Iran's IRGC Navy says 35 commercial vessels, including oil tankers, container ships and cargo carriers, transited the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours under its coordination, according to Iranian state media reports carried by Tasnim and Fars and relayed by Marine Insight [1].

The number matters less for its size than for its framing and its trend. The IRGC said all vessels crossing the waterway did so "with the permission of and coordination with the IRGC Navy" — a restatement of Tehran's claim that passage through the strait is granted, not free [1]. The 35 figure is also the third in a rising sequence reported by the same source: 26 ships earlier this week, 31 a day earlier, and now 35 [1].

Treat this as an Iranian claim, not an independent count. It comes from IRGC-linked state media via a trade republisher, and it is not reconciled with the other tallies now in circulation — the JMIC transit counts, Lloyd's List's weekly figure, or Kpler's much lower daily readings cited in earlier coverage. Those trackers and Tehran are measuring different things, and the gap between them remains the central open question about the corridor.

What is new here is the explicit permission regime attached to a rising daily number. If traffic is genuinely climbing while every transit is described as IRGC-authorised, that is a different corridor from the one implied by prewar freedom of navigation, and it is the version Tehran wants on the record as Washington presses its counter-blockade and as CENTCOM's strikes on Iranian tankers extend into the Gulf of Oman approach.

Infomarine notes that any additional controls in the area can affect global oil markets, shipping operations and marine insurance costs [1].