The US naval blockade of Iran has stopped about $25 billion worth of Iranian oil from reaching the market, the commander of US Central Command said on 16 October 2026. Admiral Brad Cooper gave the figure in a video update that CENTCOM posted on X and that the Associated Press reported through The Times of Israel.
In the same update, Cooper said US forces had helped 400 merchant vessels through the Strait of Hormuz in the past week alone, and had helped move more than one billion barrels of oil out of the Gulf since the war began. He also said the United States had helped freeze about $350 million in Iranian cryptocurrency.
A strait that Iran closed in February
Iran effectively shut the strait after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February 2026, and the closure pushed up oil prices worldwide. Since then, Cooper said, Iranian attacks on commercial shipping have killed more than 20 civilian mariners.
Cooper's numbers describe two different things happening at once. The blockade is aimed at Iranian ports and Iranian cargo. The escorts are aimed at everyone else's ships, which still have to pass within range of Iranian missiles, drones and fast boats to reach the Indian Ocean. A tanker leaving Kuwait or Iraq can be assisted through the strait on the same day that an Iranian tanker is turned back.
The $25 billion figure is the command's own estimate, and the update did not say how it was calculated, over what period, or at what oil price. What the figure signals is that CENTCOM is measuring the blockade by revenue denied to Tehran rather than by ships intercepted.
What the escorts tell shipowners
The 400 vessels in a week is the more immediately useful number for the shipping industry. It suggests that traffic through Hormuz is moving under protection rather than stopping altogether. Insurers and charterers watch that count closely, because each escorted transit is a data point on how much risk the US Navy is absorbing on their behalf.
The casualty figure cuts the other way. Twenty civilian deaths since February show that protection has limits, and that Iran retains the ability to hit ships that are not escorted or that are struck before help arrives. Military Ledger reported in October on two ships struck in Hormuz as wider attack claims emerged.
The European Union runs its own naval mission in the region, Operation ASPIDES, which accompanies merchant ships and defends them against attack but does not enforce the US blockade. The two missions share the same waters with different legal mandates, a distinction explained in how interdiction, blockade and escort differ.
What to watch next
Three things would turn Cooper's update into a measurable record: a dated accounting of the cargoes stopped, the price assumptions behind the $25 billion, and weekly transit figures that can be compared over time. Until CENTCOM publishes them, the figure stands as the commander's assessment of how much the blockade is costing Iran, delivered in the eighth month of a war that began with the strait's closure.