Dubai-Bound Ships Storm Kenya’s Ports as Iran Locks Down the Persian Gulf

Rows of gleaming Porsches and Japanese sedans sit under guard in a warehouse at Lamu Port, their intended home — the glittering port of Jebel Ali in Dubai — now under the shadow of Iranian missile strikes and an effective naval blockade that has convulsed global shipping to its foundations.

The cars, more than 4,200 of them landed in two voyages within a week, are among the most vivid symbols of the extraordinary commercial earthquake rippling out of the US-Israel war on Iran and washing up, improbably, on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast.

Since February 28, when the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran under Operation Epic Fury — killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and triggering a furious Iranian counter-offensive — the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s daily oil supply and enormous volumes of global cargo normally flow, has been effectively shut.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared the strait closed, began attacking vessels attempting to transit, and sent insurance rates for the corridor soaring by up to four times in days. By mid-March, just two cargo vessels and a single tanker had openly transited the choke point eastbound. Before the war began, approximately 138 ships passed through every single day.

The consequences have been seismic. Jebel Ali, Dubai’s giant container port and the ninth busiest in the world, was struck by Iranian missiles on March 1, temporarily suspending operations. Maersk, MSC, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd, the four titans of global container shipping, all suspended passages through the strait. Shipping charter rates quadrupled. War-risk insurance premiums on Middle East-bound cargo surged. And hundreds of vessels, caught in a deadly no-man’s sea, anchored off the Gulf of Oman and waited. Some, with nowhere better to go, turned south.

They turned towards Kenya.

Lamu’s Moment of War

The MV Grande Auckland, a 9,000-capacity pure car carrier operated by Italy’s Grimaldi Lines, made its maiden call at Lamu Port on the first Tuesday of this month. It had left Europe with a full load of high-end European vehicles bound for Jebel Ali. Instead, it discharged 469 of those cars at Lamu’s Kililana terminal and continued to Mumbai with the rest. What followed was even more dramatic.

Last Wednesday, March 18, the MV Grande Florida Palermo, also operated by Grimaldi Lines, arrived from Yokohama, Japan, carrying 3,800 vehicles and assorted spare parts — all originally destined for Dubai. It made its maiden Lamu call and handed over the entire consignment to port warehouses. Another vessel is expected next week, this one carrying 5,000 motor vehicle units.

Munir Minas Hussein, Chartering and Business Development Manager for Africa at Nisomar Group, which serves as the official agent for Grimaldi Shipping Line in East Africa, told reporters that convincing vehicle owners to divert to Lamu made clear commercial sense.

The port’s proximity to the Middle East gives it a decisive advantage over rival East African alternatives. According to maritime data, Lamu sits approximately 3,300 to 3,600 kilometres from Dubai and about 3,400 kilometres from Jebel Ali, making it closer to the embattled Gulf than either Mombasa or Dar es Salaam, while also benefiting from direct Indian Ocean access that shortens sailing time and cuts fuel costs.

“As an agency, we managed to convince the vehicle owners to divert and bring the vessel to Lamu Port, which has substantial economic advantages compared to other countries and ports within the Indian Ocean,” Minas told journalists gathered for the MV Grande Florida Palermo’s reception.

Kenya Ports Authority Managing Director Captain William Ruto said Lamu’s deep-water stature was the technical factor clinching the decision for major shipping lines. The port boasts a depth of 17.5 metres and 400-metre quay lengths, capable of accommodating vessels of up to 12,000 twenty-foot equivalent units. Mombasa Port’s berths, by contrast, are 15 metres deep and 300 metres long, limiting it to smaller vessels. High-quality mobile harbour cranes, rubber-tyred gantry cranes, and modern terminal trailers add to the facility’s appeal for roll-on/roll-off operations — the specialised vessel type designed to carry wheeled cargo like vehicles and trucks.

The cars will remain at Lamu until shipping agents are satisfied the security situation in the Persian Gulf permits their safe onward movement.

Mombasa Strains as the World Reroutes

While Lamu basks in an unlikely windfall, its older sibling is feeling the strain. Mombasa Port, the economic engine of the Kenyan coast and the principal maritime gateway for East and Central Africa, is grappling with a surge in vessel traffic as global shipping lines scramble to reroute around the twin blockades of the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.

Vessels that would ordinarily call at Jebel Ali or transit through the Suez Canal are now being redirected around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 10 to 14 days to transit times and over one million US dollars in additional costs per journey.

That longer routing is delivering more ships to East African shores than normal schedules would ever produce.

Shippers Council of Eastern Africa Chief Executive Agayo Ogambi confirmed the pressure bearing down on Mombasa. One shipping line alone increased its vessel calls to the port from eight to twenty following disruptions in other ports that produced congestion and longer waiting times. “This put pressure on Mombasa,” Ogambi said.

Kenya Ship Agents Association Chief Executive Elijah Mbaru was blunter about the fallout. He told journalists that the conflict had inflated charter fees from $100,000 to $400,000 per vessel, making exports prohibitively expensive and forcing cargo onto costly detours.

Emergency war-risk surcharges are being piled onto shipping costs and are expected to find their way to Kenyan consumers as higher prices on imported goods.

Cargo volumes handled through Mombasa reached a record 45.45 million metric tonnes in 2025, a near 11 percent jump on the prior year. The port’s infrastructure is now being tested to absorb a sudden and unplanned spike on top of that record base.

A War That Rewired the World’s Oceans

The magnitude of the disruption unleashed by the US-Israel strikes on Iran is difficult to overstate. The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow corridor just 39 kilometres wide at its tightest point, carries approximately 20 million barrels of oil every day — about 20 percent of global petroleum liquids consumption. It is the only maritime exit from the Persian Gulf. When it closes, cargo does not simply slow down. It stops.

Iran’s IRGC has made good on its threats. By mid-March, Iranian forces had conducted at least 21 confirmed attacks on merchant ships in and around the strait. A large wave of coordinated strikes on March 11 damaged or sank multiple vessels. The Thai-flagged bulk carrier Mayuree Naree caught fire and 20 crew members were rescued by the Royal Navy of Oman. Oil tankers were struck by Iranian drone boats off the Port of Basra in Iraq. US military intelligence confirmed that Iran had begun planting naval mines in the strait’s navigation lanes, prompting the US military to destroy 16 Iranian minelayers in a single operation.

The Houthis in Yemen, seizing their moment, simultaneously reversed a ceasefire of several months and resumed attacks on Red Sea shipping in solidarity with Tehran, closing off the Suez Canal route at the same time the Persian Gulf route went dark.

For the first time in modern history, both of the two great maritime shortcuts connecting Asia to Europe and the Middle East were simultaneously blocked.

Cargo that once took 25 days from Asia to Europe now faces a 49-day journey around the Cape of Good Hope. The global container market absorbed an immediate shock: freight rates from Shanghai to Jebel Ali more than doubled within days. CMA CGM slapped a $3,000 emergency surcharge per container on Gulf-bound cargo.

Oil prices broke through $100 per barrel within days of the strikes, after opening the prior week below $72. The International Energy Agency launched what it described as the largest emergency reserve release in its history. At its peak, tanker traffic through the strait had fallen by 90 percent compared to pre-war volumes.

Kenya’s Bittersweet Bonanza

Lamu Port General Manager Abdulaziz Mzee gave voice to the moral complexity hanging over Kenya’s commercial windfall. “There are still ships with cargo that are destined for the Gulf, but since the situation there has deteriorated, those ships are more or less just wandering or drifting at sea,” he said. “It is not something to celebrate, because people there are suffering and facing difficulties, but at the same time it is a commercial blessing.”

The Kenya Ports Authority posted that Lamu was “geared up for a spike in vessel calls in the coming days.” The port recorded 74 vessels between January and March this year alone, roughly a third of the total ships it serviced in the entire period since it first opened in 2021. Last year, cargo throughput at Lamu exploded to 799,161 metric tonnes, up from just 74,380 metric tonnes in 2024, a performance already driven by the previous disruption of the Dar es Salaam port during post-election instability in Tanzania. The Iran war is adding a fresh and potentially far more powerful engine to that growth.

Shipping lines that have made maiden calls at Lamu have already signalled interest in returning on a long-term basis. The port is offering incentives for sustained commercial commitments. Captain William Ruto confirmed that KPA revenues from the current surge already run into “hundreds of millions of shillings.”

The strategic promise of the LAPSSET corridor, the $23 billion regional infrastructure plan linking Lamu to South Sudan and Ethiopia through ports, highways and pipelines, has for years outrun the commercial reality of a port struggling to attract business from major international lines.

Before the Iran war, Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation, mainly routed its trade through Djibouti, and international shippers overwhelmingly preferred Mombasa for its road and rail connections to the Ugandan market. In a matter of days, a war thousands of kilometres away has delivered what years of government promotion could not.

But the ceiling of Lamu’s ambition remains constrained by unfinished infrastructure. Highways linking the port to South Sudan and Ethiopia remain incomplete, limiting how much cargo can be moved inland and dampening the port’s ability to serve as a full regional transit hub. Minas himself acknowledged the gap directly: “Once the hinterland infrastructure of East Africa is well built and lit, we will be able to discharge more vehicle cargo and other goods destined for Kenya and neighbouring countries like Ethiopia and South Sudan.”

The War That Has No End in Sight

US President Donald Trump has called for an international naval coalition to force the Strait of Hormuz open, naming China, France, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom as countries he hoped would dispatch warships.

The response has been tepid. Security analysts noted that most US allies opposed the war to begin with and have little appetite for a naval escort mission that would put their ships in the path of Iranian mines, drones and missiles. An Iranian commander declared on March 15 that Iran would continue to use the strait as a pressure point for as long as the war continued.

Iran has selectively permitted vessels from neutral countries to pass. Two Indian-flagged LPG tankers crossed safely on March 15 after negotiation with Tehran. A Pakistan-flagged tanker became the first confirmed non-Iranian cargo vessel to openly transit while broadcasting its location. China-linked vessels have largely been spared targeting, reflecting Beijing’s critical dependence on Gulf oil and its ongoing diplomatic leverage with Tehran.

For Kenya’s ports, that geopolitical arithmetic is straightforward. The longer the strait remains effectively closed, the longer ships will need somewhere to go. And for the foreseeable future, at least some of them will keep turning south.