DUBAI – Eleven thousand civilian sailors spent ninety-six hours waiting for passage out of the Strait of Hormuz. On Thursday, the UN agency that spent three days building one suspended the operation after a Singapore-flagged container ship was hit by a shell, not on the route approved by the UN and tolerated by Iran, but on the competing US-backed canal that Tehran had explicitly declared unacceptable hours earlier.
The International Maritime Organization announced the halt of the evacuation initiative in Hormuz on Thursday after the container ship Ever Lovely, operated by Evergreen Marine, reported being hit on its starboard side by an unidentified projectile about fourteen kilometers southeast of the Omani port of Dahiyat. The ship suffered damage to its bridge. No injuries were reported. IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said the evacuation “will be temporarily halted in order to once again confirm that the necessary safety guarantees remain in place for ships on our evacuation list and all ships in the area.”
A stall is not just the result of a single ship being hit. It is the result of a road dispute that the IMO was managing at its most critical moment. When the agency launched its evacuation plan on Tuesday, covering nearly 600 ships and 11,000 sailors trapped in the Gulf since Iran announced the closure of the strait on March 4, it established two separate corridors: one passing through Iranian territorial waters in cooperation with Tehran, and the second passing through Omani waters under US naval supervision. Iran was willing to work through the former. It had warned ships, categorically and repeatedly, to stay away from the second.
On Thursday morning, hours before the Ever Lovely was struck, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ordered two Panamanian-flagged cargo ships to change course and stay away from the Omani corridor. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard issued a statement saying that any ship attempting to pass through the route set by the United States would face “totally unacceptable and dangerous” conditions and that all commercial ships should coordinate their passage directly with the Iranian Navy. The Ever Lovely, according to maritime security reports, was not on the International Maritime Organization’s evacuation list. She was trying to walk on the Omani road independently.
The distinction is important. In the weeks since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran on February 28, Western coverage has often described Iranian actions in the Strait as indiscriminate. The picture on Thursday is more specific: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard issued an order, a ship on the competing canal ignored the order, and the ship was struck. Whether this constitutes enforcement of a stated position or a prohibited use of force against civilian vessels under the law of the sea is a matter currently deferred to the IMO. The island It was reported that a maritime security source told Reuters that the ship was likely subjected to a drone strike, although the exact source was not confirmed.
The strait has been transporting nearly five ships a day since Iran announced its closure in March, compared to a pre-war average of 93 ships. The IMO evacuation was the first organized attempt to restore a meaningful flow. It was also, as Thursday demonstrated, operating within a hostile framework that neither side had formally ratified as a safe passage agreement. Iran’s position of allowing transit only on its own terms through the designated corridor and not under any arrangement imposed by Washington predates the evacuation plan. The IRGC’s orders on Thursday were a reiteration of a position Iran has consistently taken since the March lockdown.
Brent crude fell below $75 a barrel on Thursday as Saudi tankers moved toward export terminals at Ras Tanura, and traders recorded the most sustained ship movement through the strait since the war began. CNBC reported Oil tankers carrying approximately 35 million barrels have already cleared the Gulf since the signing of the ceasefire framework. An IMO pause, if it extends beyond one day, will reintroduce the risk premium that markets were initially discounting. Sailors on the remaining ships are now waiting for a diplomatic answer not controlled by the IMO.
The incident comes at the worst possible moment for the ceasefire framework between the United States and Iran. The memorandum of understanding that ended four months of US-Israeli strikes on Iran established a sixty-day framework for a final agreement, but as EH’s Bahrain summit report noted, the memorandum did not address Iran’s ballistic missile program, Houthi activity, and the dispute over control of roads in Hormuz. Secretary of State Rubio warned that any toll system for passage through international waterways would spread “like a contagion” to other checkpoints. Iran’s actions on Thursday showed that it has its own view on the purpose of these narrow points.
The attack is also a reminder that the crisis extends beyond the oil market. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has halted between 1.5 and 3 million tons of fertilizer trade each month since March, with cascading consequences that the IMO Secretary-General described as “unprecedented in peacetime.” EH’s Hormuz Food Crisis Report released in May documented the Food and Agriculture Organization’s warning of a global food price crisis within six to twelve months if the strait remains closed.
The International Maritime Organization did not say when it would resume. Dominguez said the agency would contact Iran and other relevant parties to “reaffirm safety assurances” before resuming the program. It has not been made clear what this process entails, whether it requires Iran’s formal approval for both routes, or simply a guarantee that IMO-listed ships will not be subject to IRGC enforcement actions. The IRGC has been consistent on this point since March: There is a safe route, and it passes through Iranian waters.
Eleven thousand sailors are waiting for an answer. How long this wait will take depends on whether Washington and Tehran can agree on a question that the sixty-day memorandum of understanding chose not to ask.
