Oman navy takes 16 crew off the Saudi tanker SIDR after a Hormuz strike

Oman's Maritime Security Centre said on 7 September that a Royal Navy of Oman ship had evacuated 16 crew from the Saudi-flagged tanker SIDR and given medical care to people still aboard. The tanker carries a crew of 25. Two seafarers were killed when the ship was hit about two nautical miles northwest of Musandam, Oman said. Saudi operator Bahri had already named the dead as Filipino sailors.

The SIDR was one of two Saudi oil supertankers reported struck in the Strait of Hormuz a week earlier, as fighting between the United States and Iran flared again. Oman's statement closed the support operation after the ship was stabilised. It did not give a public account of the seven crew who were not among the 16 evacuees and the two dead.

The strait is the only sea exit from the Persian Gulf. At its narrowest it is about 21 miles wide, with traffic squeezed into even tighter lanes. Oman sits on the Musandam peninsula that juts into that gap, which is why its navy is often the first state vessel on scene when a tanker is hit there. The centre's wording was careful: logistical support, evacuation, medical care, operation concluded. It did not assign blame in the rescue note, even though other governments have already named Iran as the attacker.

The war around Hormuz is now six months old. Iran has disrupted traffic. The United States has run a counter-blockade of Iranian ports. Gulf exporters have been looking for routes that do not depend on a single choke point. On the same day as the Oman rescue, UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash told the Hili Forum in Abu Dhabi that the Emirates is expanding eastern-coast ports, pipelines and railways so that energy exports are not held hostage by the fighting. The Habshan-Fujairah pipeline already bypasses the strait and sends crude to the Gulf of Oman.

Qatar has said Gulf states cannot rely on the United States alone for security. Gargash went further and said Gulf collective action after Iranian strikes had fallen short of a united response, even though governments had long agreed on the nature of the threat. He also said a working relationship with Iran can be rebuilt, while trust may take decades.

For shipowners the practical file is insurance, routing and naval cover. A tanker two miles off Musandam is in Omani search-and-rescue range. A tanker further west is not. The SIDR case shows what that geography means in hours: an Omani hull alongside, sixteen people off, two already dead, seven still unpublished. Crews on the next Saudi or Emirati ship will read that arithmetic before they read any communique about freedom of navigation.

The rescue does not reopen the strait. It records that Oman is still willing to pull people off a burning or listing tanker while the governments that use Hormuz argue about who polices it. That is a narrower fact than a war aim, and it is the fact the Maritime Security Centre chose to put on the record on 7 September.