A shopping mall in the Strait of Hormuz after Iran announced that the main waterway was closed | Shipping News

The ship’s tracking data shows a significant drop in traffic as US and Iranian officials negotiate to save stability.

Shipping in the Strait of Hormuz has dropped following Iran’s announcement that it has closed the waterway again in response to Israel’s strikes in Lebanon, according to ship tracking data.

A total of 12 ships crossed the river on Sunday, down from 35 a day earlier, monitoring by maritime intelligence firm Windward showed on Sunday.

Five of the eight ships entering the strait had their Automatic Identification Systems turned off, according to Windward.

“The current situation of transportation: dark, illegal, connected to Iran, more like a closed place than an open road,” said Windward in a post on X.

Traffic on the highway has been showing signs of recovery since US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding to end the US-Israel war on Iran.

25 ships passed through the channel on Thursday, the highest number since mid-April, according to Kpler’s maritime intelligence service.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Saturday announced the closure of the waterway, citing Israel’s “mistakes” in Lebanon and the US’s failure to maintain peace in the country.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) on Saturday denied that Iran had blocked the channel, which usually contains a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas, saying that the safe passage in the waterway remained “unsafe”, with 55 commercial ships sailing that day.

The reason for the discrepancy between the figures provided by CENTCOM and commercial ship tracking vendors is unclear.

US and Iranian negotiators on Sunday held talks in Switzerland as the conflict in Lebanon threatened to derail their efforts to turn their 60-day embargo into a permanent peace deal.

In a brief statement to Iranian media after the talks, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baghaei, said that the sides had discussed the safe passage of ships on the route, and “a route was established, which is necessary”.

Despite new tensions between Washington and Tehran and signs of a slowdown in traffic, oil prices fell on Monday morning in Asia.

Brent crude, the world’s main benchmark, was down 0.9 percent as of 01:30 GMT, below $80 a barrel.

Major Asian stock markets opened higher, with major indices in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan posting big gains.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 and Seoul’s Kospi rose 1.8 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively, while Taipei’s Taiex rose 2.6 percent.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index ended the session, sinking 0.7 percent.