What CENTCOM Announced
The U.S. Navy on Thursday ended its blockade of vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from Iranian ports, U.S. Central Command announced. President Donald Trump issued the directive, ending an operation that began on April 12 and led to the redirection of 142 commercial vessels and the disabling of nine non-compliant vessels. CENTCOM wrote in a social media post: “American forces are not impeding the transit of vessels to or from Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. All U.S. military blockade enforcement efforts have ceased.”
The legal lifting of the blockade and the physical reopening of the strait are not the same event. An advisory from the Combined Maritime Force’s Joint Maritime Information Centre reported the end of the blockade but urged commercial ships to communicate with the U.S.-NATO Naval Coordination and Guidance for Shipping for safe passageways. One mine has already been identified, according to the advisory, which also includes latitude and longitude coordinates for safe passageways.
U.S. naval ships and other military assets will remain in the area to ensure that all aspects of the MOU are adhered to.
The Mine Problem
The most operationally significant constraint on the strait’s return to normal function is not diplomatic. It is physical. On June 2, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that Iran had mined large segments of Hormuz, international waters. Iran will demine and remove military obstacles within 30 days, according to the MOU.
That 30-day demining obligation is Iran’s, not America’s. The asymmetry matters. The party that laid the mines is the party responsible for clearing them, on a timeline that runs to mid-July. Steven Wills, a navalist for the Center for Maritime Strategy at the Navy League, told The Hill: “They’re an unknown, they’re hard to find, and they create a sense of fear that other weapons don’t. They can just come out of nowhere if they’ve been laid in the right place at the right time.”
Nader Habibi, an Iranian-American economist, told Al Jazeera that crews on vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz would still be concerned about their safety for a few weeks as negotiations continue for the unresolved issues between the U.S. and Iran, adding that there will be a risk of encountering unresolved mines. The practical consequence is that major shipping companies, whose insurance and operational protocols require mine-free certification before resuming normal transits, are unlikely to return at full volume until the demining process is independently verified, a process that has no confirmed timeline beyond the MOU’s 30-day obligation.
The Shipping Backlog
By late May, over 100 commercial vessels had been redirected away from the strait, with U.S. naval forces engaging in direct confrontations with ships that attempted to violate the restrictions. Brent crude prices surged past $100 per barrel as production disruptions cascaded through the global supply chain. Those redirected vessels are not instantly repositioned. Tankers that rerouted via the Cape of Good Hope added approximately two to three weeks to their voyage times. Cargo contracts, crew scheduling, port berth allocation and insurance coverage all need to be renegotiated or reactivated. The backlog is not a single queue that clears when a blockade is lifted. It is a distributed disruption across hundreds of vessels, dozens of ports and thousands of contracts.
Iran has committed to letting oil tankers move safely through the Strait of Hormuz, where roughly 20% of the world’s oil transited before the war began. The agreement states that Iran will allow commercial vessels to transit the strait with no charge for 60 days only, after which future administration and maritime services will be determined by Iran along with Oman and other Persian Gulf states. Iranian officials have suggested they may impose service fees on ships, which industry analysts call legally questionable on an international waterway.
The African Operational Reading
For African operators, the blockade lifting changes three things immediately and leaves two others unresolved.
What changes immediately: the legal restriction on transiting to and from Iranian ports is lifted. African LNG producers, Senegal, Mozambique, Tanzania, whose gas would transit through the Gulf of Oman toward Asian buyers can now plan routes through Hormuz rather than around it. African fuel importers, whose supply chains were disrupted for 67 days, can begin to normalise procurement. Oil prices have already corrected, with Brent trading around $92, down from the crisis peak above $100, reducing the import bill pressure on African economies.
What remains unresolved: the mine threat means that shipping insurers have not yet returned to pre-war coverage terms for Hormuz transits. Until they do, the risk premium on freight rates through the strait persists. The Cape of Good Hope rerouting that boosted African port activity at Durban and Cape Town does not reverse overnight. Some of that traffic may not return even after full normalisation, depending on route economics.
The second unresolved variable is the toll question. The MOU specifies toll-free passage for 60 days. Historically, a transit through the Strait of Hormuz has been free of charge. Since the war began, Tehran has stated that this will not continue. A toll structure on an international waterway through which African oil imports and LNG exports flow would represent a permanent structural cost increase with no clear legal remedy. Whether the 60-day nuclear negotiation window produces a final agreement that settles this question is the variable on which the medium-term stability of the strait, and the shipping economics it underpins, depends.