Ships entering the strait on Saturday included an empty Very Large Crude Carrier with its Automatic Identification System switched off ⁠and an Indian-flagged Very Large Gas Carrier that used the Iranian route, Kplerdata showed.   A small tanker laden with Iranian fuel oil exited, it showed.   Shipping appeared to grind to a near standstill after the United Arab Emirates said three vessels operated by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company were attacked in transit last week.      The United States said it could ​maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely.

Some ships may pass through undetected with transponders ‌off, ⁠but the figures are far from the more than 130 ships a day that traversed the Strait of Hormuz before the war launched by the U.S. and Israel on Iran in February. 

Washington must ​meet Iran’s conditions ​regarding the ⁠strait in order for shipping to resume, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in an interview with local media ​on Saturday.      The waterway handled a fifth of the world’s ​shipments⁠of crude oil and liquefied natural gas before the war.      At the Bab el-Mandeb strait, where Yemeni Houthis declared a naval blockade on Saudi ⁠Arabia on ​July 20, Kpler data showed 49 ​weekend transits by commodity vessels, down from 55 in the prior week. There were no tracked Saudi oil shipments.