Yesterday, U.S. Central Command announced that two American-flagged merchant vessels successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz, escorted by guided-missile destroyers that had entered the Persian Gulf as part of what the White House is calling Project Freedom. “American forces are actively assisting efforts to restore transit for commercial shipping,” CENTCOM posted on X. The market’s response was immediate and unambiguous: Brent crude rose 3.8% to $112.30 a barrel. Oil going up when ships make it through is not the usual signal of a market that believes things are getting better.
To recap where we are: this is week ten of a conflict that has reduced Hormuz traffic to roughly 5% of its pre-war volume. Only 154 vessels crossed during all of March. There are an estimated 2,000 ships still stranded in the Gulf. Two making it out this morning, under U.S. Navy cover, with Iran’s navy claiming it prevented the destroyers from entering and then apparently not preventing them, is progress in the narrowest technical sense. Shipping executives are not convinced it changes the risk calculus in any meaningful way.
Iran’s position has not softened. The Iranian army issued a statement this morning declaring that “the security of the Strait of Hormuz is in the hands of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran” and warned that any foreign military force, “especially the aggressive U.S. army,” will be attacked if it attempts to enter. The deputy parliament speaker said Iran “will not back down” and the strait will not return to prewar conditions. Tehran also called Project Freedom a ceasefire violation. On Sunday, before the mission launched, a cargo ship near Sirik was attacked by multiple small craft, and another was struck by unknown projectiles—the first reported incidents since April 22 and a reminder that the pause in attacks was a pause, not a resolution.
The U.S. has also warned shipping companies they could face sanctions for paying Iran tolls to transit. Iran has been charging over $1 million per ship for passage it deems permitted, and according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, has collected a grand total of less than $1.3 million in such fees so far, which he described as a pittance relative to Iran’s pre-war oil revenues. That framing is accurate, though it somewhat understates how much economic damage Iran has managed to inflict on everyone else while earning almost nothing from tolls.
What Carriers Are Doing
The liner response to this morning’s news has been wait and see. The operational reality has not changed: Maersk, MSC, Hapag-Lloyd, CMA CGM, and every other major carrier still have their Gulf booking halts and Cape of Good Hope reroutes in place. Two ships making it through under naval escort does not give an underwriter enough comfort to put a $100 million hull back in Iranian missile range. War risk premiums, which were running at 0.125% of hull value before the war, have climbed to somewhere near 5% according to maritime insurance sources cited by Al Jazeera, a twentyfold increase. An underwriter quoted by Al Jazeera this week put it plainly: premiums will not return to prewar levels even after a durable ceasefire. The mine threat alone, which the Navy has been actively working to clear since mid-April, could take weeks or months to fully resolve.
The bunker fuel situation has not helped. Costs went from roughly $456 per tonne in February to over $841 per tonne now, and carriers embedded those costs into emergency freight surcharges that are already in market. The Cape of Good Hope rerouting, which adds 10 to 14 days to Asia-Europe and Asia-U.S. East Coast voyages, is not a short-term inconvenience at this point — it is the operating baseline for the foreseeable future. When it changes, it will change slowly and with a lot of underwriter scrutiny before it does.
Air Freight: In the Clouds and Staying There
The air side of this has been running its own parallel crisis. The conflict’s initial airspace shutdowns across the Gulf removed 16 to 18% of global air cargo capacity almost instantly, according to Xeneta, with the Asia-Pacific to Middle East corridor losing 39% of capacity. Jet fuel went from $95 a barrel in late February to $197 by March 20. As of the latest IATA data it is sitting at $195 and a further spike is projected for mid-May.
Emirates has been recovering. The carrier said it has restored 96% of its global network and is now operating across 72 countries after carrying roughly 4.7 million travelers through the conflict period. That is genuinely meaningful capacity returning to the market. But Air France/KLM and Turkish Airlines remain suspended to the region through at least mid-May, Cathay Group has its freighter suspension to Dubai running through the end of May, and Lufthansa has most Middle East freighter routes on hold through October. The routes that are operating are doing so on extended paths that eat into payload and stack additional costs on top of surcharges that are already elevated.
Global air cargo spot rates were at $3.76 per kilogram in week 15 of 2026, up 37% year over year per Air Cargo News. Xeneta noted that 52% of global air freight volumes moved on spot rates in March, a level of short-term buying that the industry associates with crisis conditions. The Bertling April market report put the situation accurately: capacity to the region has fallen sharply, but the market is constrained rather than closed. Planning visibility is poor and rate exposure is high.
The Open Question
Project Freedom is genuinely new information, and it is worth being honest about the range of outcomes it creates. In the optimistic scenario, U.S. naval presence normalizes transit enough that insurers gradually re-enter the market, more vessels follow, and the logjam of 2,000 stranded ships begins to clear over weeks rather than months. In the less optimistic scenario, Iran attacks a U.S.-escorted vessel or a destroyer, and the situation escalates in a direction that makes the current disruption look manageable by comparison. Neither outcome is obviously impossible.
What the oil market appears to be pricing in right now is something closer to the middle: a prolonged standoff in which some traffic moves under military cover, Iran retains enough leverage to keep the situation unresolved, and the dual blockade continues as an uneasy equilibrium. U.S. gas prices have already gone from $2.98 a gallon before the war to $4.46 today, according to AAA. The analyst consensus cited by CNN this morning is that another month without resolution gets prices to $5 a gallon. That is the kind of number that moves political timelines.
For our customers: the immediate situation has not changed enough to alter routing, insurance, or booking decisions made last week. We are watching new developments closely and will update as the carrier and underwriter community responds. Please reach out to your M.E. Dey representative if you have specific lanes or shipments that need to be worked through.