As U.S.-Iran negotiations fail to restore normal shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, cargo movement in the conduit remains sparse.

According to container shipping research firm Linerlytica, just two container vessels made outbound passages through the strait last week.

Across all vessels, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained subdued over the past week, with MarineTraffic confirming 84 transits in total from Aug. 3-9. The traffic weakened further into the weekend. Confirmed crossings fell from 15 on Friday to 11 on Saturday and just six on Sunday, bringing the three-day total to 32.

Dimitris Ampatzidis, maritime risk and compliance manager at MarineTraffic, called the diplomatic track “contested rather than stabilizing” in a Monday report.

“Until a practical and publicly communicated transit mechanism exists, both [the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea] should be treated as operationally active but politically fragile,” he said.

Talks between the U.S. and Iran to end their war appear to have stalled, with President Donald Trump suggesting economic pressure on Tehran may be the preferred U.S. strategy over immediate military escalation.

The president told Axios on Sunday the U.S. is “only semi-negotiating” with Iranian officials.

Tehran is in talks with Oman to partially open the strait but demanded a series of six conditions the U.S. must meet, including a permanent end to the war and an end to the naval blockade on Iranian ports.

Carriers are still figuring out workarounds. Hapag-Lloyd has not returned to the Strait of Hormuz yet, but in late July it reopened bookings to and from the upper Persian Gulf area through land bridge options and third-party feeder services in the area.

This setup enables connectivity for cargo movements involving Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain and the U.A.E. without transiting the strait.

More carriers test Red Sea return

Despite continued concerns over security in the Middle East after the Iran-aligned Houthis imposed their blockade on Saudi ports, larger ocean carriers are slowly making their return to the Red Sea.

Container shipping activity through the Red Sea, its southern chokepoint the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Suez Canal has been sparse since late 2023, when the Yemeni militant group began attacking vessels during the Israel-Hamas war. While some carriers tested returning to the area after that conflict concluded, the war in Iran largely dashed hopes of a broader return, with carriers once again steering clear of the waterway amid heightened security risks.

Maersk confirmed on Monday that another container service in its Gemini Cooperation network with Hapag-Lloyd will resume sailing through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, part of a gradual return to the area.

The ultra-large Manchester Maersk, which carries more than 20,500 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs), will make a westbound Suez Canal transit on Aug. 16, marking the return of the Gemini Asia-North Europe AE2/NE1 service to the conduit.

Maersk has also switched to the trans-Suez route on the Asia-Mediterranean AE19/SE4 service, with ships transiting in both directions since the end of July.

In a service advisory, the companies said they do not currently have plans to make further changes to other Gemini services.

“At this point we have no specific timeline,” the Gemini partners said Monday. “Whilst this change is a significant step forward, we are not at a point where we are considering a wider East-West network change back to the trans-Suez corridor, and therefore also not considering a full East-West network change.”

Cosco Shipping will deploy its first owned vessel through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in more than two years, with the 4,738-TEU Xin Hui Zhou set to return to the Red Sea on the revived RES4 service from July 28. That service stops at multiple Chinese ports including Shanghai, Ningbo, Xiamen and Nansha before stopping at Egypt’s Sokhna Port.

The service will only stop at Sokhna on its maiden call scheduled on Aug. 19, but will add a call at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on its second voyage on Oct. 7.

Cosco has been offering regular weekly sailings to the Red Sea since March 2026 via its shared REX2 service, using CMA CGM vessels.

CMA CGM has also brought more sailings back through the Suez Canal, launching three eastbound voyages on the weekly FAL3 service starting July 22. Those crossings have already completed with subsequent sailings also due to take the same route, according to Linerlytica. However, the westbound voyages are still using the longer Cape of Good Hope route.

The French container shipping firm had previously trialed Europe-Asia FAL3 loops late last year before rerouting them back around the Cape starting in January.

The service is operated solely by CMA CGM as part of the Ocean Alliance NEU5 service, branded by partners Cosco Shipping as the AEU6, OOCL as LL5 and by CMA CGM and Evergreen as the FAL3.

Bab el-Mandeb crossings totaled 226 from Aug. 3-9, according to data from MarineTraffic.

“The corridor remains active, but 29 dark transits across the week show that visibility risk has not disappeared,” Ampatzidis said. “Any further Houthi statement clarifying the Saudi maritime embargo, or any Saudi operational response, could quickly affect routing behavior.”