Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz has weakened! Arabs export millions of barrels of oil with the "shadow fleet".

Persian Gulf countries are sending millions of barrels of oil through Hormuz, but that doesn't change Iran's ability to wreak havoc on the global economy.

According to the report of Ambassador Arjan's international correspondent, "New Arab" in an article investigated the ability of Iran to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz, which is described below.

As Iran and the US take cautious steps toward an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, there may be signs that Tehran's biggest source of leverage is eroding.

The attempt of Persian Gulf Arabs to simultaneously bypass Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab / Iran turned the Hormuz-Bab al-Mandab link into a strategic issue.

Iran has played its "ace" by closing the Strait of Hormuz/ The importance of the Strait of Hormuz is gradually disappearing!

Iran has long considered the ability to paralyze this strategic bottleneck to be its version of an atomic bomb; A trump card that, if used, could create a global energy crisis of historic proportions.

Immediately after the start of the US-Israeli war on February 28, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps did exactly that, decisively moving to close the strait and trapping one-fifth of the world's oil and liquid natural gas inside the region.

But the country's ability to exert pressure on the global economy has been threatened in recent weeks as the US military facilitates clandestine shipments of oil through the strait and Arab producers rearrange export routes.

More oil is now flowing out of the region than at any other point during the seven-month war, undermining Tehran's efforts to negotiate permanent control of the strait.

Arab oil exports are coming back

Middle East crude exports, excluding Iran, returned to pre-war levels in September, even as Iran and its allies stepped up attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure.

Estimates from data tracking platform Kepler show that Arab countries exported at least 16.5 million barrels of oil per day from the region during this month.

Much of the increase came from Saudi Arabia, which sharply increased its exports through the strait in response to last month's attack on a Red Sea pipeline.

Shipping data tracked by Bloomberg show that the kingdom's Hormuz shipments reached more than three million barrels per day in the first three weeks of September, more than triple the amount in August.

Exports through Hormuz have increased slowly since June; When the Pentagon began a concerted effort to bring energy supplies to the global market. With the support of American air cover, the Persian Gulf countries have smuggled millions of barrels of oil through this narrow strip of water using shadow fleets to escape Iran's fire.

America's effort to open this waterway has coincided with Arab countries' efforts to find new ways to get their oil out of the region. Saudi Arabia has rerouted its crude oil to the Red Sea via an east-west pipeline, while the United Arab Emirates has relied on its terminal in Fujairah across the strait. Iraq has transported millions of barrels of oil by truck from the Syrian desert to the Mediterranean.

"Iran seems to have lost significant leverage over the Strait of Hormuz," said Ria Reddy, deputy head of the Iran team at the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project.

He told New Arab: "If commercial ships can still pass through the strait at a high rate despite Iran's threats, Iran has less ability to use the strait to force the US and other countries to accept its demands."

The increase in Arab oil exports is not the only way Tehran has lost control. The US blockade has turned the tide against Iran, trapping its oil in the region and depriving the country of billions of dollars of vital income.

Dozens of its ships have been targeted by American forces; What the Trump administration has described as a "tanker-against-tanker" policy is aimed at stopping IRGC attacks on maritime traffic.

Although there is no end in sight to the war, the millions of barrels of oil now leaving the region have had little effect on global prices; Prices that continue to be affected by high geopolitical risk and skyrocketing freight rates.

The reopening of Hormuz has coincided with a 57% jump in the price of Brent; The price reached $110 in mid-September after the Houthis took control of the Red Sea coast of Yemen and the vital Bab al-Mandab Strait.

This issue has also not helped curb the shortage of fuels such as gasoline and diesel; The prices of these fuels have reached record highs due to persistent bottlenecks in refineries around the world.

It does not seem that the US-led effort to increase gas shipments from Qatar will have the same success; Shipments that are still well below pre-war levels. Last month, gas prices in Europe and Asia hit their highest level since 2022 amid supply concerns ahead of winter.

All this means that Iran still has a lot of say in the direction of the global economy, despite the millions of barrels of crude oil that now pass through the strait every day.

"The resumption of oil exports in the Strait of Hormuz is not synonymous with stability," Borjo Ozjelik, senior Middle East security researcher at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told New Arab.

He said: "Iran still retains the ability to resume retaliatory drone and missile attacks on critical Persian Gulf infrastructure and oil production sites."

Dani Sitrinovich, a senior researcher at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), said that although the US has weakened Iran's control over the Strait, it has so far failed to achieve its major goal of stabilizing the global energy market.

"Iran has retained the ability to target oil tankers, threaten commercial shipping, and make passage through the strait more difficult and expensive," he said.

"As a result, Washington's operational achievements have not yet produced the economic outcome it ultimately needs," he added. "Oil prices remain high, in part due to higher insurance premiums, a shortage of tankers and continued risk to commercial shipping."

Iran's sporadic attacks on ships have prevented the normalization of maritime traffic in the strait, kept shipping rates at record levels, extended the freeze in the insurance market, and kept pressure on oil prices.

According to data collected by the conflict monitoring organization ACLED, September saw a significant increase in attacks on oil tankers; 21 ships were confirmed to have been hit by Iranian missiles, compared to 12 in the previous month.

ACLED's Middle East Regional Team Leader, Valentin de Otoy, told New Arab: "September saw the highest number of successful Iranian attacks on commercial ships since March; When the war was at its peak.

Washington has the upper hand in the strait for now, he said, but Iran's continued ability to threaten ships raises questions about the long-term viability of its escort operations.

However, the US destruction of Iran's coastal radars and surveillance systems makes it more difficult for Tehran to use them. There are signs that this damage has forced Iran to resort to cruder means of disrupting maritime traffic.

"Iran appears to have adopted less effective methods of tracking and attacking ships, including using speedboats to visually identify targets and coastal rocket launchers to lay mines," Reddy of the Critical Threats Project said.

He said: "These adaptations show that Iran is facing more difficulty in identifying, targeting and consistently disrupting large-scale shipping."

Iran's influence on the future of the strait extends beyond what happens in its immediate neighborhood to other parts of the region; Where its allies have been able to put more pressure on the global energy markets.

Oil and gas prices jumped last month after Houthi forces and Iraqi militias dealt a back-to-back blow to Saudi Red Sea exports, seizing Bab al-Mandab and disabling Aramco's East-West pipeline on the same day.

Since the collapse of a Yemeni ceasefire in July, the group has targeted several refineries on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, closing the bottleneck to Saudi-linked shipping.

However, horizontal intensification for the axis of resistance has had limited success; Arab producers have been resilient to these multi-pronged attacks, quickly finding new export routes when one is closed.