The primary transit corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, centred on the IMO shipping lane at approximately grid reference 40RDQ2696738653 (26.5667°N, 56.2667°E), was carrying roughly 120 vessels per day before the war began on 28 February. Kpler’s data for the week of 11 to 17 May records 55 commodity vessel crossings in total for the week. The recovery from 19 the week before is arithmetically sharp. In terms of pre-war baseline, it represents less than 7% of normal weekly throughput.

The composition of those 55 crossings tells most of the story. Roughly half carried liquids, including three very large crude carriers reportedly bound for China, Oman, and Japan. Sixteen liquefied petroleum gas tankers also crossed, along with 15 dry bulk commodity vessels. One LNG tanker, carrying Qatari gas to Pakistan, crossed on 12 May. That single crossing brought the total number of LNG transits since the start of the war to eight, across 81 days. In peacetime, four or five LNG tankers passed through the strait per day.

The LNG figure is the strategic headline that the aggregate vessel count obscures. Crude oil can be redirected, stored, or blended across multiple routes with friction. LNG is a cryogenic cargo requiring purpose-built vessels, purpose-built terminals, and contractual delivery windows that cannot easily be rerouted around a 55km chokepoint. Eight crossings in 81 days means Qatar’s LNG export pipeline to Asia is operating at approximately 2% of pre-war capacity through this route. The economic consequences are distributed across Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, India, and European import terminals through spot market price signals, even if the diplomatic attention remains focused on crude.

On 19 May, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council posted to X announcing the launch of the Persian Gulf Strait Authority. The post invited followers to receive real-time updates on Hormuz operations, and the IRGC Navy’s own account shared the same announcement simultaneously. The PGSA is not a new institution in operational terms: transit application emails had been routed to info@PGSA.ir since early May per Press TV reporting, and shipping industry sources confirmed to CNN and Lloyd’s List that a vessel information declaration form, running to more than 40 questions on ownership, crew nationality, cargo, and routing, had already been circulating to shipping companies seeking clearance.

At Bandar Abbas, the IRGC Navy headquarters at grid reference 40RDR2840206932 (27.1832°N, 56.2772°E), the administrative apparatus for processing those applications has been running since at least March, when Iran first announced it had begun receiving toll revenue. The PGSA’s launch on 19 May should be understood as Tehran choosing to make that de facto authority legally and institutionally visible, replacing an opaque grey-market system, which had spawned fraudulent copycat operators accepting cryptocurrency, with a single named sovereign entity. Euronews reports fees of up to $2 million per transit, paid in Chinese yuan. No official tariff schedule has been published.

The US Treasury Department’s OFAC moved against the PGSA framework before Tehran had formally named it. In guidance updated earlier this month, OFAC clarified that payments to the Iranian government or the IRGC for Hormuz passage were not authorised for US persons, US-owned entities, or US-controlled foreign entities. That prohibition does not extend to Chinese, Indian, or other non-sanctioned third-country shipping companies. The nationality logic of the PGSA is therefore already structured around it: the vessels that can pay are largely the vessels Tehran will allow through, and those vessels serve the Asian markets Tehran is positioning as its economic lifeline.

Of the 55 commodity vessels that crossed the strait in the week of 11 to 17 May, Kpler traced only three by flag, ownership, or cargo to China directly. Two additional Hong Kong-flagged vessels also transited, heading for Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Iranian officials confirmed on 15 May that Chinese vessels had been permitted to cross after a slowdown the previous week. The numbers are modest in absolute terms, but the pattern across the full 81-day wartime dataset is consistent: China and India have been the dominant non-Gulf beneficiaries of PGSA-authorised transit throughout the conflict.

The Kpler destination data has a known limitation: vessels do not always disclose final destinations while crossing, and the figures likely understate Chinese and Indian activity where cargo is transshipped through Oman or the UAE rather than declared direct. Other non-Gulf destinations appearing in the data include Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, and Malaysia. Western European countries are near-absent as declared destinations. The data reflects the OFAC prohibition in real time: shipping companies with US dollar clearing exposure are declining the PGSA application process, leaving the strait functionally partitioned by geopolitical alignment.

Iran’s 10 May statement that countries complying with US sanctions would face difficulties crossing the strait is the clearest articulation of this partition logic. It is not a restriction on all shipping; it is a sanctions-mirror, denying passage to vessels whose home states comply with the US economic pressure campaign against Tehran. The PGSA is therefore not merely a revenue mechanism. It is a counter-sanctions instrument operating at the chokepoint through which one-fifth of global oil and LNG previously moved.

AFP’s sourcing notes that Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz remains one of the central issues in stalled negotiations with the United States, which have yet to produce a breakthrough. That framing is consistent with all reporting from the post-ceasefire negotiating period since 8 April. Iran has not offered to return the strait to full pre-war transit conditions as part of any deal framework disclosed publicly. Its position, repeated through Iranian Foreign Ministry channels and by parliament security committee chair Ebrahim Azizi, is that any post-war maritime arrangement will differ structurally from pre-war conditions.

Tehran’s internal signalling is also notable. Billboards in Tehran’s metro system have appeared claiming Iran could generate up to $100 billion annually from Hormuz toll revenues, per Euronews. That figure is implausible as a sustained steady-state calculation but its political purpose is domestic: it frames the PGSA as a sovereign economic gain from the war rather than a temporary wartime control measure. If Tehran’s public narrative locks in around permanent toll authority, the diplomatic cost of surrendering the PGSA as a negotiating concession rises correspondingly. Washington’s negotiating position, as articulated by Trump’s pause on new Iran attacks as of 18 May, suggests talks are continuing in some form, though no framework document has been made public.