dubai, April 21 -- The Strait of Hormuz now appears to be just as closed as before Iran and the US said the vital oil channel had been reopened. Traffic through the strait on Sunday and Monday was reduced to a trickle after Tehran rejected a continuing US naval blockade and moved to seal the waterway again. The reduced movement underscores just how quickly hopes unravelled that cargoes could once again resume. On Friday, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the strait was "completely open" for commercial shipping, while US President Donald Trump said Iran was removing sea mines from the waterway. That prompted oil prices to plunge and dozens of tankers to race towards the strait at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. But Iran quickly declared that the passage was closed again as it emerged that the US operation in place since April 13 would not be lifted. The chaotic, on-off nature of ship traffic through the strait underscores just how difficult it will be to fully restore oil and gas flows that are vital to the global economy. On Monday, just two liquefied petroleum gas carriers and two oil product tankers moved through the strait in both directions. The previous day, two LPG vessels and a cruise liner sailed out of the gulf, while no inbound transits were seen. The Gas Harmony, an LPG carrier, went dark inside the gulf on Saturday morning but reappeared off the coast of Oman on Monday, indicating that the vessel transited the strait in the interim. The Liberia-flagged ship is owned and managed by Athens-based Gas Harmony Shipping Ltd., according to maritime database Equasis. At least three Mediterranean Shipping Co. containerships and a MSC cruise liner, along with a handful of other passenger vessels, appear to have exited the gulf on Saturday, hugging the Omani coastline. That was a deviation from the corridor approved by Iran during the short-lived opening of the waterway. Another MSC containership remains off-grid after it stopped signalling inside the gulf....