War risk 2026: the Middle East dominates the headlines, the Black Sea dominates the data
The Middle East dominates the headlines but the Black Sea dominates the data
I posted a few years back about my frustration with main stream news coverage on the maritime markets and how often it seemed to conflict with the data. While it's improved significantly by dint of shipping becoming a more important arena in geopolitics, you still end up with the rhetoric being imbalanced with reality.
The war in the Middle East has dominated the headlines for obvious reasons, to the point the majority of the country has seen videos of ships on fire having been attacked by either side of the conflict.
And even people in the industry, if pushed for an answer on where the most dangerous place in the world to trade is (from a maritime perspective) right now, would mostly point to the Strait and The Red Sea.
Not even close to true.
As you can see from the chart, only briefly did the ME represent the largest share of global maritime War Risk events, starting on Mar 3 when the Libra Trader (IMO 9562673), was struck by an unidentified projectile while anchored 10NM east of Fujairah, UAE.
Then there was a steady decline from April (25%) to August (12%) which tracks the stop-start Iran-US talks. In June MoU broke down, Iran resumed attacks, US reimposed a port blockade.
The Strait is clearly still disputed in early September but my point being that perhaps contrary to popular belief the no. events has fell of precipitously.
The opposite is true for the Black Sea however.
Jan-march Ukraine's drone campaign was very much in progress, to the point that Russia turned to the IMO for support.
The spike from the Iran war then dilutes the Black Sea % share but then as the ME receded, Black Sea climbed back: 62% (Apr), 56% (May), 65% (Jun).
And then in July, Ukraine launched “Operation MoLoChKa” where Ukraine's drone forces claimed 172 ships hit in 12 days at the peak.
Russia struck 35 Ukrainian-trading vessels in port and 22 en route in July alone; Ukraine claimed 206 hits on Russian shadow fleet units.
Into August the share climbed to 83% with infrastructure being the new target.
Ukraine struck the Sheskharis crude terminal at Novorossiysk and Russia hit Ukrainian grain terminals.
Ukraine said Russia hit 52 civilian vessels in just six weeks (July to mid-August) according to Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry.
Russia hit five ships in a single assault including a burning Greek bulker; shadow fleet tankers were photographed exiting the Bosphorus wearing anti-drone cages
Look at the relationship between Share of War Risk incidents vs Share of Google search interest. It dropped off a cliff in March and hasn't really rebalanced at all.
We generate the analysis using the Maritime Data Platform (which lets users use natural language to analyse maritime data sets) and then beautify them in Claude.
Sources:
War Risk Incidents: Maritime Data Platform security events, source data Ambrey. War risk = sightings plus physical damage, January to August 2026, by region.
Attention: Google Trends worldwide search interest, same period, monthly average. Middle East = "Strait of Hormuz" plus "Persian Gulf".Search interest is a proxy for attention, not a count of headlines.
Context: TradeWinds, linked inline.
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