Shipping Industry Casts Doubt on Donald Trump’s ‘Present’ from Iran

Claim that 20 Pakistan-flagged ships will exit Strait of Hormuz questioned as country only has 13 big ocean-going vessels

Jamie John in London and Humza Jilani in Islamabad

Financial Times

US President Donald Trump spent the weekend championing his “present” from Iran, which he said would allow 20 Pakistan-flagged ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s foreign minister, called the gesture “a harbinger of peace” as the war with Iran still rages, while Trump hailed the move as a sign that negotiations were “going very well”.

But shipping analysts on Monday called into question the US president’s claims, pointing out that the number of vessels seemed implausibly high, even after Trump suggested they had already “started” sailing “right up the middle of the Strait”.

There are only 13 large ocean-going Pakistan-flagged vessels in the world, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence data, which defines these as vessels of over 10,000 deadweight tonnage. A supertanker of the kind oil traders are desperate to see start exiting the Gulf can be over 200,000 DWT.

Eight of those Pakistani-flagged vessels are oil tankers and five are bulk carriers, which carry dry cargo such as grain and coal. But none of those ships is currently trapped in the Middle East Gulf, while just three are in the Gulf of Oman on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz.

“What Trump is doing, it’s just a headline, clickbait,” said one ship broker. “It’s just nuts,” said another analyst who had spent the day trying to make sense of the president’s comments.

Just two Pakistan-flagged ships are known to have transited the Strait of Hormuz over the past fortnight: one tanker on March 15 and one bulk carrier on Saturday. A further Marshall Islands-flagged tanker chartered to the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation crossed on Saturday.

Anna Kelly, a spokesperson for the White House, defended Trump’s claims and said that so-called “experts” had been wrong about the president multiple times before, adding they had argued he “could not end the war between Israel and Hamas . . . and that the administration’s tariff policies would create an economic crisis”.

“The president has proven them wrong time and again, and he is confident that the Strait will be open very soon,” Kelly added.

Dar suggested at the weekend that two ships flagged to Pakistan could start transiting the Strait of Hormuz each day.

Some ships had begun to discuss reflagging to Pakistan, according to three diplomats and industry figures involved in the discussions. But even then, the 20-ship mark quoted by Trump was unlikely to be reached “any time soon”, said one of the people.

“People would flag to Pakistan, but where is the advantage after this voyage? [It’s] not a long-term strategy,” said one shipping executive. “The simpler explanation is that the president is talking BS.”

Shipping flows through the Strait of Hormuz have come to a near standstill since Iran began striking ships and port infrastructure across the Gulf. The cost of oil has soared, with the Brent crude benchmark hitting $116 a barrel on Monday, threatening a surge in inflation in the US as November’s midterm elections approach.

The ship broker pointed out that much of the flow through the strait in recent days had been “one way, going out”.

“For the oil market to normalise, you have to get ships in and out on a daily basis,” the broker added.

Tehran has over the past two weeks allowed a handful of ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz by taking an unusual route around Larak Island, off the coast of Iran.

Those vessels have included oil tankers and bulk carriers from India, Greece and Iran’s own oil fleet, as well as the Karachi, a Pakistan-flagged tanker.

Trapped seafarers suffer as Iran war rages

Yet they have largely been confined to vessels involved in trade with Iran or with close diplomatic links to the country. On Monday two container ships linked to Chinese state-owned group Cosco exited the waterway, marking the first time since the start of the war that a major container shipping line has made a crossing.

Iran’s speaker of parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who Trump said on Sunday was the person who authorised the additional ships, has mocked the US president for allegedly attempting to manipulate the oil market.

“They’ve spammed so much fake news trying to push energy prices down that the market’s just numb now,” Ghalibaf wrote on X on Friday. “Keep going, nobody’s buying it anymore. The real prices will show up anyway.”