Strait of Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz carries approximately 21 million barrels of oil per day — roughly one-fifth of global petroleum liquids — through a channel two nautical miles wide at its navigable narrows. As of this snapshot (2026-09-20), the corridor registers elevated multi-domain convergence across five of eight shore states, with Iraq at WARNING and Yemen at CRITICAL. No single signal drives these readings; convergence is the signal.

The material change since the prior snapshot (2026-08-20): Iran's structural pressure index has risen for three consecutive 30-day periods. Iraq has moved from ELEVATED to WARNING on deteriorating economic and governance indicators. Bahrain has cooled from ELEVATED to STABLE — a positive signal in an otherwise pressured Gulf cluster.

Iran remains the corridor's primary risk node. The shore state most capable of disrupting the Strait holds 19 scored domains, with Structural Pressure and VDem Governance as peak drivers. The current ELEVATED band reflects sustained and rising pressure — not acute crisis. One further step to WARNING would be the threshold for coverage review. The three-month rising trend is the watch item.

Iraq at WARNING is the most material rating change in this snapshot. Iraq-flagged or Iraq-origin cargo transiting Hormuz, and vessels calling at Basra/Umm Qasr, carry elevated sovereign risk exposure. The primary drivers are economic stress and governance deterioration — not direct maritime threat — but the coupling to regional instability is established.

Yemen at CRITICAL affects Bab-el-Mandeb more directly than Hormuz, but the spillover path is real: vessels diverting from Bab-el-Mandeb to the Cape route may still call at Fujairah (the world's largest bunkering hub, inside the Hormuz approach zone), and any escalation in Yemeni IRGC-backed activity has a non-zero probability of extending to the Strait.

What this is not: This is a current-state convergence reading, not a disruption forecast. The score does not predict an attack. It records measured pressure across 132 signal domains and flags when that pressure has crossed the band thresholds that preceded past disruption events. The system does not assign probability to future events.

JWC/JWLA Listed Area status: The Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf are JWC Listed Areas. The convergence picture in this snapshot does not recommend a change to JWC listed-area classification — that determination rests with the JWC committee and requires formal notice. However, the current readings inform the additional premium (ADDL) that market placements should carry, and the specific band changes below are material to that calculation.

Dark contact picture and cover relevance: The 300 recorded loitering events in this snapshot are concentrated in anchorage and approach zones — Fujairah/Khor Fakkan, the outer Gulf of Oman waiting area, Dubai/Sharjah anchorage and Abu Dhabi offshore. Zero contacts were recorded within the TSS corridor narrows. The contact picture is consistent with normal bunkering and transit queuing activity. It does not, in isolation, justify escalating war-risk terms on Hormuz transits — but Fujairah bunker calls by vessels also covered for Bab-el-Mandeb exposure warrant checking for geographic overlap.

Comparison to prior JWC trigger language: For a formal recommendation to escalate Hormuz to a higher JWC alert category, the Sabian convergence model's internal threshold requires Iran at WARNING or above AND either Saudi Arabia or Oman at WARNING. The current picture is one Iranian step below that threshold. The three-month rising trend on Iran's structural pressure index is the single nearest indicator to that threshold.

The following are the specific signal movements that would alter the corridor's risk rating or cover implications at the next snapshot:

Indicators are reviewed at each snapshot cycle (approximately monthly). Standing-watch subscribers receive intra-cycle notification when any indicator crosses its trigger level.

The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, carrying roughly 21 million barrels of oil per day — about a fifth of global petroleum liquids — through a channel two miles wide at its narrowest (U.S. EIA). Northern shore: Iran; southern shore: Oman (Musandam) and the United Arab Emirates.

A sample of the recorded loitering events · Hormuz approaches and anchorage zones, by detection date. Positions are real and detection-derived. Showing 24 of 300 — the full register is restricted; naming individual vessels is outside the scope of this record.

◆ 276 further contacts withheld · full register restricted.

Daily count of recorded loitering events · Hormuz approaches and anchorage zones across the window.

Count of recorded contacts by sub-zone (relative to the contact set's own extent).

Umbra SAR · 2025-01-11 - Port of Jebel Ali, United Arab Emirates · open-source (CC BY 4.0)

Real open-source imagery (Umbra Open Data, CC BY 4.0), captured 2025-01-11 — shown to demonstrate SAR coverage of this corridor, not a specific interception. Radar tasked onto a specific contact on demand is a restricted capability, not included in this snapshot.

This snapshot is static. The restricted dossier maintains a continuous watch on the corridor — new dark events, corridor entries and score movements tracked as they occur, from live collectors that run continuously. A frozen page cannot show a live feed; that is the line between this record and the restricted service.

Convergence scoring. Scores are computed per country from 19 signal domains across 6 signal families: governance (V-Dem LDI, World Bank WGI, Freedom House), conflict (GDELT event counts, satellite fire radiative power, UNHCR displacement), economic (World Bank GDP/inflation/trade data, LSCI, currency stress, OEC trade flows), maritime (AIS coverage, port throughput, LSCI), climate (CHIRPS precipitation, MODIS land surface temperature, FAO drought index) and digital (OONI network anomaly, OTX AlienVault cyber threat pulses, Tor censorship signal). Domain weights are fixed at model build time and reviewed annually. No large-language model is used in score computation. All inputs are structured, machine-readable telemetry with documented provenance.

Band thresholds. STABLE: 0–25 · ELEVATED: 26–50 · WARNING: 51–75 · CRITICAL: 76–100. Thresholds are symmetric and fixed. A country moves to a higher band when its weighted score crosses the threshold on two consecutive daily computation runs (single-day spikes do not trigger a band change). A country moves to a lower band when its score remains below the threshold for five consecutive days.

Dark / loitering contact methodology. Contacts are satellite-derived from Global Fishing Watch (GFW) 30-day vessel track analysis. Detection window: 2026-07-26 to 2026-08-21 (27 days). Classification: a loitering event is a vessel track showing ≥12 consecutive hours of low-speed movement (<2 knots) outside a declared anchorage. Contact positions are the centroid of the loitering track. Sub-zone attribution uses the Hormuz geographic boundary set below.

Hormuz sub-zone definitions (GFW analysis boundary):

Confidence levels. Convergence scores: HIGH (structured, multi-source, cross-validated daily). Dark contact positions: MEDIUM-HIGH (GFW detection reliability varies by proximity to coastal AIS receiver coverage; Gulf of Oman south coast has moderate terrestrial AIS coverage). SAR imagery: HIGH (Umbra open-source radar, CC BY 4.0, independently verifiable at umbra.space/open-data). Shore-state signal vintage: MEDIUM (some economic indicators are quarterly; intra-quarter scores interpolate from last confirmed value).

Limitations. The system does not have visibility into: vessel communications; port manifests; cargo type; vessel flag-state enforcement actions; IRGC naval operations not reflected in open-source reporting. The convergence score is an aggregated pressure reading, not an order-of-battle assessment. It cannot detect a sudden, unheralded incident — its value is in sustained trend detection, not flash events.

Provenance. All scores are computed by the Sabian engine on the record date and sealed with a SHA-256 content digest and an RFC 3161 trusted-timestamp token on the FreeTSA provenance chain (genesis 2026-05-27). Verify: recompute SHA-256 over the published data payload and compare to the content digest on the cover page.