Renewed strikes threaten shipping recovery in Gulf

The renewal of strikes by the forces of Iran and the United States threatened the nascent recovery of shipping in the Persian Gulf, where traffic through the Strait of Hormuz recently rose to the highest levels since the start of the war.

- Peter Eavis and Jenny Gross

The attacks over the past three days showed that both countries were willing to use military force to gain the upper hand in the strait, prompting many ship operators to remain wary of the waterway, a crucial choke point for oil and gas shipments from the gulf.

“Shipping is literally caught in the crossfire as the US and Iran battle for control of Hormuz strait,” said Michelle Wiese Bockmann, an analyst at Windward, a maritime intelligence firm. “This does little to restore confidence that security and safety can be guaranteed to get stranded ships out.”

On Saturday, Bahrain, a US ally in the region, said it had been attacked by Iranian drones, apparently in retaliation for strikes that American forces made on Iran on Friday. The US attack was itself in response to Iran for firing on a cargo vessel, the Ever Lovely, navigating the strait on Thursday.

The attacks occurred about a week after the United States and Iran signed a preliminary peace agreement that included a provision to reopen the strait.

But the waterway has not returned to normal. After the Iranian attack on the Ever Lovely, the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, halted an effort to evacuate hundreds of ships stranded in the Persian Gulf.