# REPORT: Hormuz shut down, the global bill nobody wants to pay

> Some sentences alone are enough to send the price of a barrel soaring before a single ship changes course. On July 12, 2026, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps uttered one of those sentences, declaring the Strait of…

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Reportage
- Published: 2026-07-20
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/report-hormuz-shut-down-the-global-bill-nobody-wants-to-pay

## Introduction: one strait, a fifth of the world's oil

### The declaration that shook markets

Some sentences alone are enough to send the price of a **barrel** soaring before a single ship changes course. On **July 12, 2026**, the **Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps** uttered one of those sentences, declaring the **Strait of Hormuz** closed, that maritime chokepoint through which roughly a **fifth of the world's oil** passes. The announcement came after **Iranian** strikes on commercial vessels in the strait, which were themselves followed by an American retaliation targeting nearly **140 targets** tied to the **IRGC** during the night of July 11 into July 12.

This is not the first time **Tehran** has waved the threat of a total blockage of this strategic waterway, but the context of **July 2026** changes everything: the fragile **ceasefire** negotiated with the **United States** had just collapsed, and President **Donald Trump** had himself declared the truce over. The strait, already largely paralyzed since the conflict began in February, plunges back into an uncertainty that oil **markets** had dreaded for months.

### A world economy already weakened by months of blockage

The **Strait of Hormuz** is not just a dot on a maritime map: it is the mandatory passage for most of the **oil** and **liquefied natural gas** extracted from the **Persian Gulf**. Since the first American-Israeli strikes of February 28, 2026, traffic there had already been severely disrupted, caught between sea mines, ship attacks, and reciprocal naval blockades. Tanker traffic, which previously averaged **33 ships a day**, collapsed to just thirteen the day before the latest **escalation**, according to data cited by **CNBC**.

This collapse in traffic is not a technical footnote for shipping companies: it reflects a risk premium that has become so high that insurance for some vessels is simply unavailable, or priced out of reach. The **Brookings Institution** already noted in June that insurers were refusing to cover crossings, forcing entire crews to abandon the most direct route to **Asian** and **European** **markets** altogether.

*I cannot look at this **IRGC** announcement as just another geopolitical episode. A fifth of the world's **oil** held hostage to the word of a regime that has already mined this strait and attacked civilian ships is an act of global economic hostage-taking, and it deserves to be called exactly that.*

*This is not only a matter of **barrels** and stock prices: it is a test of will between a regime holding a global shipping lane hostage and a Western coalition that must prove, once again, that it will not bow to energy blackmail.*

## The origins of a crisis that has lasted since February

### February 28, the day everything changed

To understand the scope of the July 12 closure, one must go back to **February 28, 2026**, the date when the **United States** and **Israel** launched a large-scale military campaign against **Iran**. The **Iranian** response was immediate: the **IRGC** warned that any navigation through the strait would now take place under the threat of gunfire, before escalating to boarding **merchant ships** and laying mines in the strategic waters of the passage.

What unfolded in the following weeks went far beyond the Iranian military theater. The **price of Brent crude** crossed the symbolic threshold of **100 dollars** a **barrel** on March 8, for the first time in four years, before peaking around **126 dollars**. This surge constituted, according to several analyses cited by **Wikipedia** and the **International Energy Agency**, the most significant disruption to global energy supply since the oil shocks of the 1970s.

### A ceasefire that never really held

A first **ceasefire** had been negotiated on April 8, 2026 between **Washington** and **Tehran**, meant to allow the strait to reopen. But the failure of the **Islamabad** talks immediately triggered an American naval blockade of **Iranian** ports, maintained from April 13 to May 29, before a new fragile arrangement allowed a partial resumption of commercial traffic in mid-April.

This alternation of broken truces and precarious resumptions illustrates a simple reality: neither side has ever had total, lasting control over this waterway since February. Every de-escalation has proven temporary, every resumption of traffic has been followed by a new **escalation**, right up to this declared closure of July 12, which once again shuts the most strategic passage in global energy trade.

*This succession of broken **ceasefires** is not a communications accident, it is a pattern. A regime that negotiates a truce only to break it the moment the opportunity arises is not seeking peace, it is buying time to reposition, and the entire world pays the price with every new rupture.*

## What the strait actually means for the global economy

### A fifth of the oil, a fifth of the gas

The figures put forward by analysts at the **Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas** and several energy think tanks converge: roughly **20 million barrels of oil per day** passed through the strait before the crisis, or about a **fifth of global consumption**. Add to that nearly a fifth of the world's exports of **liquefied natural gas**, plus a significant share of the international trade in **urea**, the most widely used fertilizer on the planet.

This double dependency, energy and agricultural, explains why closing the strait is never just a matter of a higher price at the pump. **The Guardian** noted in March that the disruption potentially affected the **cost of living** for millions of households worldwide, from gas-importing economies to farmers dependent on fertilizer shipped through this chokepoint.

### Loss estimates that vary widely, but all alarm

An economic analysis published in March 2026 put the risk to **global GDP** between **330 billion and 2.2 trillion dollars**, depending on the conflict's duration. This considerable gap between scenarios shows how much the uncertainty itself constitutes an economic risk factor, independent of the conflict's final outcome: investors, insurers, and oil companies must contend with a range of scenarios so wide that it paralyzes part of long-term investment decision-making.

The **International Monetary Fund** and several Western central banks have, for their part, raised the risk of **stagflation**, combining slowing growth with rising inflation, a scenario most Western economies had not faced since precisely the 1970s.

*Estimates that vary by a factor of seven depending on the assumptions used should be enough to convince any Western leader that dependence on this strait has become a first-order strategic vulnerability, not just another market risk among many.*

## The immediate impact on oil and gas prices

### Brent, the nervous barometer of a region at war

The **price of Brent crude** has followed, since February 2026, one of the most erratic trajectories in its recent history. After the peak of **126 dollars** in March, a relative lull allowed a retreat to **82 dollars** when a peace deal was floated in June, before renewed hostilities in early July immediately reignited market nervousness. Every strike, every announcement of the strait's closure or reopening translates almost instantly onto the screens of traders in **London** and **New York**.

This extreme volatility has concrete consequences well beyond the trading floors: airlines revise their fuel cost forecasts, petrochemical industries adjust their margins, and governments in importing countries must recalculate, sometimes week to week, the impact on domestic **inflation**.

### Liquefied natural gas, the public's blind spot

While **oil** captures most of the media attention, the **liquefied natural gas** market is under just as real pressure. Wholesale gas prices in **Europe** had fallen by roughly **6%** during the previous partial reopening of the strait in June, a figure that shows how directly sensitive the European energy market remains to the slightest shift in the Iranian file, even as the continent had already cut its dependence on Russian gas since 2022.

This double vulnerability, both oil and gas, puts **Europe** in a particularly delicate position: it diversified away from **Vladimir Putin's** **Russia**, partly through the **Gulf**, only to find itself today exposed to another major conflict zone.

***Europe** was right to cut its dependence on **Putin's** gas after 2022, but it would be naive to think any diversification is enough: swapping a Russian vulnerability for one in the **Strait of Hormuz** is not a strategic victory, it is merely a relocation of risk.*

## Shipping companies and the real cost of risk

### Insurance premiums turned prohibitive

The very functioning of maritime oil transport depends on an insurance system that, in the **Strait of Hormuz** since February, has effectively jammed. Several analyses cited by **Brookings** indicate that insurance for certain vessels has become either unavailable or so costly that shipowners prefer to reroute cargo rather than assume the risk, even during periods of partially restored traffic.

This reluctance is not irrational: it reflects the memory of **commercial vessels** directly targeted by **Iranian** forces, as well as the documented presence of sea mines laid in the strait's waters. No serious insurer can ignore this level of real operational risk, regardless of the moment's diplomatic rhetoric.

### The risky choice to shut off transponders

Faced with this situation, some captains have opted for a radical strategy documented by **Kpler** and reported by **CNBC**: switching off their **transponders** to cross the strait undetected, a practice akin to navigating blind through a mined zone monitored by several navies at war. Of the thirteen vessels that crossed on July 9, several chose either the Iran-controlled route or electronic invisibility.

This choice, as dangerous as it may seem, speaks volumes about the degree of logistical desperation among some maritime operators: rather than simply forgoing transit altogether, they prefer the risk of collision or an unreported attack to the certainty of immediate financial loss from a full diversion.

*Sailors switching off their transponders to cross a mined zone is the most concrete symptom of a crisis that cannot be reduced to lines on a financial chart. Behind every **barrel** transported are crews taking risks that no one should ever impose on them for the profitability of a cargo.*

## The American military response and its limits

### A hundred forty targets, a calculated escalation

The American retaliation of July 11 into July 12, targeting nearly **140 targets** tied to the **IRGC**, follows a doctrine **Donald Trump** has claimed since the conflict began: strike hard to deter any new attack on commercial shipping. The **Pentagon** had already, in early July, claimed strikes on nearly ninety additional targets, including missile launchers and airstrips used by **Iranian** forces.

These operations also targeted the vicinity of the **Bushehr** power plant, a sensitive target that shows Washington's willingness to strike strategic infrastructure without claiming a direct hit on the civilian nuclear site itself, a distinction that **Washington** carefully maintains in its official communications.

### A deterrence that failed to prevent the strait's closure

Despite the scale of these strikes, the **IRGC** maintained its declaration closing the strait, demonstrating the real limits of American military deterrence against an organization willing to absorb a considerable economic and human cost to preserve its regional capacity for disruption. This persistence directly questions the effectiveness of a punitive strike strategy when it is not accompanied by physical, lasting control of the waterway itself.

This situation confirms a bitter lesson for Western military planners: destroying missile launchers is not enough to guarantee the security of a maritime space as vast, and as prone to **mines** and asymmetric attacks, as the **Strait of Hormuz**.

*Striking a hundred forty targets and seeing the strait remain closed the next day is an implicit admission that firepower alone does not solve this file. It will one day have to be admitted that a durable solution will not be purely military, even though **Iran** deserves no leniency for having triggered this spiral.*

## Iranian fire on Gulf allies

### Amman, Kuwait, Doha, Manama under threat

The **Iranian** response was not confined to the strait itself. Between July 9 and 10, **Iranian missiles** targeted the base at **Al-Azraq in Jordan**, as well as installations in **Kuwait**, **Qatar**, and **Bahrain**, four **Gulf** nations hosting Western military presences or maintaining close security relationships with **Washington**. This geographic expansion of the **Iranian** response shows a deliberate intent to internationalize the cost of the conflict beyond just American or **Israeli** territory.

This strategy of broadened retaliation puts the entire set of **Gulf** monarchies in an untenable position: as hosts of Western bases, they find themselves exposed to retaliatory strikes over military decisions made in **Washington** or Jerusalem, with no real control over the conflict's **escalation**.

### A risk of regional contagion that remains open

This dynamic of cross-retaliation sustains a risk of regional contagion that Western diplomats have feared since the crisis began. Every **Iranian** strike on a third-party **Gulf** country complicates these states' ability to maintain a cautious posture of neutrality, even as their own economic interests, particularly oil interests, are directly threatened by the strait's persistent closure.

This situation illustrates the systemic nature of the crisis: it is no longer a bilateral confrontation between **Washington** and **Tehran**, but a conflict whose shockwaves strike third-party economies that have no interest in seeing the region ignite further.

*The **Gulf** monarchies are today paying the price of a strategic proximity to the West that they themselves chose for their own security. That is no reason to abandon them, but it is a brutal reminder that alliance with the West carries a cost that **Tehran** knows perfectly well how to exploit.*

## The troubling reconstruction of Iranian nuclear sites

### Pickaxe Mountain and Parchin, two files under watch

Recent satellite images show reconstruction activity at the **Pickaxe Mountain** and **Parchin** sites, two installations tied to Iran's military program. This reconstruction would constitute a direct violation of the **Islamabad memorandum** signed on June 17, 2026, meant to govern de-escalation between the two belligerents and specifically limit this kind of quiet rearmament.

This information, if confirmed, fundamentally changes the reading of the current crisis: it suggests that **Tehran** is using periods of truce not to negotiate in good faith, but to rebuild its strategic military capabilities in view of a prolonged confrontation with Western powers.

### A diplomatic trust already badly damaged

This discovery fuels an already deep mistrust on the American and **Israeli** side toward commitments made by the Iranian regime. Every signed agreement seems to be followed, with troubling regularity, by a violation documented through satellite imagery, a pattern that makes any new diplomatic negotiation all the harder to sell to Western public opinion.

This dynamic of mutual distrust directly feeds the logic of military firmness defended by the **Trump** administration, which can now justify its preemptive strikes with concrete evidence of rearmament rather than mere suspicion.

*A regime that rebuilds its military installations while negotiating a truce does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. It is exactly this kind of documented duplicity that justifies an uncompromising Western posture, with no naivety about **Tehran's** true intentions.*

## Financial sanctions and the succession in Tehran

### The IRGC's financial network in Washington's crosshairs

Alongside the military strikes, **Washington** announced new **sanctions** targeting the **IRGC's** financial network, along with figures close to **Mojtaba Khamenei**, whose name increasingly circulates as a potential successor at the head of the regime. This financial pressure aims to choke off the covert funding channels that allow the Revolutionary Guard Corps to maintain its operational capacity despite the country's growing diplomatic isolation.

The effectiveness of these **sanctions** remains to be demonstrated over the long term: the recent history of sanctions against **Iran** shows a significant capacity for adaptation by the regime, which has developed sophisticated workaround networks over the years to keep exporting **oil** despite international restrictions.

### A supreme leader's funeral and a succession left hanging

The state funeral of the former **supreme leader**, held in **Mashhad**, revived speculation over a succession toward **Mojtaba Khamenei**, a scenario that worries Western analysts given his profile, considered even more radical than his predecessor's. Such a transition, if confirmed in the coming months, could further harden the **Iranian** posture in negotiations over the future of the **Strait of Hormuz**.

This succession uncertainty adds to an already explosive context, where every internal Iranian political signal is scrutinized closely by Western intelligence services trying to anticipate the regime's future trajectory, between continued **escalation** and a possible diplomatic opening forced by economic exhaustion.

*A succession toward a figure considered more radical should reassure no one in the West. Preparations must begin now for a post-transition **Iran** potentially even less inclined toward compromise, and Western strategy must adapt accordingly rather than hoping for a providential softening.*

## Warnings from Israeli intelligence

### An alleged plot against Trump, to be treated with caution

Reports, still to be confirmed with the rigor they demand, mention a warning from **Israeli intelligence** concerning a possible Iranian plot targeting President **Donald Trump** himself. This kind of extremely sensitive information must be handled with the greatest methodological caution as long as it is not corroborated by multiple, independent sources.

Should this information be confirmed, it would radically change the nature of the conflict, shifting it from a classic military and economic confrontation to a direct threat against the personal security of a Western head of state, with considerable diplomatic and security implications for the entire Western alliance.

### Why this journalistic caution is warranted

Intelligence services, even the most reliable ones, have in the past communicated information that turned out to be exaggerated or politically exploited. This caution takes nothing away from the potential gravity of the information, but it requires that it not be treated as an established fact until independent corroborating evidence supports it.

This methodological reserve is all the more necessary in a context where disinformation, from every side, circulates at a speed difficult to control, making independent verification more essential than ever to maintain the credibility of any serious journalistic coverage of this conflict.

*I prefer to say clearly that this information remains unverified rather than amplify it without proof. But the mere fact that it is circulating in serious intelligence circles is enough to remind us of the scale of the danger this regime poses to Western security.*

## The repercussions for energy-importing economies

### Asia, the top buyer of Gulf oil, on the front line

Asian economies, particularly **China**, **India**, and **Japan**, rank among the largest importers of **oil** transiting the **Strait of Hormuz**. Any prolonged disruption of this corridor directly threatens their energy security, with potential consequences for their industrial growth and domestic **inflation**, at a moment when several of these economies are already trying to contain internal inflationary pressures.

This Asian dependency illustrates a strategic paradox: **China**, presented by some Western analysts as the primary systemic threat to the West, finds itself hostage to a crisis it does not control, in a strait it does not militarily monitor in any significant way.

### Europe between persistent inflation and costly diversification

In **Europe**, the persistent rise in energy costs tied to the strait crisis adds to an already heavy bill since the break with Russian supplies in 2022. **European** governments must now contend with a double energy vulnerability, having diversified away from **Putin's** **Russia** only to find themselves exposed to a new zone of turbulence in the Middle East.

This situation reinforces, for many **European** decision-makers, the urgency of accelerating the transition toward energy sources less dependent on chronic geopolitical conflict zones, a long-term objective that nonetheless does not solve the continent's immediate vulnerability to the current crisis.

*There is a bitter irony in watching **China**, which I consider a major strategic threat to the West, also suffer the consequences of this blockage. But this irony must not distract us from the urgency, for **Europe** and the **United States**, of securing their own energy resilience, without waiting on **Tehran's** goodwill.*

## Exit scenarios, between hope and skepticism

### A peace deal still theoretically on the table

Despite the collapse of the latest **ceasefire**, some diplomatic channels theoretically remain open between **Washington** and **Tehran**, notably around the **Islamabad memorandum**, which is supposed to frame a final agreement within sixty days of its initial signing. This framework, though weakened by documented violations on the Iranian side, still stands as the most tangible reference point for a negotiated de-escalation.

The most cautious analysts nonetheless point out that every previous **ceasefire** since February has ended up collapsing under the weight of new provocations, whether from ship attacks or American retaliatory strikes. This recent history calls for extreme caution regarding the prospects of a rapid and lasting resolution.

### The dark scenario of a prolonged war of attrition

Conversely, several energy experts now raise the scenario of a prolonged conflict, where the strait would remain durably disrupted, forcing a structural reconfiguration of global **oil** and gas supply chains. **The New York Times** noted in June that a rapid return to pre-crisis trade levels seemed unlikely, even in the event of a diplomatic settlement, given how durably eroded the trust of shipowners and insurers has become.

This prospect of a world energy landscape durably reshaped by the **Hormuz** crisis could, paradoxically, accelerate certain investments in alternative production capacity, notably in the **United States**, which the **Trump** administration could tout as an indirect strategic success of its firm policy toward **Iran**.

*Even a peace deal signed tomorrow would not be enough to erase months of accumulated distrust among insurers and shipowners. This crisis has already durably changed the map of global energy risk, and we must prepare for that rather than wait for a magical return to normal.*

## What this crisis reveals about Western vulnerability

### An energy dependency never fully resolved

This crisis, however grave, recalls a truth Western decision-makers rediscover with every new geopolitical shock in the Middle East: structural dependence on a region prone to recurring conflict remains a major strategic vulnerability, despite decades of investment in energy diversification and renewables.

This vulnerability is not unique to the **United States** or **Europe**: it also affects rival powers of the West such as **China**, which could, in an optimistic scenario, create shared incentives for regional de-escalation, even among powers that otherwise view each other as systemic adversaries on other theaters.

### The geopolitical price of necessary firmness

American military firmness toward **Iran**, though it generates an immediate and painful economic cost for global **markets**, remains, from a long-term perspective, the only credible option against a regime that has repeatedly shown its willingness to violate signed agreements and directly threaten global trade to preserve its regional influence.

This strategic choice carries a price that Western economies and their trading partners must now collectively bear, but the alternative, capitulating to blackmail over the **Strait of Hormuz**, would carry far graver consequences for the strategic credibility of the entire Western world over the medium term.

*We must have the courage to say that this crisis costs a great deal, but that yielding to Iranian blackmail would cost infinitely more in the long run. Firmness has an immediate price, weakness would carry a far higher one still, paid in strategic credibility for decades.*

## The ambiguous role of China and Russia in this file

### Beijing, a silent but worried client of Iranian oil

**China**, the main buyer of Iranian **oil** despite Western **sanctions**, finds itself in a singularly uncomfortable position amid this crisis. **Beijing** depends directly on the strait's stability for its own energy imports, while maintaining close economic ties with **Tehran** that put it at odds with the Western coalition led by **Washington**. This Chinese **ambiguity** illustrates the complexity of a world order where strategic fault lines do not always align with immediate economic interests.

This Beijing contradiction should not, however, be mistaken for benevolent neutrality. **China** continues to provide indirect economic support to **Iran** through its discounted **oil** purchases, thereby helping to finance, even partially, **Tehran's** capacity to continue its military operations in the strait, all while publicly complaining about the economic consequences of the very instability it helps prolong.

### Moscow, an interested spectator of a chaos that suits it

**Vladimir Putin's** **Russia**, for its part, watches this crisis with obvious strategic interest: every day of disruption in the **Gulf** diverts Western attention from its ongoing aggression against **Ukraine**, while keeping **oil** prices at levels that directly benefit the **Kremlin's** war finances. This convergence of interests between **Moscow** and **Tehran**, two regimes already allied militarily through deliveries of **Iranian** drones used against Ukrainian cities, is no coincidence.

This de facto alliance between powers hostile to the Western order, whether **Iranian**, Russian, Chinese, or North Korean, confirms the relevance of reading these regional crises as symptoms of the same systemic struggle against Western primacy, rather than as isolated files to be handled separately from one another.

*It must never be forgotten that **Putin** profits from every **barrel** blocked in this strait to finance his own war against **Ukraine**. This convergence between **Moscow** and **Tehran** should push the West to treat these two files as two sides of the same coin, not as independent crises.*

## Conclusion: a crisis redrawing the map of global risk

### What we know for certain today

At the end of this factual reconstruction, one conclusion stands out: the declared closure of the **Strait of Hormuz** on July 12, 2026 is not an isolated incident, but the culmination of a continuous **escalation** since February, marked by repeated **ceasefires** systematically broken, massive American strikes, and an **Iranian** resilience that, despite a considerable economic cost to **Tehran** itself, refuses to yield control of this strategic waterway.

This situation confirms, once again, the structural fragility of global energy supply in the face of such a geographically concentrated chokepoint, and the urgency, for Western economies, of drawing lasting lessons from this crisis rather than settling for reactive management of each new closure and reopening announcement.

### A bill that will keep growing

Whether this crisis is resolved in the coming weeks through a new fragile agreement, or settles in as a lasting new normal for global energy trade, one thing remains certain: the price paid by consumers, shipping companies, and importing economies will keep rising as long as the **Gulf** region remains hostage to an Iranian regime willing to sacrifice global stability to preserve its own power.

The **Strait of Hormuz** will remain, in the months ahead, the most sensitive barometer of this confrontation, and every new announcement of closure or reopening will continue to rattle **markets** that have, for now, found no credible alternative to this structural dependence on a passage as narrow as it is indispensable.

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Oil tanker traffic near standstill in Hormuz after new strikes — Reuters, July 9, 2026](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/oil-tanker-traffic-through-hormuz-near-standstill-attacks-strain-iran-truce-2026-07-09/)

- [Oil tanker traffic slows after Iranian attacks — CNBC, July 9, 2026](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/09/iran-strait-hormuz-oil-tanker-traffic-gulf-trump.html)

- [Trump declares ceasefire over after fresh strikes — Euronews, July 8, 2026](https://www.euronews.com/2026/07/08/us-launches-fresh-strikes-on-iran-after-ships-attacked-in-strait-of-hormuz)

### Secondary sources

- [Timeline of the 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Strait_of_Hormuz_crisis)

- [Analysis of the strait as a breaking point for global oil markets — Brookings Institution](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/from-chokepoint-to-crisis-the-strait-of-hormuz-and-global-oil-markets/)

- [What the Strait of Hormuz closure means for the global economy — Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, March 20, 2026](https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2026/0320)

- [A return to pre-crisis supply levels remains distant — The Guardian, June 15, 2026](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/15/return-pre-crisis-oil-gas-supplies-months-away-iran-strait-of-hormuz)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/report-hormuz-shut-down-the-global-bill-nobody-wants-to-pay