{"id":846,"date":"2026-09-28T03:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T03:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/jmic-keeps-hormuz-at-severe-as-iran-warns-charterers-over-unauthorized-routes\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T03:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T03:33:09","slug":"jmic-keeps-hormuz-at-severe-as-iran-warns-charterers-over-unauthorized-routes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/jmic-keeps-hormuz-at-severe-as-iran-warns-charterers-over-unauthorized-routes\/","title":{"rendered":"JMIC keeps Hormuz at severe as Iran warns charterers over unauthorized routes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Joint Maritime Information Center kept the Strait of Hormuz threat level at \u201csevere\u201d in an advisory reported on Sunday, 27 September, even as it recorded no confirmed attacks or disruptions in the strait over the previous 72 hours. Iran International, citing the advisory, said IRGC \u201cattacks, attempted attacks, and\/or harassment activity persisted including UAV overflight, targeted surveillance of merchant shipping, and occasional VHF hailing.\u201d JMIC read that pattern as evidence of \u201cIran\u2019s intent to assert presence along key transit lanes and maintain pressure on transiting vessels.\u201d Commercial traffic, it added, remained below 2025 levels. US Coast Guard data cited in the same advisory put traffic at about 30 vessel transits a day over the previous 72 hours. That is a quieter 72-hour kinetic print than the mid-September sequence of unnamed tanker and cargo hits. It is not an all-clear.<\/p>\n

The same Sunday, Iran\u2019s Persian Gulf Strait Authority moved from vessel-by-vessel listing to a charterer warning. In a statement posted on its X account and carried by Mehr News, Pars Today, Kayhan and WANA, PGSA said it had received reports that some charterers were forcing ships to use \u201cinvalid\u201d or \u201cunauthorized\u201d routes through Hormuz. \u201cThis action, in addition to creating the possibility of financial and human losses for the vessel, owner, captain and crew, will also seriously restrict that vessel\u2019s future passage through the Strait of Hormuz,\u201d the Mehr text read. Shipowners were told to exercise \u201cthe necessary caution.\u201d If a charterer were found in violation, PGSA said, the company would be added to the Non-Compliance List and \u201cthe passage of all their vessels through the Strait of Hormuz will face restrictions.\u201d That is a wider net than the hull-by-hull NCL already covered on this blog when the list stood at 77 vessels on 14 September. It is also still an Iranian administrative product, not a UKMTO, JMIC or IMO instrument, and it sits directly against OFAC\u2019s existing warning that cooperating with PGSA demands can create US sanctions exposure.<\/p>\n

PGSA then published a letter it said came from the owners of an unnamed vessel apologizing for an unauthorized transit. According to WANA\u2019s Sunday account of the letter, the owners said the passage was not on the owner\u2019s instructions and was not the master\u2019s negligence. The charterer, they wrote, had instructed the captain to transit immediately without completing the required declaration, obtaining approval, or fulfilling PGSA\u2019s stipulated procedures. The captain had been under \u201csignificant commercial pressure\u201d and had considered himself obliged to follow the charterer\u2019s orders. The owners asked PGSA to accept the apology and to remove the vessel\u2019s case from the Non-Compliance List. The hull, flag, IMO number, charterer and route were not published. Operators should not treat that letter as a verified casualty, a named listing, or a template for how to write to an IRGC-linked authority. It is useful only as evidence that the commercial pressure PGSA describes \u2014 charterer over owner, fixture over declaration \u2014 is now being argued in public.<\/p>\n

A quiet 72 hours does not retire projectile, UAV or hailing risk<\/h2>\n

JMIC\u2019s \u201csevere\u201d rating has been the standing Hormuz read for months: deliberate hostile action is considered highly likely. Sunday\u2019s 72-hour gap with no confirmed attack is a change in frequency, not in the underlying assessment. The last named UKMTO kinetic prints in the strait remain the 23 September Cape Dao projectile\/fire\/fatality file, the 21 September inbound unnamed tanker with two crew minor injuries, and the time-late 21 September outbound LPG debris hit with crew safe \u2014 all already on this blog. JMIC\u2019s earlier Update 099, dated 24 September, had already recorded those as UKMTO 140-26, 141-26 and 142-26, with one fatality confirmed and remaining crews reported safe. Sunday\u2019s advisory does not withdraw those products, does not downgrade the rating, and does not say that AIS-on vessels can expect to pass without directed hails toward a northern Iranian-controlled route.<\/p>\n

The traffic numbers in the same advisory should be read against the other prints operators already hold, not as a new census. About 30 US Coast Guard-counted transits a day over 72 hours is well above the single-digit AIS-visible commodity days that Kpler has been publishing, and well below the 2025 baseline of about 138 vessels a day that JMIC has used throughout this war. Pre-war throughput was on the order of one-fifth of global seaborne oil, often summarised as ~125 commodity transits a day. The Coast Guard figure is a mixed-traffic count, not a laden-VLCC count, and it is not independently reconciled with Kpler. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox News on Sunday that oil flows through the strait were averaging \u201calmost 13 million barrels a day,\u201d and that \u201cthere was a day just this last week where over 20 million barrels of oil, more than pre-conflict levels, flowed out of the strait.\u201d That peak is the same order of magnitude as the anonymous US official\u2019s Wednesday, 23 September, claim of about 60 commercial vessels and about 22 million barrels, already covered on this blog on 25 September. Reuters could not independently verify that Wednesday print. Wright also said the pricing problem was \u201cmuch more refining capacity than it actually is the flow of oil.\u201d None of those volume claims is a JMIC downgrade. A master still planning a Hormuz transit should assume UAV overflight, targeted surveillance, occasional VHF hailing, visit-and-search, and residual projectile risk, including on days when no new warning is issued.<\/p>\n

Iranian military commentary on Sunday was louder than the kinetic log. Armed forces spokesman Abolfazl Shekarchi said the United States would be \u201cslapped\u201d if it intervened in Hormuz. An IRGC Navy official challenged Trump to send a warship near the strait if Washington believed it controlled the waterway, and threatened US warships as far away as the Indian Ocean if fighting resumed. Army chief Amir Hatami said the war was not over and that the military must remain prepared. Those remarks are threat backdrop. They are not attributions of Sunday\u2019s quiet 72 hours, and they are not a reason to treat the southern Omani corridor as closed or open. Oman\u2019s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, told the UN General Assembly that Muscat would continue working to safeguard navigation through Hormuz and urged restraint and dialogue. Waltz, on the US side, said 146 countries had condemned Iran over attacks on civilian shipping. Those are diplomatic counts. They do not move a TSS.<\/p>\n

Charterer instructions now sit inside a two-sanctions problem<\/h2>\n

The operational implication of Sunday\u2019s PGSA warning is that the dispute between owner, charterer and master is being pulled into the listing regime. The existing Non-Compliance List already threatened fines, detention, seizure or confiscation for named hulls, and it already warned that STS, transshipment or other operations with listed ships could pull additional vessels onto the list. OFAC designated PGSA on 27 May 2026 as IRGC-linked and has, in FAQ 1249 and related guidance, warned that companies making payments or providing sensitive vessel information in response to Iranian transit demands can create US sanctions exposure, while also stating that safe passage does not require payment. Sunday\u2019s text goes further toward the commercial party that writes the voyage order. If PGSA adds a charterer, it says, every vessel associated with that company can face restrictions on future Hormuz passage. For a time-charter operator with several ships in the Gulf of Oman STS pattern, or a cargo owner that regularly stems Ras Tanura, Banias substitutes, or Sohar STS, that is a fleet-level listing risk, not a one-voyage deviation.<\/p>\n

The unpublished apology letter makes the same point from the other direction. A master who follows a charterer\u2019s order to skip a PGSA declaration can put the hull on the NCL. A master who complies with a PGSA declaration, routing instruction or fee can put the company in front of OFAC. Neither Sunday\u2019s letter nor PGSA\u2019s X statement resolves that conflict. Club circulars and flag guidance since May have generally told members not to pay, not to file sensitive questionnaires with PGSA, to report Iranian hailing to NCAGS\/UKMTO, and to keep AIS, citadel and BMP discipline. MARAD\u2019s standing Hormuz advice has been to keep at least 30 nautical miles from US units, to expect coalition queries, and not to comply with over-the-horizon VHF or email \u201cinstructions\u201d from Iranian forces. Sunday does not replace that stack. It adds a public example of a charterer allegedly ordering a master to ignore the Iranian stack, followed by an owner asking the same authority to take the ship off a list. Companies that still have Gulf fixtures should assume that both pressures \u2014 Iranian listing and US secondary-sanctions risk \u2014 will be applied to the same voyage, and that the person who feels it first is the master.<\/p>\n

The 72-hour gap also should not be read against the diplomatic file as if a ceasefire had begun. Trump rejected Iran\u2019s seven-day reopen proposal on Saturday; Araghchi said on Sunday that Iran would not soften its conditions and had not yet received a formal mediator message. That impasse is a separate article. For passage planning, it means there is no agreed TSS, no agreed declaration regime, and no agreed end date for either the US blockade of Iranian ports or Iran\u2019s claim to manage the strait. NCAGS registration, the humanitarian exemption process for Iran-bound hulls, and the 30-nautical-mile US-unit standoff remain the coalition side of the picture. PGSA\u2019s unauthorized-route warning and the NCL remain the Iranian side. JMIC\u2019s severe rating is the industry-facing synthesis. A day with no new UKMTO warning does not collapse those three into one corridor.<\/p>\n

What Operators Should Note<\/h2>\n