PANAMA CITY: Around 1,500 ships and their crews are trapped in the Gulf due to the Iranian blockade in the strait of Hormuz, the secretary general of the UN’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO) said in Panama on Thursday.

The war in the Middle East, unleashed February 28 by Israel and the United States against Iran, provoked reprisals from Tehran across the region and a shipping blockade in Hormuz, a crucial global trade route.

“Right now, we have approximately 20,000 crewmen and around 1,500 ships trapped,” Arsenio Dominguez told the Maritime Convention of the Americas.

Dominguez said that maritime shipping moves over 80 percent of total consumed products in the world.

The stranded crew members “are innocent people who are doing their jobs every day for the benefit of other countries,” but “are trapped by geopolitical situations outside their control,” Dominguez told the gathering of industry executives and IMO representatives.

Before the conflict’s outbreak, a fifth of the world’s total petroleum and gas passed through the Strait of Hormuz. The closure has led to a significant global surge in the price of hydrocarbons.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2026