---
title: "Hormuz Flow Falls to 2.9m Barrels a Day as Washington Weighs Its Next Move"
description: "Iran’s attacks have pushed Strait traffic 86% below its October 8 level, while the Pentagon’s missile stocks won’t recover until 2030"
author: "Luis Goa"
published: 2026-10-15T11:41:05Z
modified: 2026-10-16T05:41:38Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/hormuz-flow-falls-to-2-9m-barrels-a-day-as-washington-weighs-f33bd6
language: en
tags: ["iran", "yemen", "war", "military", "saudi", "world", "mideast"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Hormuz Flow Falls to 2.9m Barrels a Day as Washington Weighs Its Next Move

*Iran’s attacks have pushed Strait traffic 86% below its October 8 level, while the Pentagon’s missile stocks won’t recover until 2030*

By Luis Goa · October 15, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/hormuz-flow-falls-to-2-9m-barrels-a-day-as-washington-weighs-f33bd6

## In brief

- Hormuz oil flow fell from 20.8m barrels on Oct 8 to 2.9m barrels on Oct 11, Kpler says
- US has fired over 1,000 Tomahawks against a pre-war stock of ~3,100; CSIS sees full resupply only by late 2030
- Trump has ruled out attacking Iran before the Nov 3 midterms but says the war could escalate after
- Pew poll: 65% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s Iran war handling, up from 61% in March
- Houthi strikes on Riyadh airport killed over a dozen people; Aramco building hit Oct 13

On October 8, tankers moved 20.8 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, above the pre-war average of 17.1 million barrels a day, according to the shipping tracker Kpler. Three days later, on October 11, that figure was 2.9 million barrels, the lowest of the month. The swing illustrates what has replaced front-line combat in the eight-month-old US-Iran war: a contest over whether tankers can cross a 50-kilometre-wide channel without being hit, fought with drones, escort ships and insurance premiums rather than battalions.

**Hormuz oil flow whipsaws** Oil carried through the Strait of Hormuz, million barrels a day

|  | Oil flow (million bpd) |
| --- | --- |
| Pre-war average | 17.1 |
| Oct 8, 2026 | 20.8 |
| Oct 11, 2026 | 2.9 |

Source: [Kpler, via Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/14/iran-steps-up-hormuz-surveillance-attacks-soar-oil-flows-crash-again)

The war began on February 28, when the US and Israel struck Iran, and Iran retaliated against American bases and Gulf infrastructure before closing the Strait, which carried at least 20% of global crude and LNG supplies before the war. Brent crude rose from about $72 a barrel the day before the war to nearly $120 a barrel at its peak; it was trading at about $104 on Thursday, as reported by [Al Jazeera](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/15/us-iran-stalemate-what-are-trumps-next-military-options). A June ceasefire collapsed over who controls the Strait. Washington has kept a naval blockade on Iran’s southern ports since; Iran has kept attacking tankers that try to run it. President Trump has said on Truth Social he will not attack Iran before the November 3 midterms, while telling a Republican convention in September the conflict “is going to end immediately after the elections” — a timeline [he has also floated to a Nebraska crowd](https://rews.cc/a/a-rally-in-nebraska-and-a-president-offers-two-american-citi-4c3614) in more apocalyptic terms.

## The squeeze option

The default is to keep doing what the US is already doing: blockade, escort, surveil. With US Navy escorts, Gulf oil flows excluding Iran’s climbed back to more than 81% of pre-war levels in September, Kpler’s data show, and some Gulf producers rerouted enough volume to push regional exports above pre-war levels on 14 days that month, according to the tracker. Then Iran changed tactics. The UK Maritime Trade Operations centre logged 15 attacks on ships between October 6 and 14, after Kpler counted 10 tankers struck between September 28 and October 4 and another on October 5 — the worst run of attacks since the war started. Iran’s security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, said Tehran had been hitting vessels in the US-backed convoy system nightly for weeks: “You are smuggling,” he said, “but the strait is under Iran’s control.” Patrick Bury, a senior associate professor at the University of Bath and former NATO research analyst, told Al Jazeera the arithmetic favours Tehran: drones that feed targeting data and strike ships are cheap to fly, and “the asymmetry of costs,” plus Iran’s geography, gives it “a kind of easier starting point” than the US, which must keep carriers, aircraft and escorts on station to counter them.

![A tanker flanked by two warships sails between rocky shores beneath a giant umbrella canopy, with a helicopter flying nearby.](https://rews.cc/img/f7bdfb60764e1012efd93344e57b3e782d53a885.webp)

## Bombing again

Trump has said ramping up air strikes after the elections may be “possible.” The US fired more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iran over the course of the war, against a pre-war inventory of roughly 3,100, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Navy’s fiscal 2027 budget request asks for 785 more Tomahawks, a sharp jump from the roughly 86 missiles a year the US has averaged ordering over the past decade, but [CSIS’s analysis](https://www.csis.org/analysis/rebuilding-us-missile-inventory-multiyear-project) finds current production lead times mean replacement missiles won’t start arriving until March 2030, with inventories not fully restored until late 2030. Bury put the broader rebuild — Tomahawks, Patriot interceptors, THAAD stocks — at three to four years once funding is in place: “The problem is to solve that issue takes a long time, even when you press Go with the money.” The cost asymmetry cuts the same way as at sea: Afzal Ashraf, a visiting fellow at Loughborough University and former RAF officer, told Al Jazeera that each cheap Iranian drone or missile can force the US to fire “an interceptor of a million \[dollars\] or more,” and “the United States is running out of missiles for its own defence.” He also argued a renewed bombing campaign could “actually achieve a lot less” than the opening strikes in February, because Iran has concealed what remains of its arsenal better: “They have fewer, but they can conceal them better.” Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has signalled the next round would be harsher, declaring last month that the era of “proportionate responses” is over. Renewed strikes could also cost the US access to Gulf bases beyond the three states — Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain — that Iran has already hit in retaliation; Ashraf said other Gulf states appear to have reached a separate understanding with Tehran to stay out of the fighting.

## Ground options nobody wants

One target repeatedly named by analysts is Kharg Island, 26km off Iran’s coast, which handles about 90% of Iran’s oil exports. Joseph Votel, a former US Central Command commander, has estimated that 800 to 1,000 soldiers could seize it, according to Reuters, but they would be exposed to fire from the mainland with little warning needed by Iranian forces once the island is occupied. Ashraf called taking it “the most irrational of the irrational decisions,” warning Iran could retaliate against Gulf oil infrastructure generally, and noting popular appetite for US casualties is already low in a war that polls deeply unpopular. A full invasion is further off the table: Trump has largely ruled out a ground offensive, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in March that ground troops would not be needed to meet the administration’s goals. “I don’t think they’re going to do it anyway,” Bury said. “I don’t think they can do it, to be honest with you.”

![An orange chess knight stands on a floating mousetrap facing an oil tank and derrick, against a bright blue background.](https://rews.cc/img/e44dd5114ac0f0eace4a7975e13d10fc246fe7c7.webp)

## The political clock

Disapproval of Trump’s handling of the war rose from 61% in March to 65% in a [Pew Research Center survey](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/10/08/iran-conflict-remains-deeply-unpopular-as-many-americans-expect-it-to-go-on-for-months/) fielded September 28–October 4 — roughly in line with the nearly-70% figure other October polling has found for Americans who say the war isn’t worth fighting. The same Pew survey found 52% of Americans not too or not at all confident the administration will achieve its goals, and 47% expect the military action to run more than a year — a timeline that lines up with what [former defense secretary Mark Esper has told reporters](https://rews.cc/a/esper-sees-iran-war-dragging-past-2027-possibly-into-the-nex-c64e6b) about the war outlasting 2027.

## A second front opens in Yemen

While the Strait standoff holds, the war’s cost is rising on a second front. Fighting between Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces and the Iran-aligned Houthis has intensified along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, and the Houthis have expanded attacks on Saudi oil and aviation infrastructure, as [Al Jazeera reported](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/15/fighting-in-yemen-intensifies-whats-the-latest-on-the-battlefield). Strikes on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport in the week of October 10 killed more than a dozen people and injured hundreds, according to Saudi officials, and the Houthis claimed a separate strike on an Aramco administrative building in Dhahran on October 13 — accounts of the damage differ, with Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry describing a limited fire and no casualties while unnamed sources told other outlets several floors of an office tower were affected, though oil production was not disrupted. On Thursday, forces aligned with Yemen’s government said they intercepted a drone headed toward Medina and a missile aimed at Riyadh. The Houthis have cast the campaign as retaliation for Saudi-led strikes on Sanaa and say they will keep hitting Saudi infrastructure until Riyadh ends its involvement in Yemen’s civil war — a second pressure point on a Gulf monarchy that Washington needs to keep hosting its bases and backing its blockade.

Bury’s framing of the core problem — can the US regenerate its military stockpiles faster than the politics around the war change — doesn’t resolve on any date on the calendar. The midterms land November 3; CSIS’s delivery schedule puts full Tomahawk replenishment in late 2030. Whichever administration is in office when that schedule plays out, Bury said, “would need to do the same thing anyway.” The number to watch between now and the election isn’t a poll. It’s how many barrels clear the Strait on any given day, and how many ships don’t try.

## See also

- [2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Strait_of_Hormuz_crisis) — en.wikipedia.org · Timeline backgrounder on the closure and blockade

## Sources

- [US-Iran stalemate: What are Trump's next military options?](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/15/us-iran-stalemate-what-are-trumps-next-military-options) — aljazeera.com
- [Fighting in Yemen intensifies as Houthis hit Aramco and Riyadh airport](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/15/fighting-in-yemen-intensifies-whats-the-latest-on-the-battlefield) — aljazeera.com