Hormuz reopening plans thrown into doubt after Evergreen boxship attack
A drone strike on the Ever Lovely just after it cleared the strait has forced the IMO to suspend its evacuation of trapped ships.
The tentative restart of commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been knocked off course after an Evergreen containership was struck shortly after completing its transit, leading the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to suspend the evacuation of vessels still trapped in the Gulf.
The 9,532 teu Ever Lovely was hit by a drone a day earlier, having used the southern route close to the Omani side of the strait. It had been sailing in convoy with two other Evergreen boxships, the 8,500 teu Ever Lotus and the 5,600 teu Ever Unicorn. Evergreen reported no injuries and only minor damage, and said the vessel remained seaworthy. AIS data shows the Ever Lovely has since left the area and is now bound for Singapore.
The strike landed just as movements through Hormuz were starting to pick up, following the IMO's evacuation-corridor announcement and Oman's release of six authorised eastbound waypoints — the first formal safe-passage routing since the strait closed.
In the wake of the attack, IMO secretary-general Arsenio Dominguez said the evacuation would be paused while the organisation re-verified that safety guarantees still held.
"Following the launch of the IMO's evacuation plan, through which several vessels have already been successfully evacuated, I have decided to temporarily pause its implementation," Dominguez said.
The plan had been intended to bring more than 11,000 seafarers out of the region after months of disruption. The IMO had said earlier in the week that the operation would be run jointly with Iran, Oman, other coastal states, the US and industry, and that the necessary safety assurances were in place. Those assurances are now being tested again.
Shipping body BIMCO said it was "deeply concerned" by the attack, calling it a blow to the dual effort to evacuate ships and reopen transits.
"The attack is a setback in the plans to evacuate ships and resume transits through the Strait of Hormuz," BIMCO said, while noting that some transits could still go ahead.
The association said the episode underscored the need for clearer agreements between Washington and Tehran, warning that the language of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding remains "not sufficiently clear".
That ambiguity is now the core problem for owners. Iran has cautioned that ships using routes it has not designated will not be covered by safe-passage guarantees, even as the Oman/IMO corridor was created specifically to give stranded vessels a way out of the Gulf. Iran's Persian Gulf Strait Authority has stated that transits outside its own approved routes fall outside any guarantee.
Maritime analytics firm Windward said Iran had ordered vessels on the southern corridor to turn back the previous day, tracking five ships reversing course and a sixth going dark.
