Iran says the Strait of Hormuz is closed and U.S. Central Command says it is open

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared the Strait of Hormuz closed "until further notice" on July 11, hours after it struck a Cyprus-flagged container ship transiting the waterway. U.S. Central Command said the same day that the strait "is open to all vessels seeking to lawfully transit the international waterway" and that "Iran does not control the strait."

Both statements are still standing. The traffic numbers sit somewhere in between.

What happened

CENTCOM said the IRGC attacked the M/V GFS Galaxy, a Cyprus-flagged container ship, as it transited the strait. The vessel took what CENTCOM described as significant engine room damage, the crew abandoned it while it burned, and one civilian crew member is missing. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center, which is run by the British military, said the ship had been traveling a route that hugs the Omani shoreline, the lane commercial vessels have used to stay out of Iranian territorial waters.

The IRGC gave a different account. It said multiple vessels "disregarded our warnings and instructions to correct their course and proceed along the approved route," and that one of them "was struck by a warning shot and brought to a stop."

At 7:15 p.m. ET on July 11, CENTCOM began its third round of strikes on Iran that week, hitting about 140 targets. That is more than the two prior rounds combined, according to the Associated Press. CENTCOM said it went after missile and drone launch sites, ammunition dumps and communications equipment, and that the strikes were meant to "degrade Iran's ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial vessels freely transiting the strait." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote online: "Iran made a poor choice. Now they pay."

Iran said the strait would stay closed and said it would consider targeting "additional enemy bases in the region" if it was attacked again.

The traffic tells a third story

Neither claim is quite what the water shows.

Windward, a maritime intelligence firm that tracks vessel movements, counted 21 transits through the strait on July 11: nine inbound, 12 outbound. Before the war, the waterway carried roughly 140 transits a day. So ships are still moving, which is CENTCOM's point, and almost nobody is moving, which is closer to Iran's.

The southern corridor, the Oman-side lane that U.S. escorts had kept open, has all but emptied out. Of the 12 outbound vessels Windward counted on July 11, one used it. No inbound vessel used it at all.

CENTCOM said that since early May, U.S. forces have helped more than 800 commercial vessels and 400 million barrels of crude oil through the strait.

Qatar's Transport Ministry told all vessels to stop sailing until further notice, the first blanket maritime suspension by a Gulf state since the war began. Qatar's LNG exports load at Ras Laffan.

The strikes widened

Iran's response reached past the strait. The IRGC said it targeted Prince Hassan Air Base in Jordan. The United Arab Emirates warned the public of incoming missiles and drones, missile alerts sounded in Bahrain, which hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, and Qatar's military said it intercepted incoming fire. The UAE had not been hit in this round of the exchange before Sunday.

Iran's Health Ministry spokesperson, Hossein Kermanpour, said the two rounds of U.S. strikes earlier in the week killed at least 17 people and wounded 115.

Where the talks stand

The strait is the sticking point in every remaining negotiation. Iranian and Omani foreign ministers met on Saturday to discuss it and agreed to keep talking at what Oman called the technical and political levels. Oman has drafted a proposal for managing routes through the waterway. Iran has not said the strait is open to all traffic, which is what the Trump administration has asked for. U.S. officials have said nuclear talks cannot move until the strait is secure.

The war began Feb. 28. About a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas moved through the strait before it started. Oil, which hit $120 a barrel at wartime highs, has since fallen well off that mark.

Days before this weekend's exchange, President Trump said the interim deal to end the war was "over." U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, told the AP that the resumption of strikes came out of what they called a rogue faction of Iranian hard-liners working to sabotage the ceasefire. Iran says its government is unified under its new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since the war began and who said this week that avenging his father's killing "is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out."