The incident comes just hours after reports emerged that the U.S. Navy has created an entirely new shipping route outside the strait, following extensive dredging operations that deepened the seabed. According to satellite monitoring, the U.S. Navy has conducted an underwater excavation operation in recent months, dredging and deepening a shipping channel that previously could not accommodate large oil tankers, located near the Omani coast and beyond the reach of the Iranian regime.
The original natural shipping lane measured approximately 1,600 feet wide with a natural depth of about 93 feet, dimensions that allow standard commercial vessels to pass but not the massive oil tankers known in the petroleum industry as VLCCs (Very Large Crude Carriers). Over recent months, the U.S. Navy has re-engineered the route, dredging the seabed and expanding the channel, which runs between the Omani island of Jazirat Musandam and the Omani mainland.
The route has become one of the strait's major new traffic arteries, with the United States now moving millions of barrels of oil through it nightly. Thanks to Jazirat island flanking the route from the north and the curvature of the Earth, Iranian forces cannot effectively target the new channel.
