Iran's increase in vessel attacks in the strait of Hormuz is likely the result of increased targets in the region, but it is unclear whether this resurgence of attacks, some with fatal results, will hamper rising oil flows through the strait.
Iran has increased the pace of its attacks against commercial shipping in the last week, with increasingly deadly results. Two attacks occurred around the strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, including the first attack inside the Mideast Gulf in a month, which resulted in multiple casualties. The number of casualties in the incident has not yet been confirmed.
"Iran has seemingly more targets to shoot at now, which could mean that the same probability of impact is resulting in higher raw numbers of successful attacks," Joshua Tallis, research program director at the Center for Naval Analyses, told Argus.
It is difficult to assess improvements in Iranian targeting and there is little transparency over how US tactics are evolving, but it is reasonable to assume that over months of repeated strikes, Iran has refined its ability to target vessels as it adapts to operating without the use of coastal radars, Tallis added.
Coastal radars were targeted by the US Central Command, which oversees US forces in the Middle East, as part of the early July US strike campaign against Iran following the breakdown of the short-lived Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Iran.
"Higher traffic creates more opportunities for exposure, while shuttle operations send the same ships repeatedly through the risk area," Claire Jungman, director of maritime risk and intelligence at vessel tracking firm Vortexa, told Argus.
Through 24 September, Vortexa identified 148 tankers involved in shuttle operations, with 85 tankers active during September, up from 11 in April, with 42 of those tankers completing four or more runs through the strait of Hormuz.
"That repeat participation is important: this has become a regular operating model for a core group of ships," Jungman said.
It is unclear if the recent increase in attacks against tankers will stymie the recovery of crude exports that are making their way, albeit very expensively and inefficiently, through the strait of Hormuz.
"It's still a bit too early to say whether the most recent salvos would have an impact, but in the past we've seen attacks did not deter the main actors in the shuttle trade," Tomer Raanan, senior maritime intelligence analyst at Lloyds List Intelligence told Argus.
