President Trump Tells Tankers Show Some Guts! | Strait of Hormuz Update for March 9, 2026

On this episode of What's Going On With Shipping, these ships should go through the Strait of Hormuz and show some guts. There's nothing to be afraid of. They have no navy. We sunk all their ships. I am your host, Sal McCogliano, and welcome to today's episode.

So that was President of the United States Donald J. Trump on Fox News on Sunday to Brian Kilmeade talking about, hey, commercial ships, show some guts and sail through the Strait of Hormuz. All right, we're going to break that down and talk about why ships are probably not sailing through the Strait of Hormuz, and also ask the question, where's the US Navy? Because there is no US Navy in the Persian Gulf.

First, let's go to the new data being put out by the Joint Maritime Information Center. They are tracking vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz. So back on 28 February, we had 98 ships going through the Strait of Hormuz. On 8 March, we had one. You see that precipitous drop there that took place. It also shows you the number of tankers segregated out there. It also has for the number of tankers segregated out there. It also has for you the Bob Elman DAB. That information is from the automated identification system, in other words the transponders. Ships that are not running

transponders are not showing up on that list. I think that's a really key thing. We then have this chart showing you straight-of-horror moves transits. This goes all the way back to the beginning of the year. You'll see that normally somewhere between 120 to 140 ships are typically going through. I think you can see here where that drop takes place back on February 28th when the U.S. initiated offensive capabilities against Iran alongside Israel. And then they have a great recap here showing you the attacks perpetrated by the Iranians

against shipping. You'll see attacks initiated back on 1 March, series of attacks. We had a US tanker, the Stena Imperative hit in the shipyard over in Bahrain. One shipyard worker was hit. The Skylight, this was a container ship that was hit in the very southern end of the Strait of Hormuz. Four crew members on board were injured. You got the MKD Viam. That was hit by an unmanned surface vessel. One member of the engine crew was hit. And then you see from 3 to 4 March, ships hit.

The Golden Oak and Libra Trader were victims of unmanned surface vessel attacks. The Safin Prestige was hit on the stern of the ship. Several of the crew members were injured on board that vessel. MSC Grace, a container ship, had an explosion close aboard. The Sanagold Namib was a tanker hit by an unmanned surface vessel up off the coast of Kuwait and Iraq. Then we have an attack on 5-6 March. This is the Moussafa 2.

This is the most egregious. This was a salvage tug heading out from the UAE, and we believe at least four members of the crew were killed, if not more. And then an attack on a ship called the Arabia 3. So if you want a little bit more granular detail on this, let me point you over to the Washington Institute for Near East Policies, their interactive map here that

allows you to kind of hit every incident that has taken place. So for example here, there is the MKD VIAM. You get a description on it. They talk about the description of the incident, who the owner and operator is, gives you tons of details down to the granular level of all these attacks. Let's head over to marine traffic. Again, here is the live AIS data as broadcast. Again, you could see the massive ocean ship traffic coming out of the Strait of Malacca, kind of segwaying here, half of

it, the red dots, those are tankers still heading up toward the Persian Gulf in the Middle East. Green ships are freighters, container ships, bulkers heading to that Cape route around Africa, and when we come up here to the Strait of Hormuz, you see basically no traffic whatsoever. Still have that big anchorages forming here east of and south of Hormuz, west of Hormuz, not as many ships

showing up here, maybe kind of hiding themselves, turning off their AIS. Big anchorage off of El Jebel and Ras Tanunura here, the Saudi Arabian facilities, and then up here around Kuwait. And all right, let's address the president's comments here. Okay, show some guts and basically run the straits. There's a problem with that, Mr. President. Number one, it's not really up to the crews and the ships to do that. The companies make the orders. And right now, the companies are not doing

it largely because of insurance issues and the risk associated with it. Even if you have insurance, you want some sort of guarantee that the area is safe. And I gotta say, they aren't getting that from the United States government. For example, I give you Exhibit A. This is the United States Maritime Administration, a part of the Department of Transportation. This is their shipping arm.

They have issued this alert, active as of March 6. It replaces one that was issued on March 1st, on the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the Arabian Sea. I read verbatim to you, significant military activity continues in the geographic areas listed above. It is recommended that vessels keep clear of this area if possible. Your administration, the Maritime Administration, is telling ships, avoid this area, don't go near it.

That's not a question of guts. That's a question of the United States government is saying to avoid this area. That is going to cause insurance rates to escalate. And that's exactly what we're seeing. I should also note it says this, any US flagged owned or crewed commercial vessels that are operating in these areas should maintain a minimum standoff of 30 nautical miles

from US military vessels to reduce the risk of being mistaken as a threat. Well, I will tell you this, Mr. President, there are five US flagged commercial ships in the Persian Gulf. No worries about being within 30 miles of Navy vessels because there's none in the Persian Gulf. No worries about being within 30 miles of Navy vessels because there's none in the Persian Gulf. Zero. My question is, if you want commercial ships to run the Strait of Hormuz and sail in the Persian Gulf, you've got to move US Naval vessels into that area and demonstrate that it is safe for commercial vessels to do it. He goes on to sit there and say

he's destroyed the Navy offensive capabilities. Okay, that's great. You got to move then naval forces in. The problem is really the lack of requisite naval forces to do it. This is the chart put together by Ian Ellis Jones. There are two carrier strike groups in and around the area. Out in the Indian Ocean, you have the Abraham Lincoln strike group. Lincoln was recently photographed with about four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers around it operating in the Arabian Sea. That leaves maybe about four Arleigh Burke destroyers remaining to conduct an escort

operation along with three littoral combat ships configured for mine sweeping. You have the USS Gerald R. Ford, which just came through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea. It has a couple of Arleigh Burke destroyers with them, along with a replenishment vessel. And then you're having the USS George H. W. Bush steaming across the Atlantic right now, heading into the Mediterranean. The French have just moved their carrier strike group, the Charles de Gaulle, into the region. This is all a problem because commercial ships view risk

differently than military ships. You can sit there and say, listen, there's very little chance that the enemy is going to shoot at you. That's not the way insurance companies see it. If you have a 99% chance of surviving a missile attack, as the Navy probably does. That's great odds. I take those odds any day of the week. If I'm a commercial vessel, it is a bit different. For example, this is a speeded up image of the anchorage off Fujairah. Fujairah is at the tail end of the UAE pipeline. This is, tankers can come into this pipeline and get oil and move cargo out of it, but because of attacks on the Fujairah pipeline,

what you see here is ships moved away from Fujairah off to the air. Now I will admit, there is some spoofing that's going on there that's clustering the ships together. This map shows you that UAE pipeline right here that comes out here. This is the Hasban-Fujairah pipeline. That pipeline is absolutely essential, but we've just had an attack on the terminal there, and the attack on the terminal drove the ships away.

There's a Saudi Arabian pipeline that comes out in Yambou. If Yambou gets hit, you're not gonna be able to move cargo. I should also note that the other problem with hitting Fujairah is this. Fujairah is a major fueling port for all the world's ships. This is the price right now per ton for very low sulfur fuel oil. Problem is if you can't get into Fujairah to fuel,

this is going to create a massive disruption. Same thing for marine gas oil, same thing for the high sulfur fuel that's out there. As this chart shows you, look what has happened to Brent oil, same thing for the high sulfur fuel that's out there. And as this chart shows you, look what has happened to Brent oil. And now it's pinging, it's over this, it's over 100. It's actually about $112 this morning that it came in on. So yeah, Mr. President, I agree that

we should open up the straits, but this is going to take some action on the part of the US military, particularly the US Navy, to demonstrate that the strait is safe, not just for commercial vessels, but for naval vessels. That means putting warships in the strait. Now we are seeing some ships run through the strait. This story from G-Captain from Bloomberg, a Greek oil tanker exits Strait of Hormuz with its signal off. This is the Cheydong.

A tanker ran through the strait and came out. It's part of Dynacom Tankers Management. Okay, I don't want to use stereotypes at all, but you need to understand Greek ship owners. Greek ship owners have an opportunity here to make some money. And when a Greek ship owner sees an opportunity to make some money, they're going to be making some money. And this is why you see it. If you look at the charter rate right now for tankers, they're insane. I think I talked about it the other day. I said we went from $50,000 a day to

half a million dollars a day. There was a placement the other day for $744,000 a day. $744,000 is an insane amount of money. Yes, Scrooge McDuck levels of money. Now, to get around this, we're seeing some really strange things being done. So for example, this story by Malt Humfert over at GCaptain, the EU, the European Union, buys 100% of Russian Arctic LNG just nine months before the planned gas ban. I ran this story a while ago talking about how the EU was being kind of hypocritical in basically shutting off Russian gas, but at the same time buying it like crazy.

So Energy Secretary Chris Wright and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz went on one of the talk shows this weekend, I think it was Meet the Press, and they talked about the fact that the U.S. is waiving sanctions on Russian oil. This way, India can import, at least for 30 days, Russian oil that is sitting there afloat right now. The US had put a huge pressure on India not to buy Russian oil, and now here they are, hey, you can buy it for 30 days because we're kind of causing a little bit of a disruption

over here in the Persian Gulf. Then we have stories like this with Tokyo, Washington DC, and Beijing preparing to release their strategic reserves of petroleum. Now again, I've talked about this before. Understand, if you cut off the Strait of Hormuz and lock it off, there is still oil afloat. There's about 100 million barrels afloat, not to mention other oil that's floating or

sailing on ships around the world. So we're going to drain that down. We're going to drain down strategic reserves. The problem is going to be is the shock this is going to do to the system. And so this is why you see Japan, China, US getting ready to dip into their strategic reserves. This is also critically why the US should have replenished its strategic reserves and it

didn't. Strategic reserves are about half of where they should be right now. We then have two Gulf states declaring force majeure act of nature here regarding the Middle East crisis. So Kuwait is talking about implementing a reduction in its crude oil production, which is key. I mean, again, this is going to be the thing that's going to force ships into the Gulf. That is empty tankers, heading them up there to grab that fuel, because what Kuwait doesn't want to do is not just take refineries offline, but take production offline, because once you shut down wells, that is a long time to get it back up and running.

Then you have Qatar shutting down LNG. This is also critical, because yes, we have LNG in the United States, LNG in Australia, but you can't up that facility. It takes too long. Plus, you have a finite number of LNG tankers out there. If all of a sudden you got to move LNG from Qatar to East Asia, but now that LNG is going to come from the United States, it's a longer distance. You're going to need more ships to do that, and they are not enough ships out there. So I talked about escorting and the US Navy is going to have to demonstrate how to do it.

Just today, there was a post by the European Union Operation of Speeds. This is the escort force operating in and around the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandab, and the Gulf of Aden. You get this image here of an Italian frigate guarding two Italian container ships. They are guarding their own ships heading through the straits. As I mentioned to you before, there are five US ships stuck inside the Persian Gulf. The US Navy should go in and get them and escort them out, demonstrate that they can run them

out. Now, there is a danger to this. Back on January 9th of 2024, there was a massive convoy battle south of Yemen. And what happened was US ships, two of them, two Maersk vessels, along with several others, were running through the Bab el-Mandab when they came under missile attack and drone attack. Now, the US Navy defended them, fought them off,

but what happened is the US decided not to send any ships back through again. And from January of 2024 until September of 2025, no ships went through. Why? Because they can go around Africa. There's an alternative. There is no alternative to the Strait of Hormuz. You've got to get in there. And the United States is going to have to demonstrate that. We're going to need to see

the US Navy steam flag flying through the Strait of Hormuz, fully visible, and without getting whacked at by the Iranians. And then we're going to have to see a demonstration of commercial ships. I would envision some empty tankers being escorted in to get to Kuwait, to get to Saudi Arabia, maybe some LNG tankers to get to Qatar and start loading. That's going to be the next element.

But again, the difficulty with this is you have 500 miles from Kuwait down to the Strait of Hormuz. There is not enough US ships to escort that entire distance. That's the only way to get this done, and it's really on the United States. I am not a big endorser of the United States being the world policeman, escorting the world's shipping everywhere. However, it is the US and Israel that initiated the attacks on Iran, arguably in defense of issues that Iran have done. Unquestionably, Iran is not the greatest

nation on the planet and have done horrible things, including against people I know who was over in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 20 years. But the US needs to bear this along with potential allies. Now, there are other escort forces

available. There are the Gulf states, Bahrain, Kuwait allies. Now, there are other escort forces available.

There are the Gulf States, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE. They have naval forces, small naval forces that can be used in this, allied naval forces, Asian naval forces. The Koreans are here. We know the Chinese are close by with a Type 55 and a Type 52D destroyer in and around the area.

All of this is important. I'm not going to be surprised to start seeing Chinese ships ripping through this area, squawking Chinese vessel on their AIS just like they did through the Strait of Hormuz. All of that is going to happen. And I think the question here is the US has to develop a plan. It doesn't do any good for the president to go on Fox News and say, show some guts and run through. It has nothing to do with guts. Believe me, I know merchant mariners, they have no problem running through the Strait of Hormuz. What they want is some assurances. And the companies want insurance for it. The $20 billion that was allocated for this should have been allocated the day of the attack. Understand that's where

you needed the 20 billion. You don't need the US underwriting commercial insurance right now. The commercial insurance market is fine. Shipping will insure these vessels. Don't worry about that. They will pool money and get enough money to do it. You don't need it.

What you needed was the $20 billion the day the attacks started when they had war risk insurance but not enough. That's where the US should have came in. Hey, we'll underwrite, we'll back up this with $20 billion in case there are attacks, you guys are good. That would have kept the ships flowing. Instead, what happened? Ships locked up. And now we're trying to overcome inertia and get ships going. Finally, I want to talk about one thing. So the other day I did a video where I talked about did the US Navy just torpedo shipping, in which I discussed the

fact that the US sank that Iranian frigate off the coast of Sri Lanka. That is giving pause to shipping firms and potentially could raise insurance rates in the Indian Ocean, which we're waiting to see if that materializes. The other thing I mentioned was a post from Ed Finley Richardson, who basically talked about the idea of targeting Iranian tankers and torpedoing them. And I sat there and I said, well, let me give you an alternative strategy, and that was seizing Iranian ships, a la the way we

did Venezuela. I try to be unbiased as much as I can. And I'm also a historian, and I can't help but talk about different scenarios. I'm teaching two courses right now, one on the American Revolution, one on the Civil War, and in those classes I take devil's advocate side. I'll argue, well, the British should have done this, the Confederates should have done this. It doesn't mean I'm in favor of the British or the Confederates.

It means I'm going to put ideas out there. And when I put forward a strategy for the United States to seize Iranian tankers, let's be clear. Number one, the Iranians do this. They're still holding two Greek tankers they seized in 2022 in Bandar Abbas. So when everyone's screaming about the Iranians, you know, the U.S. attacking ships, the Iranians are holding ships they have grabbed four years ago still sitting there off Bandar Abbas.

Anyway.

I am fine with criticism, and I gotta say, when people criticize me, I don't run away from it. Hence this image right here. This is over on X. This is from JenXGirl. Hey Mercogliano and Ed Finn, which you didn't properly get the thing right, nice advice, you morons. What's that? It didn't say you morons? What's it say? Oh, effin' morons. I'm an effin' moron, in case you didn't know. There you

go. Let's continue on. Torpedo Iran's oil tankers. Well, it looks like they took your idiotic advice, now the world can thank you both for this toxic mess." What she is talking about is this video right here, which supposedly has evidence that the US has started to bomb Iranian tankers. However, what I will tell you is that's not an Iranian tanker, that is an Iranian Corvette. So you're wrong. Secondly, that's not what I said. She posted a 48-second clip in which she trimmed what I said. Now, I posted a 21-minute video and then I took the conclusion of that video,

which is about 2 minutes and 40-something seconds, and posted that directly. She further trimmed it down and edited it so it looked like I said that we should torpedo Iranian tankers. Listen, I don't run away from criticism. I leaned into it. I am an Italian from New York. It's just the part of my upbringing. I just love a good fight and I will take that. But I'm going to hit back, just to be clear. And when Gen X girl, you come at me with that, I'm right here. I'm right here for you any day of the week.

Do I regret posting what I do? Nope. Don't regret it at all. I think a strategy to interdict shipping is it. Now, everybody has heard me talk about how much I oppose targeting merchant ships. I do. But the Iranians, go back to the beginning of this video, targeted

a whole batch of ships and have killed merchant mariners. They have unleashed that against commercial shipping, much like the Houthi directed their attacks against ships that had nothing to do with Israel, Gaza, and Hamas. And when this happens, I'm sorry, I'm going to put some ideas out there. Again, historian, maritime security, maritime policy guy, this is what I do. But anyway, my best to Gen X girl 1994.

Appreciate you watching. And hey, Gen X Girl 1994. Appreciate you watching. And hey, Gen X Girl 1994, can I give you a piece of advice? Why don't you subscribe to the channel and hit the bell so you'll be alerted about new videos for you to get upset about when they come out. Leave a comment, you already did that. Share with other people, give it a thumbs up.

I'm not sure I'm going to get a thumbs up from her. But anyway, give it a thumbs up, share it across social media, which I think you will do, and if you can, support the page. Hey, Gen X girl, dip into that wallet and let's see if you'll support my page. How do you do it? You hit that super thanks button down below or head on over to Patreon and become a monthly and yearly subscriber. Until our next video, or until the next Gen X person I upset, which should be pretty soon, this our next video, or until the next Gen X person I upset, which should be pretty soon, this is Sal, signing off.