Did a 'zombie ship' exit the Hormuz Strait on March 20? Report offers shocking details

A possible 'zombie ship' on Friday (local time) appeared to exit the Hormuz Strait amid the war between Iran and US-Israel forces, which has reached its third week.

No, zombie ships are not vessels carrying zombies, but active, real vessels that take on the false identities of already scrapped ships in order to circumvent maritime regulations.

The alleged zombie ship that was tracked leaving the Hormuz Strait on Friday reportedly identified itself as the Japanese-flagged LNG Jamal (IMO: 9200316), a liquefied natural gas tanker, a Bloomberg report said.

Notably, Japan is one of the nations—including India and Turkey—that have managed to secure safe passage for some of its vessels through the Hormuz Strait.

However, the vessel in question had also allegedly been taken to a demolition yard in India in October last year, where it is being broken up, the report added, citing market participants and port agents' reports.

If confirmed, the ship posing as the LNG Jamal would be the first vessel using such a deception tactic to cross the Hormuz Strait since the beginning of the three-week-long chaos in the Gulf.

THE WEEK could not independently verify the identity and nature of the alleged zombie ship.

The report notes that the zombie ship had first begun transmitting AIS data under its assumed identity on March 13, when it indicated that it was headed to Sohar, Oman, and that it was already in the Gulf of Oman.

The vessel then went dark—switched off its AIS transmissions—before popping up in the Persian Gulf (near Sharjah, UAE) on Friday, this time showing no clear destination.

Meanwhile, the safe passage of vessels through the Hormuz Strait continues to be based on Iran's "special conditions"—under which Tehran has warned of attacks on US and allied vessels that might try to transit the waterway, and offered safe passage for only certain ships on a permission-basis.

Iran's lawmakers are also considering imposing taxes on ships passing through the Hormuz Strait as a means of leverage in the war.

This has led to maritime traffic through the embattled strait coming to a near standstill—the same waterway that had been seeing the flow of about 20 per cent of the world's energy exports before the war.