About

whoclosedhormuz.com answers one question: is the Strait of Hormuz open or closed, and who flipped it? The name is a nod to the news-cycle back-and-forth — it is NOT an editorial claim that the strait is always closed.

We fuse two independent data streams:

• Ground truth — live AIS vessel traffic. If tankers are moving through the chokepoint, the strait is functionally open regardless of the political narrative.
• Narrative — an LLM-curated feed of Reuters, AP, Al Jazeera and official statements, classifying each headline into OPEN / CLOSED / RESTRICTED with an attributed actor and a short reason.

We show both side-by-side so the user can judge discrepancies. That credibility gap is itself the story.

The ship map is an hourly snapshotof MarineTraffic tile data covering the chokepoint, not a live AIS feed — free satellite AIS over the Persian Gulf does not exist. The map always displays the capture timestamp so you can see how stale it is (amber after 2h, red after 6h). The scrape method is lifted with thanks from montanaflynn/ishormuzopenyet (MIT).

Built in seven days, Apr 18–25 2026. Code lives on GitHub; the pipeline is documented in the disclaimer.

This is a one-person project. Tips via the footer link keep the hosting, Supabase, and Gemini bills paid.