U.S. conducting stealth operation to transport oil through Hormuz

The U.S. military has quietly established a shipping corridor in and out of the Strait of Hormuz to transport millions of barrels of oil each day — a notable success even as the broader war remains at a stalemate, two U.S. officials told Axios.

• Under the operation, which has been underway for the last several weeks, 15 to 20 tankers have entered and exited the strait through a southern channel along the coast of Oman.
• About 10 million barrels of oil a day — roughly half the pre-war volume — are being transported out of the strait and injected into the global energy market, the officials said.

Why it matters: The U.S.-led operation is mitigating one of the most painful aspects of the war: the disruption to oil supplies that sent crude prices soaring. While the amount of oil coming out of the strait is still below pre-war levels, it is making a discernible difference in global supplies, officials say.

How it works: The effort goes beyond escorting outbound tankers with oil on board. The U.S. military is helping empty tankers enter the Gulf from the Arabian Sea through the strait, pick up oil from UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait, and then exit.

• The full details of the operation have not been previously reported.
• "We have been controlling the southern lane of the Strait of Hormuz for two months now. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can be a nuisance, but they don't control the strait. We do," one of the U.S. officials, who has direct knowledge of the matter, said.

Behind the scenes: The task force overseeing the Hormuz effort is being run out of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division headquarters in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

• The task force is coordinating with regional Gulf partners. It creates a daily list of ships coming out of the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz and into the Arabian Sea, as well as a list of rented empty tankers that travel from the Arabian Sea, through the strait and into the ports of Gulf countries to pick up more oil.
• Each night, the ships are scheduled to move in one big outbound line during a certain time slot and one big inbound line during a separate time slot.
• The ships are given several checkpoints to pass through and report back.
• The U.S. Air Force has fighter jets that circle above and look for Iranian cruise missiles and drones to shoot down.

Zoom in: The operation was made possible by a recent two-week U.S. Central Command military campaign that degraded Iran's radar and maritime surveillance systems, the officials said.

• Iran has diminished visibility of the traffic in the southern channel of the strait. Its monitoring is limited to a few radars it managed to reconstitute as well as "spotters" in small IRGC fast boats, U.S. officials say.
• Because the Iranians are mostly "blind," they are launching drones and cruise missiles in the general direction of where ships might be transiting.
• Some ships have been hit by the Iranian attacks, but many were stopped by the U.S. military. On Monday night, for example, U.S. forces shot down eight Iranian drones and two cruise missiles, one of the U.S. officials said.

State of play: U.S. officials say that over the past two weeks, 15 to 20 tankers transited in and out of the Strait of Hormuz each night through the southern channel, keeping the exports going.

• The average daily exports have been growing and are now close to 10 million barrels, U.S. officials say.
• On some nights over the last few weeks, they note, the amount of oil moving out of the Gulf was 15 to 20 million barrels.
• On Tuesday night, more than 20 ships were slated to move in and out of the strait through the southern lane, with approximately 15 million barrels of oil potentially coming out, one of the officials said.

What he's saying: "There is a tremendous amount of oil coming out of the Strait of Hormuz," President Trump told Axios on Wednesday.

• He said the U.S. is not negotiating with Iran at the moment. "They are wasting time. It's a waste of time to negotiate with them," he said.
• "The Iranians still have some fight left, but overall they are a shell of themselves," Trump said.