France Tracks 750 Ships Stranded in Strait of Hormuz
France's Saturday turned on a single waterway. The navy's Brest MICA centre tracked 750 civilian ships stranded by Iran's Hormuz blockade and 24 Iranian attacks since 28 February, as Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrapped a Gulf tour and Saudi Arabia warned of fresh US strikes on Iran within 48 hours. Friday's May Day rallies under 'bread, peace and freedom' tied rising French energy bills to the same war.
The Strait of Hormuz set the tempo of France's news this Saturday. In a basement at the country's western tip, Commanding Officer Thomas Scalabre's Maritime Information Cooperation and Awareness Centre in Brest tracked the more than 750 civilian ships still stranded on the Gulf side of the strait, sending encrypted alerts within a 50-nautical-mile radius to 85 transport companies that include CMA CGM and Maersk. The centre has logged 40 security incidents since the Iran war began in late February, including 24 direct Iranian attacks on commercial vessels and Tehran's claim to have laid sea mines. France and the United Kingdom have pledged to assemble a peaceful coalition to reopen the strait — but only after the conflict ends.
Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrapped a swing through the Gulf monarchies on 1 May aimed at preparing for a post-war scenario, and found the Gulf divided. Saudi Arabia, the visit's principal stop, expects renewed US strikes on Iranian civilian infrastructure within 48 hours — strikes Iran has warned would draw retaliation against Gulf states. President Trump first floated such strikes in late March; since then a fragile ceasefire of nearly 30 days has held alongside stalled US–Iran talks.
The war reached French streets a day earlier. May Day demonstrations gathered in Paris and across the country under the joint-union slogan “bread, peace and freedom,” explicitly tying rising energy and grocery costs to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. The same week, the government introduced a bill to allow bakeries and florists to employ workers on 1 May — a politically sensitive carve-out that drew unanimous opposition from the major unions, who told the prime minister, “Don't touch May Day.”
The Hormuz crisis sits in a chain of recent reporting: the Telegraph documented the IRGC's “mosquito fleet” on 1 May, an Iranian seafarers' union counted 44 civilian deaths in US-Israeli strikes the same day, and an estimated 20,000 seafarers remain trapped on Gulf cargo ships, per reporting from 27 April.