US military claims no ships made it past the blockade of Hormuz in first day

[0:00] The U.S. military says that no ships have passed its blockade of Iran's southern coast over the [0:05] past 24 hours. It says that six merchant vessels complied with its orders to turn around. So this [0:12] here is the live map, and it shows a handful of oil tankers, the red dots, and cargo ships, [0:19] those are the green dots, currently in or near the Strait of Hormuz, which is the narrowest [0:25] point of this waterway. Arrows indicate the vessels are moving. Dots show those which are [0:30] stationary. Hundreds of vessels remain stuck, concerned by threats of attack and sea mines [0:36] laid by Iran. The U.S. military says that it is working to support freedom of navigation for [0:41] vessels transiting through the Strait of Hormuz from non-Iranian ports. Let's discuss this with [0:47] Alexander Uhudistanu. He's a military and diplomatic analyst with expertise in maritime security. [0:54] Sir, what lessons do you learn from the first 24 hours of this U.S. naval blockade of [1:01] Iran? The time is short, so the lessons that we learn here are more, let's say. Small sample [1:08] size so far. Yes, small sample size. In my opinion, in my opinion, U.S. has this blockade established [1:17] somewhere further away from the actual Strait. As in their ships are located? Yes. But does that [1:23] change anything? No, because in the end, the whole point is to basically interdict these ships that [1:30] would leave from Iranian ports of the ship that would go towards Iranian ports to actually be [1:36] connected to the global supply chain. So it doesn't really matter if the ships are stopped in the [1:41] mouth of the Strait or they are stopped in the Gulf of Oman or further into the Arabian Sea. The point [1:48] is for the ships to not reach the destination ports going out of the Strait or reaching destination ports [1:53] while trying to get into the into the Strait. So lessons I think we'll start learning a bit later [2:00] regarding especially the ships that will come out of the Strait, because if you look at the distance [2:04] between Larak Island and, let's say, the entrance towards Arabian Sea. So Larak Island is this, [2:12] where we see the cluster of green dots at the top of the screen just below it. That's Larak Island. Yes. [2:17] So it's basically the checkpoint that Iran insists on ships to pass around at north and south of this [2:24] island in order for them to access the recommended passages that the Iran Revolution Guard Corps recommended. [2:34] So from there, all the way to the entrance to the Arabian Sea is roughly 325 nautical miles, [2:39] that's 600 kilometers. And that's roughly one day of passage, one day and a half for ships to pass. So [2:45] if ships try to pass and they, for example, stop the AIS in order to try to shadow their passage, [2:53] if they will pass, they will have to pass through that point. And if we'll see this in 48 hours, [2:58] if we'll see ships that were previously in the Gulf and then 48 hours somewhere along the Indian Ocean, [3:04] then we can surely say, yes, some ships pass through the blockade. So far, we don't have that particular, [3:10] let's say, pattern of life developing. There are two aspects to this naval blockade. Or rather, [3:17] I should say, there are two things that the US Navy is doing. One is try to impose a blockade on Iran. [3:23] And that's what we've just been talking about. You're saying that within the next two days, [3:26] it'll be interesting to see, track those ships, see which ones may or may not be getting through, [3:31] and that will tell us whether the blockade is working. Yeah. But the other layer of the US Navy's [3:36] mission is to create a safe passage and conditions for the safe passage of commercial ships through [3:44] the strait, those that are not going to or coming from Iran. Is that possible at this point? [3:51] It depends. It depends if US Navy will take action in terms of trying to demine or at least create safe [4:01] corridors in the mined areas or let the ships... I meant right now, today, a commercial ship cannot [4:07] safely pass through because we don't... I think they can because they can use the recommended [4:11] corridors by Iran in that sense, which they say they are safe and they can pass through. We've seen [4:17] actually ships today passing through the actual strait, but at one point they stopped or some of [4:22] them even returned and are now sitting waiting orders in terms of commercial orders like other [4:29] merchandise or stuff. So we've seen ships passing through the actual strait today. That's not [4:33] something we haven't seen. We're not sure if those ships have passed from the blockade area towards [4:38] the global ocean, towards the Indian Ocean. Okay. That's the interesting part that we'll probably [4:43] will probably see it happening in the next, let's say, 12 to 24 hours. Yeah. Something else I'm going to [4:48] have to run, but that's something else to watch. So we have to watch the two aspects of this, and it [4:52] comes down to which ships are going through the Strait of Hormuz. We'll leave it here for right now. [4:57] Alexander Uhudy Ashtanu, Military and Diplomatic Analyst with expertise, obviously, in maritime [5:02] security. Thank you very much for joining us in the studio. Thank you also.