The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced on 30 July 2025 the addition of 22 containerships to its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list for their alleged links to Iranian interests. A total of 143 ships including 71 crude oil tankers, 42 product tankers and 5 LPG tankers were included in the list that are alleged to be part of the shipping assets controlled by Hossein Shamkhani that have been used to transport oil and petroleum products from Iran
The escalation of the Iran-Israel conflict in the Middle East has sparked fears of a potential disruption to vessel traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. The impact on the container markets will be far less severe compared to the tanker and LNG markets, as the Middle East Gulf is mostly an import market with very little exports of any strategic importance that are shipped in containers. Middle East Gulf ports located north of the Strait of Hormuz handled a total of 29m teu of containers in 2023, acc