What Expired, and What Did Not
| AUTHOR | Dr Y Nithiyanandam |
| DATE | August 17, 2026 |
| CATEGORIES | Geospatial Research Satellite Based Navigation Hormuz West Asia |
Today marks the end of the 60-day US-Iran memorandum. But the Strait of Hormuz had long ago left it behind.
Vessel-tracking data reported by Reuters on Sunday showed no transits in the strait. Zero ships, not fewer ships. But the US Energy Secretary said over the same weekend that some nine million barrels of oil a day were still flowing through Hormuz.
In a broad sense, both could be correct. That seeming contradiction says more about the current crisis than the end of the memorandum itself.
We has been tracking the corridor through AIS vessel tracks, satellite imagery and open-source reporting since February. The view is not simply of a strait open or closed. Access seems to be more and more conditional.
Some vessels may be crossing with their AIS transponders turned off. Reports on 11 August suggested that eleven of fourteen recorded crossings followed an Iranian-approved route, with none taking the traditional central channel.
This makes an important distinction between real movement and observable movement.
AIS is one of the primary methods for tracking commercial shipping. When vessels cease transmission, they are difficult to tally via traditional systems. Thus, transit stats should be taken with a grain of salt. Some reports that used the same Kepler data have sometimes landed at different counts. Thus, any number seen in the open is best taken as a floor, not a full count.
So the expiration of the memorandum is more diplomatic than operational. It was declared over on 7 July, having stopped working effectively within days of being signed. What you lose today is the remaining framework to which both sides could’ve potentially returned.
After 171 days three patterns emerge.
First, traffic through Hormuz appears to fall in stages. It dropped from about 130 ships a day to the twenties, then single digits and now sometimes even zero recorded transits. Whenever traffic has increased, it has struggled to return to its previous level.
Second, mediator optimism has always exceeded agreement among the principal parties. Doha, Muscat and Islamabad statements have often signalled a deal was near, only to be followed by harder lines from Washington or Tehran.
Third, neither belligerent state has made the restoration of normal third-party commercial shipping a central objective. The most powerful interest in restoring predictable maritime movement is from the Gulf states and other trading countries.
For India, one distinction now counts the most. For five months Hormuz has been largely a price problem. Reserves, alternative crude suppliers and rerouted contracts can absorb higher costs. That would make it an availability problem with a long period of near-zero transits.
That would require a very different answer. One day of no movement recorded is a warning. A week would mean something far worse.
Hormuz has been neither fully open nor fully closed after 171 days. The nature of access has changed. What has changed is the nature of access itself.