"Iran is incentivised to claim that the traffic has been thinned – and it has – CENTCOM is incentivised to claim that the impact" [CENTCOM]
The expert's explicit framing of both parties having opposing incentives to misrepresent transit figures directly supports the claim that chokepoint data is becoming a tool of competing state narratives rather than neutral fact.
Reasoning from this article
The article illustrates a structural dynamic where control over a physical chokepoint is increasingly inseparable from control over the information narrative about that chokepoint. Both Iran and the US military are shaping reported transit numbers to serve strategic messaging goals, while commercial providers offer a third, partially blind data stream (AIS dark vessels). This tripartite information fragmentation around critical infrastructure is likely to recur wherever state actors contest access to strategic waterways or corridors, making independent verification structurally harder over time.