On Aug. 28, CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said the Strait of Hormuz is "clear of sea mines... open, and momentum is building." Within a day, the IRGC Navy called that "an obvious lie" and Iran's control of the strait "completely decisive." A day after that, Deputy Foreign Minister Gharibabadi said the strait "remains closed... in coordination with Iran," aligning Tehran's diplomatic track with its navy's rejection. Two governments are now on record with mutually exclusive descriptions of the same water, and five days later, nobody outside those two governments has been able to say which one is right.

Not for lack of instruments. Three independent measures exist that would normally settle a question like this: how many ships are actually transiting, what underwriters charge to insure them, and what the market pays for the oil that moves through. All three have gone quiet at once. Hormuz transits sit exactly where they sat before Cooper spoke, 7 to 10 vessels a day. The Marsh war-risk hull premium has not moved off 7.5 to 10 percent of hull value in 42 days. Brent has not printed a confirmed price in five sessions, the longest gap since the crisis began. A claim that would normally get tested against data within hours is instead sitting in a data vacuum, and that vacuum is doing real work for both governments.