The Strait of Hormuz saw a sudden surge in maritime traffic Thursday morning, hours after U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a surprise memorandum of understanding to halt their recent conflict.
Ship-tracking data from MarineTraffic.com showed at least 10 commercial vessels transiting the vital waterway, with six more preparing to exit the Persian Gulf. Among the first to cross were ships stranded for months by the conflict, including the Mraikh, a French-flagged liquefied natural gas carrier operated by QatarEnergy, and a vehicle carrier owned by Italy’s Grimaldi Group.
While traffic is growing, it remains far below the pre-war baseline of roughly 135 ships per day. Some mariners are still operating under wartime precautions; cargo ships owned by Chinese and Hong Kong firms continue to broadcast that they have “Chinese crew on board,” a tactic adopted when Tehran threatened to target U.S.- and Israeli-linked vessels. Meanwhile, several sanctioned Iranian oil tankers that breached the U.S. blockade earlier in the week were still traveling toward domestic ports.
The breakthrough came Wednesday when President Trump signed the agreement during a dinner outside Paris hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, while President Pezeshkian signed remotely from Tehran. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who helped mediate the talks alongside Qatar, announced on X that the deal takes “immediate effect.”
Sharif noted that “as a first step, the Islamic Republic of Iran will instantly reopen the Strait of Hormuz and the United States of America will immediately lift the naval blockade.”
Despite the quick restart of shipping, officials on both sides are warning of major challenges ahead. In Iran’s government—where Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei holds ultimate authority—Foreign Minister Esmail Baqaei cautioned that the next phase of diplomacy will be far more complicated.
“Our work is now more difficult than before, because implementing international agreements is always far more difficult than drafting them,” Baqaei said in a statement carried by state broadcaster IRIB. He added that vessels were already moving through Iranian ports “without any problems” due to the end of the American blockade.
Face-to-face implementation talks are scheduled to begin Friday at the Burgenstock resort in Switzerland. The Swiss foreign ministry confirmed that the United States, Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, and other involved countries will meet to hammer out details, including future negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program.
However, a serious fault line has already emerged over the status of southern Lebanon. The signed memorandum explicitly demands an “immediate and permanent end to military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” Iran has stated that any continued Israeli military presence would violate the terms.
Yet Israel, which is not a signatory to the agreement, signaled it does not intend to withdraw immediately. On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that its troops would remain inside a six-mile-deep “security zone” along Lebanon’s southern border.
“IDF soldiers are stationed in the designated area of operation in southern Lebanon, and will continue to remove threats and strengthen the defense of Israel’s northern residents,” the military said in a statement. According to reporting by the Reuters news agency, Israeli officials are currently holding intense talks with Washington to secure permission to maintain those deployments. A senior Israeli official told Reuters that the country was “conducting stubborn negotiations” over the issue. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has not commented.
The friction underscores the high stakes of a war that began on March 2 when the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel. On Thursday, the IDF announced that Master Sgt. Alexander Filin, 29, was killed and seven other soldiers were wounded in combat operations the previous day.
Since the start of the conflict, 31 Israeli soldiers and one civilian contractor have died. In Lebanon, a massive campaign of Israeli airstrikes and a ground invasion have killed more than 3,800 people, according to Lebanese authorities.
READ: Pump Relief: National Gas Average Slips Under $4 After Trump Signs Iran Deal
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