Strait of Hormuz Update: US Blockade Holds as Renewed Fighting Sends Oil Prices Surging Sharply This Week

A short-lived ceasefire between the United States and Iran collapsed in mid-July, plunging the Strait of Hormuz back into crisis and sending global oil prices sharply higher as Washington reinstated a naval blockade of Iranian ports and both sides resumed military strikes across the Gulf region.

The renewed escalation began over the weekend of July 12-13, when U.S. forces carried out strikes on more than 80 targets inside Iran, according to reporting on the collapse of the June 17 ceasefire. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responded by moving to reassert control over the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most critical maritime chokepoints, through which roughly one-fifth of global oil supplies and about 20% of the world's liquefied natural gas typically pass.

President Trump announced on Truth Social on July 13 that the United States would reimpose its naval blockade against Iran and initially said the U.S. would charge every vessel using the strait a 20% toll on its cargo, a proposal that drew immediate pushback. The International Maritime Organization rejected the fee idea within hours of Trump's announcement, with IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez saying the organization has "always been consistent" in opposing charges for passage through international straits. The U.S. Treasury Department separately warned that anyone paying Iran for safe passage through Hormuz would risk violating U.S. sanctions, describing such payments as "maritime extortion." Trump ultimately abandoned the cargo fee demand on July 15, even as the broader blockade and military campaign continued.

U.S. Central Command confirmed the blockade formally took effect at 4 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, July 14, targeting vessels traveling to and from Iranian ports and coastal areas. That same day, the U.S. military launched additional airstrikes against Iran, with Centcom describing a seven-hour operation involving fighter aircraft, drones and naval vessels that struck missile facilities, drone production sites, naval assets and coastal defense systems along Iran's coastline. In a social media statement following that operation, Centcom Commander Brad Cooper said Iran had "intentionally" targeted civilians over the preceding week, accusing Tehran's forces of attacking seven commercial vessels and leaving roughly a dozen crew members dead, missing or injured.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard has continued targeting commercial shipping in the strait throughout the renewed conflict, including attacks on two supertankers that were transiting Hormuz with their transponders switched off. The United Arab Emirates' state oil company, ADNOC, reported that two of its own tankers were struck by projectiles while passing through the waterway, an attack that killed one mariner and injured several others. Iran has also demanded that vessels use a northern shipping route through its own territorial waters, asserting a claim of control over the strait that the United States and its allies have rejected, insisting instead on the continued use of a southern corridor through Omani waters that remains protected by the U.S. military.

The renewed hostilities have taken a severe toll on shipping traffic through the strait. According to tracking data cited by TheStreet, only six vessels crossed Hormuz during a 12-hour window on July 11, reflecting how sharply traffic collapsed as the ceasefire broke down. Saul Kavonic, head of energy research at MST Financial, said Iranian efforts to control the strait would likely keep shipping traffic below half of pre-war levels for an extended period. Despite the disruption, the U.S. Energy Department told CNBC that 8.5 million barrels of oil still transited the strait on a single day, Sunday, July 12, even amid the ongoing hostilities, underscoring that the waterway has not been fully closed despite the severe drop in overall traffic.

Oil markets reacted sharply to the renewed conflict. Brent crude futures jumped 9.6% on July 14 to close at $83.30 a barrel, marking the international benchmark's best single-day performance since May 2020, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures rose 9.4% to settle at $78.14. Prices climbed further the following day, with Brent gaining another 1.72% to close at $84.73 and WTI rising 1.5% to $79.34, as the U.S. military launched additional strikes against Iran while simultaneously enforcing the reimposed blockade. Patrick De Haan, an analyst at GasBuddy, said he expected the national average price of gasoline in the U.S. to reach $4 a gallon within seven to ten days, with retailers beginning to pass along the increases within 24 to 48 hours of the initial price spike.

By the weekend of July 18-19, signs emerged that the situation may be stabilizing somewhat, even as the underlying conflict remained unresolved. President Trump said in an interview with NBC News' "Meet the Press" that aired Sunday that the Strait of Hormuz was open. Maritime intelligence firm Windward tracked nine ships that transited the strait on Saturday, and the Joint Maritime Information Center, a U.S.-led naval coalition based in Bahrain that provides security guidance to civilian shipping in the region, confirmed that the southern route through Omani waters remained open to both inbound and outbound traffic. Even so, the center cautioned in a Sunday notice that the overall security situation in Hormuz "remains severe," urging mariners to exercise "extreme vigilance" while transiting the waterway.

The current standoff traces back to the broader 2026 Iran war, which began on February 28 following U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iranian military targets, including the assassination of Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. The conflict has produced a cycle of escalation and de-escalation in the months since, including an earlier U.S. naval blockade of Iran that ran from April 13 to June 18, followed by the brief ceasefire that collapsed in mid-July, triggering the current wave of strikes and renewed blockade enforcement.

With Trump maintaining that the strait remains open and traffic slowly resuming along the protected southern corridor, but with Iran continuing to contest control of the waterway and the underlying military conflict still active, energy analysts and shipping firms said they expect continued volatility in both oil markets and Gulf maritime traffic in the days ahead, with the durability of the current, tenuous stability likely to hinge on whether renewed diplomatic talks between Washington and Tehran can produce another lasting ceasefire.