Tehran, April 14 -- Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has thinned to a trickle of its original self as the US naval blockade has deterred ships from crossing through, with tracking data showing vessels clustering on either side of the chokepoint rather than risking any attempts to pass through it.
Data from MarineTraffic shows dense concentrations of ships waiting westward in the Persian Gulf and eastward in the Gulf of Oman, while the Strait itself - typically one of the busiest shipping corridors in the world - now appears largely empty, with only a small number of vessels being visible and moving close to the Iranian coastline, amid heavily controlled maritime transit.
The geography of the Strait highlights the scale of disruption....