Wednesday, November 11, 2026
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Geopolitics Nov 11, 2026 · 8 min read

New strikes on both sides of Hormuz as Iran denies any talks

Tracker Red Sea and Hormuz: are ships going through? · 5.1 ships/day

Two ships hit in a day, one inside UAE waters, Iran claims more, and Tehran says there are no talks

On Tuesday 10 November, merchant ships were attacked on both sides of the Strait of Hormuz within hours of each other. ADNOC Logistics & Services said one of its vessels was damaged in an attack in UAE territorial waters that afternoon. UKMTO, the UK Royal Navy’s maritime trade office, issued Warning 201-26: a tanker was hit by an unidentified projectile about 19 nautical miles north-east of Lima, Oman, at 1338 UTC. And Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said three tankers were burning in the strait, one of them after hitting a mine on a route Iran had not approved.

On the same day, Iran’s top security official said there are no talks with Washington at all.

Our view is simple. The strait now has no safe side, and the diplomacy that markets were pricing in last week does not exist in any form Tehran will admit to. Forwarders should stop planning for a reopening in November and plan for Gulf workarounds to run through the rest of the year.

What happened at sea

The background is short. The US and Israel launched strikes on Iran on 28 February. An April ceasefire and a June memorandum aimed at a peace deal followed, but there is still no final settlement (Anadolu).

The ADNOC statement was thin. The company said response operations were ongoing but did not name the ship, describe the damage or say whether anyone was hurt (gCaptain). What matters is where it happened: inside UAE territorial waters, on the Gulf side.

The UKMTO strike was off the Omani coast. According to gCaptain, “The vessel’s master reported that all crew members were safe and there was no environmental impact.” A damage check was planned for first light. gCaptain says it is not clear whether the ADNOC and UKMTO incidents are linked.

The IRGC Navy’s claims are bigger and less certain. Through TASS, it said a third tanker “struck a sea mine this afternoon” on a route not authorised by Iran, and that “The tanker is on fire in the eastern part of the strait.” Dawn, citing agencies, reported that the IRGC said three oil tankers were on fire, without naming any of them. No maritime authority has confirmed these. Treat them as claims, not facts. But the claim itself is a message: Iran says ships that leave its approved routes are at risk of mines.

This follows a busy week. On 7 November a tanker caught fire about eight nautical miles north-west of Khasab, Oman, and its crew evacuated; UKMTO later reclassified it as an attack (gCaptain). The JMIC, a naval security advisory centre, recorded five attacks off Oman’s Musandam coast between 1 and 5 November. Its 8 November advisory kept the Hormuz threat at SEVERE, “warning that further deliberate attacks were highly likely” (gCaptain).

What was said on land

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said in a television interview that “we are not currently conducting any negotiations with the Americans” (Anadolu, citing Tasnim). He called US claims of talks “complete lies”, denied any planned meeting with Vice President JD Vance in Qatar, and said the strait will stay shut “until all seven conditions were fully implemented.”

Those conditions include ending the war on all fronts, unfreezing Iran’s foreign assets, lifting oil sanctions and ending the US naval blockade of Iranian ports. Washington wants nuclear issues in the first round (Dawn). That gap has not narrowed.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi kept one door open. He said Iran’s offer to reopen the waterway within two days of a deal still stands, and that the conflict “will not be resolved through military means, nor by intensifying sanctions” (Dawn).

The US side is just as fixed. At the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Paris, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: “The economic campaign [against Iran] is so devastating that right now there is no need for major combat operations” (CBS News). He has also called Tehran’s demands “outrageous and ridiculous” (Anadolu). Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said: “We control the Strait of Hormuz” (CBS News).

President Trump, after meeting Qatar’s prime minister on Monday, spoke of “positive momentum” towards ending the conflict (Dawn). Qatar said both sides had responded positively to its mediation but admitted a deal is uncertain (Anadolu).

Put those together. Washington believes sanctions and the blockade are working and sees no need to fight or to give ground. Tehran says it will not reopen until it gets all seven demands. That is a standoff, not a negotiation. Oil traders seem to agree: Brent crude hovered around $90 a barrel on Tuesday morning (CBS News).

What the traffic numbers say

Hormuz is open in name only for most commercial shipping.

US naval figures show 91 US-facilitated transits between 5 and 7 November, about 30 a day. Independent tracking shows daily transits in the single digits to low double digits. The 2025 average was “approximately 138 vessels per day in 2025” (gCaptain). JMIC notes the US and independent figures come from different systems and are not directly comparable.

IMF PortWatch, as relayed by Straits.live, logged 3 transits on 8 November, against a pre-crisis baseline of 85 a day. The baselines differ by source, but every count points the same way: a small fraction of normal.

The queue is building outside. About 162 ships were at anchor near Fujairah and Khor Fakkan on 8 November, with more near Sohar and Musandam (gCaptain). JMIC counts 177 maritime security incidents in the wider region since 1 March. That figure includes suspicious approaches and military enforcement, not just strikes on merchant ships.

There is one exception. Energy cargo is still moving in larger volumes than container cargo. S&P Global Energy counted 31 laden LNG tankers leaving the strait in October, up from 23 in September and the most since the war began (Dawn). Shippers of gas and oil can justify escorts and very high insurance. A container line calling at four Gulf ports on a weekly loop cannot.

Why the UAE side matters for container cargo

Many forwarders have treated the UAE coast as the safe end of the problem. Jebel Ali has stayed open. At a briefing on 10 November, DP World’s GCC chief executive Ahmad Yousef Al-Hassan said: “We closed only six hours since the start of the war” (Khaleej Times). Jebel Ali can handle up to 19.4 million TEU a year (TEU means twenty-foot equivalent unit, the standard container measure).

But getting boxes to and from Jebel Ali still means using Gulf waters. Tuesday’s ADNOC attack shows those waters are now a target too.

The east-coast fix is not ready. DP World’s new terminals at Fujairah (Al Rugaylat, up to 2.5 million TEU a year) and Dibba are expected to be operational within the next 18 to 24 months, Al-Hassan said. He also said “Fujairah is never a replacement or a backup only for Jebel Ali” (Khaleej Times). In plain terms, no new large DP World container capacity opens on the UAE’s Indian Ocean coast before 2028.

So cargo keeps taking the expensive routes. Hapag-Lloyd’s Middle East emergency surcharge, set in June for in-transit cargo, priced a 40-foot box routed via Jeddah and then by truck to the UAE at $6,700, and via Fujairah or Khor Fakkan by truck to UAE points at $3,100 (Tradlinx). On 30 October Maersk said it would adjust its inland fuel surcharge because of “the evolving situation in the Middle East” (Newsquawk).

Insurance tells the same story. War-risk premiums, the extra cover a ship buys to sail through a conflict zone, were about 0.25% of hull value before the war. By late August, market estimates for Hormuz transits were 3% to 8% (Insurance Business). Neil Roberts of the Lloyd’s Market Association put it bluntly: “That price reflects the risk.” Attacks inside UAE waters give underwriters no reason to cut.

What forwarders should do now

First, plan Gulf routings into December, not to the end of November. With Iran denying talks and the US seeing no need to fight, nothing points to a quick change.

Second, quote surcharges as a separate line, and warn customers they can change with little notice. Carriers have been moving them faster than base rates.

Third, keep using the alternatives and lock in capacity on them: Omani ports such as Sohar and Salalah with onward trucking, UAE east-coast ports with trucking to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and Saudi Red Sea land bridges via Jeddah. Truck slots and border processing are where the bottlenecks will build as the anchorage queue grows.

Fourth, check your cargo insurance. Make sure war-risk cover is in place for cargo waiting in Gulf anchorages and feeder legs, not just for the strait transit itself.

Fifth, watch three signals: an official confirmation of any of the IRGC mine claims, a JMIC downgrade from SEVERE, and any change in Iran’s line on the seven conditions. Without at least one of those, expect no change.

Our call

Our prediction: no major carrier restores a regular scheduled container service through Hormuz into the Upper Gulf before 1 December 2026. We also expect Gulf war-risk and emergency surcharges from the big carriers to stay in place through December. And we expect CENTCOM, the US military command for the region, to report at least one more non-tanker merchant ship disabled by the end of December. Tuesday’s attacks, on both coasts, make all three more likely, not less.

Sources

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