Iran’s Mohsen Rezaei Announces Restricted Zone Outside Strait of Hormuz, Threatens Sanctions

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei said Tehran would announce a restricted zone outside the Strait of Hormuz in the coming days and place any ship attempting to transit the area on Tehran’s sanctions list.

Rezaei told state-run IRIB TV that the zone would extend from "the line where the U.S. naval blockade begins" to the Strait of Hormuz region and inside the Persian Gulf on the other side, and he said ships entering without coordination would face sanctions affecting their insurance coverage and future passage.

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The same reporting said Rezaei dismissed U.S. claims that ships and oil tankers are crossing the waterway as a "lie," while acknowledging some vessels attempt to cross via a route near Oman by switching off navigation systems.

In parallel, the United States began implementing a “ship-to-ship” policy against Iran, with American forces targeting two oil tankers belonging to the Iranian government, and an American official said President Donald Trump approved the policy to deter Tehran from attacking oil tankers and commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

As Iran warned that any ship entering the new zone would be added to the sanctions list, the United States described its actions as retaliation and deterrence, with Axios cited in the Aajil report saying the strike on the two tankers came within a wave of broad attacks on Tuesday targeting about 100 military objectives.A

The Aajil report said the two Iranian tankers were hit by American drones with missiles that struck the engine rooms, and it described the strikes as the first time the United States struck Iranian tankers as retaliation for attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.A

Aajil

Iran’s top security chief Mohsen Rezaei also framed the confrontation as a shift in how Iran would respond, and the ABC News report quoted him saying, "We're making changes," and that Tehran would announce a restricted prohibited zone outside the Strait of Hormuz.

In the same ABC News account, Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf posted on X in response to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s threat to sink Iranian oil tankers, warning that "Strike our assets and you get struck."

Shipping data reflected the escalation, with Aajil reporting that preliminary data released on Friday showed four bulk carriers crossing the Hormuz Strait on Thursday, down from nine the day before and well below the 10-day average of about 15 vessels.A

“four bulk carriers crossing the Hormuz Strait yesterday, Thursday”

Aajil

Aajil said Kpler data showed that the ships that had crossed by 04:55 UTC included two medium-range tankers, one CamastarMax-class tanker, and one Handymax, while also noting that the figures do not include ships that may have passed with AIS transmissions turned off to avoid detection.A

The same Aajil reporting tied the disruption to broader economic pressure, stating that before the outbreak of the war on February 28, about 125 large commercial ships passed through the strait daily, representing about one-fifth of global daily oil and LNG supplies.A

Beyond the strait, Al Jazeera reported that the Panama Canal Authority said that from Thursday only 34 vessels will be permitted to sail daily through the canal, with the cap dropping further to 32 on September 15, as the region braces for lower water levels due to the El Nino weather phenomenon.