That count, Aug. 29 -- Six thousand sailors on four hundred ships are waiting.

not a military victory, not a ceasefire, not even a functioning shipping lane, but a humanitarian limbo in which thousands of seafarers remain stranded on vessels that cannot safely move in either direction.

The war itself was launched on February 28, when US and Israeli forces killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in a strike on Tehran and hit nuclear installations across the country. President Donald Trump had promised it would last four to five weeks. On Friday, as the six-month mark passed, the sole verifiable outcome was a waterway through which more than a fifth of the world's oil once flowed that now sees traffic in the "low double digits," compared with ...