Graeme Wood

And usually they'd be going back and forth, mostly speedboats smuggling.

But at this point, again, as calm as could be.

So I spent about five hours in the fjords next to the strait.

And

just a few miles into the Strait itself, and saw, I would guess, fewer than half a dozen boats that were actually going back and forth across the Strait.

And of course, I didn't see any evidence that anyone was going through the Strait.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, right across the street, if you went inland, you'd get to Minab, where there was the school famously destroyed by the United States, which killed possibly hundreds of children.

So devastation is not that far away.

But if you're not right there...

then what you see is calm waters.

And also, by the way, you still see some traffic going back and forth.

I mentioned six boats or so that I saw going back and forth.

Those are smugglers who just decide that they live outside the law in the best of times.

And so right now they're going back and forth.

They're bringing...

electronics to iran and in the past they would usually bring goats back apparently so there's still that going on but mostly you just see these calm waters and then dozens upon dozens of boats just waiting for it to be safe to go back in their usual route are iranian tankers able to move uh right now no at that point no that there was there was nothing going back and forth or chinese tankers serving the iran trade i should say i mean there's uh

There's this extraordinary phenomenon going on right now where while there's a lockdown on Persian Gulf oil, Iran has been able to sell actually more than before, mostly going to China.

So at the moment, because of expensive oil, Iran, and because of the need of everyone, including the United States, to loosen up the energy markets, Iran has been able to sell oil.

But I mean, going back and forth through the Strait of Hormuz,