Shipping traffic slows through Strait of Hormuz amid Middle East tensions

At the narrow throat of the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world's oil has long flowed as a matter of routine, commerce now moves with the hesitation of a traveler who senses danger ahead. Persistent conflict across the Middle East has thinned the passage of tankers and cargo vessels, forcing shipping companies into a calculation as old as trade itself: the cost of risk weighed against the cost of delay. What happens in this slender waterway between Iran and Oman does not stay there — it travels outward through fuel prices, factory schedules, and the quiet anxieties of energy markets o