'Only single-digit number of ships' passing Hormuz, Iran tells CGTN

Iran's deputy nuclear chief Behrouz Kamalvandi has disputed US claims that the number of oil-carrying vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz is growing, telling CGTN that the traffic remains in the single digits.  

"The number of ships is not the number that they [the US] are claiming," Kamalvandi said on Tuesday during the International Atomic Energy Agency's General Conference in Vienna.

"We have only a single-digit number of ships which are in traffic going and coming into the Strait of Hormuz," he said.

Before the US-Iran conflict, shipments amounted to over 100 vessels per day. This figure has since fallen to well below 14 ships per day, according to preliminary ship tracking data cited by Reuters.

US secretary of energy Chris Wright, however, said the United States had made "tremendous progress" in restoring traffic through the strategic waterway.

Iran's initial efforts to impede all flow through the Strait of Hormuz had not been successful, Wright told CGTN and other media outlets at the IAEA event on Monday. 

"We are today up to a 10 million barrels per day average of oil and oil products going on water through the strait. You will see that number grow in the coming week," Wright said. "Time for Iran to make a choice. They don't have many cards in their hand."

Kamalvandi rejected that assessment, saying "a country under invasion" has every card to play.

"We have many more cards," Kamalvandi told CGTN. "And we have a very strong will to defend our country."

Visa dispute 

Kamalvandi also addressed the visa dispute that prevented his superior, AEOI chief Mohammad Eslami, from attending the IAEA conference.

Kamalvandi said the IAEA's host country Austria issued a visa about two weeks ago but "all of a sudden, under pressure from the Americans, they revoked it."

"This is not good," Kamalvandi added. "This is not only a matter for Iran, it is an international issue. And I think everybody, every country, has to react."