Iran Drone Strike on Ever Lovely Shatters Hormuz Ceasefire, Triggering U.S. Retaliation

The shot that shattered Hormuz's fragile calm

At 14:10 UTC on June 25, 2026, a drone struck the starboard side of the Singapore-flagged containership Ever Lovely as she exited the Strait of Hormuz approximately 7.5 nautical miles southeast of Oman's Port of Dahit.gcaptain The vessel, operated by Taiwan's Evergreen Marine Corporation, sustained bridge damage but no casualties and completed its transit.gcaptain The United States government attributed the strike to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, calling it a "foolish violation" of the US-Iran ceasefire signed just eight days earlier.aljazeera

The attack immediately suspended a UN-backed evacuation of more than 11,000 sailors stranded inside the Gulf since the strait was effectively closed after US and Israeli strikes on Iran in late February.apnews The International Maritime Organization paused its Hormuz Evacuation Framework — launched two days earlier, on the IMO's own Day of the Seafarer — pending renewed safety guarantees.gcaptain About 115 ships had cleared the strait in recent days; roughly 500 remain.apnews

Ceasefire words, IRGC actions

The US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding, signed June 17 at the G7 margins in Versailles, committed both parties to a 60-day negotiating process with Iran pledging "best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge."aljazeera But the IRGC's self-proclaimed Persian Gulf Strait Authority had already warned that vessels transiting without Iranian permission "will not be covered by the guarantee of safe passage."gcaptain Iran's chief negotiator told state media that "everyone should know that the administration of the Strait of Hormuz will never go back to the way it was before the war."aljazeera

US Central Command struck Iranian missile and drone storage facilities and coastal radar positions on June 26, calling it "a powerful response" that "clearly violated the ceasefire."apnews +1 Iran's foreign ministry confirmed counter-strikes against US-linked targets and accused Washington of being a "treaty-breaking regime."aljazeera Bahrain reported Iranian drones targeting its territory in the same exchange.aljazeera

Markets, insurance, and the next transit

Before the conflict, the strait carried roughly 20% of global seaborne oil trade at about 120 vessel transits per day.gcaptain War-risk premiums have climbed from 0.05% to over 0.7% of hull value per transit — what one shipping executive described to CNBC as "a serious business model stress test."gcaptain Brent crude rose roughly $1.50 a barrel in Asian trading on June 26, while Abu Dhabi's Murban benchmark jumped nearly 4%.gcaptain Marine data firm Windward noted 43 transits were still recorded after the attack, but warned "the pace of normalization has slowed."apnews

A second tanker was struck in the strait on June 27 as the two sides continued trading blows.aljazeera Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meeting Gulf Cooperation Council ministers in Bahrain when the Ever Lovely was hit, warned that accepting Iranian control of the waterway "will spread throughout the world like a contagion."gcaptain The 60-day MOU nominally remains in force — but whether the IRGC considers itself bound by it is the question every shipowner and insurer must now answer.