the Strait of Hormuz - told their European counterparts that the sultanate would continue to respect international maritime law, but that charges could be introduced for services linked to the clearance of the strait or navigational assistance. However, Oman has not clarified whether these charges would be mandatory for all ships. To this end, Muscat is reportedly assessing systems adopted at other strategic chokepoints around the world, including the Strait of Malacca in Asia, where there are no mandatory navigation fees but only costs for specific security and assistance services, shared between Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
Any introduction of charges for ships in transit could cost commodity traders and shipowners tens of billions of dollars a year. Several governments, including those of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are increasingly concerned that the sultanate could move towards a toll system for the Strait of Hormuz shared with Iran, and have warned that such a system would violate international maritime law. On 29 June, French President Emmanuel Macron will meet Sultan Haitham bin Tariq in Paris, as world powers step up efforts to secure free passage through the strait. According to Macron’s office, the two leaders will discuss the security of maritime routes, which depends on free and unconditional passage through Hormuz.
Oman, an ally of the United States but also closely linked to Iran, is sometimes described as the “Switzerland of the Middle East” because of its neutral stance in the region’s geopolitical conflicts, and had previously acted as a mediator between Washington and Tehran before the outbreak of the conflict. Muscat’s signals on the future development of the strait remain mixed: on 23 June, the sultanate published a joint statement with Iran referring to the operational management of the route and related costs, while two days later it signed a statement with the United States and the Gulf Cooperation Council rejecting any tariff, toll or attempt at unilateral control over the strait.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, visiting Bahrain, said Oman had confirmed during the meeting and in the signed statement that there would be no tariffs or tolls, describing the news as positive. Omani officials are nevertheless said to have told European colleagues that they were under pressure from Iran, which during the conflict launched missiles and drones in several areas of the Middle East, including Oman itself, and which remains the leading military power in the Persian Gulf despite the damage suffered by its armed forces in US and Israeli attacks.
Diplomatic instability was accompanied, in the final week of June, by equally marked operational instability in the strait. The truce agreement between Washington and Tehran, signed on 14 June on the sidelines of the G7 in Versailles, provides for a ceasefire that came into force on 18 June and the reopening of the strait without tolls for 60 days. Before the conflict, daily traffic stood at around 125-130 ships, but during the blockade it had fallen by up to 90% below pre-war levels.
On Saturday 21 June, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Irgc) declared the strait closed again in response to Israeli bombing in Lebanon, causing transits to fall from 26 ships to just five the following day, with maritime intelligence company Windward recording only 12 transits on Sunday, mostly Iranian vessels subject to sanctions. On Monday 22 June, traffic resumed, albeit tentatively: four Qatari LNG carriers, the Wadi Al Sail, Mekaines, Al Sadd and Mesaimeer, entered the strait for the first time since the start of the war, using the northern route under Iranian jurisdiction, while two large tankers exited towards the Gulf of Oman. The Joint Maritime Information Center (Jmic) of the US Navy confirmed during the day that the southern route through Omani waters had reopened, with no coordination requirement.
On 23 June, the secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), Arsenio Dominguez, formally launched the evacuation plan for the Strait of Hormuz, structured around two corridors: a northern route through Iranian waters and a southern route through Omani waters. The plan covers around 500-600 commercial ships and more than 11,000 seafarers who have been trapped in the Persian Gulf since March. In those days, the number of daily transits stood at between 27 and 37 vessels, according to analytics company Kpler.
Wednesday 24 June marked the week’s peak and the busiest day since the start of the conflict, with figures varying by source: Kpler recorded 70 ships in both directions, while AXSMarine counted 62, the highest number since 28 February and equal to 53% of the transits recorded on the same day in 2025. Outbound tankers were carrying at least 11 million barrels of crude, mainly from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. The price of Brent crude then fell towards $74.08 a barrel, down 1.9%, as the geopolitical risk premium linked to supply concerns eased.
On Thursday 25 June, at 14:10 UTC, the most serious incident of the week occurred: the container ship Ever Lovely, Singapore-flagged and managed by Taiwan’s Evergreen Marine, was hit by a drone on its starboard side while leaving the strait along the southern corridor, about 7.5 nautical miles south-east of Dahit, in Omani territory. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (Ukmto) confirmed the attack, reporting damage to the bridge with no casualties or environmental impact, and all 21 crew members were unharmed. The US Government attributed the attack to a drone from the naval arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Irgc-N). The so-called Persian Gulf Strait Authority, a body created by Tehran to manage transit, had issued a radio warning that same morning, highlighting risks for ships transiting without Iranian authorisation or without complying with the automatic identification system (AIS). The Revolutionary Guards are also said to have ordered at least three tankers to turn back midway through their transit, including the Togo-flagged Blue Star 1.
Following the attack, the IMO immediately suspended its evacuation plan to verify security conditions in the area. Evergreen Marine said the Ever Lovely had been following the route recommended by Ukmto, not the one indicated in the IMO plan. US Secretary of State Rubio, who was in Bahrain for a Gulf Cooperation Council summit, said no country has the right to control or impose tolls on an international strait, while a joint ministerial statement by the Council rejected any form of tariff or unilateral control over the route.
On Friday 26 June, transits fell sharply from Wednesday’s peak: according to Kpler, tankers in transit declined from 27 on Wednesday to 24 on Thursday and 13 on Friday. Despite the slowdown, at least four tankers, including three VLCCs, entered the Gulf to load crude, while two supertankers did the same to take on Iranian oil. Bimco analyst Jakob Larsen described the attack as a blow to evacuation plans, while noting that some transits could still take place, and stressed the need for clear agreements between the United States and Iran on the full restoration of maritime traffic. Aristidis Alafouzos of Okeanis Eco Tankers does not expect a significant disruption to crude transits, but notes that Saudi Arabia continues to reroute some of its exports through the Red Sea from the Yanbu terminal, avoiding the Gulf altogether. War-risk insurance premiums have risen to as much as 0.7% of hull value for a single transit, compared with 0.05% before the conflict.
Iran’s chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said, at a meeting in Switzerland, that the strait would never return to pre-war conditions and would be administered by the Islamic Republic. As of 26 June, traffic through the strait still represented only 50-55% of the levels recorded before the conflict, with around 11,000 seafarers remaining trapped in the Gulf awaiting evacuation.
