The Strait of Hormuz remains open to all shipping except vessels linked to “Iran’s enemies”, Iranian media reports published on Sunday quoted Iran’s representative to the U.N. maritime agency as saying.
Ali Mousavi’s comments came from an interview published on Friday by Chinese news agency Xinhua, before U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to target Iranian power plants if the strait was not “fully open” within 48 hours.
The threat of Iranian attacks during the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has kept most ships from getting through the narrow strait, the conduit for around a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, threatening a global energy shock.
Because where a ship is registered is not where it’s owned. Almost zero ships are registered to the countries that own them.
Looks like a Thai company to me: https://www.preciousshipping.com/en/who-we-are/ (at least all the crew were Thai nationals).
The ownership can be obscured, if Iran hit it, it’s because they got a tip Israel or the US’ dickhead billionaires were involved, and or it was trading with the US. This is fiendishly hard to trace by design.
Iran’s proxy the Houthis made a promise to also only hit enemy ships. And then shot at everything that moved - ships were sunk where people could see no connection.
It is quite reasonable to doubt how precise Iran is here…
By that definition, any ship probably has some connection to the US/NATO, which makes their whole point about the Hormuz being open void.
Not at all, chinese, Indian, perhaps even Javan shipping all gets a pass under the Iranians. And anyone else willing to play by their rules. It’s Iran’s straits, they have a right to make the rules on it.
Yeah that’s fair but I think it goes back to my point that no vessel will feel safe operating in the strait at this time (regardless of any promises).
Only way to ensure safe passage is for each trusted nation-state to clear each one of their ships individually in advance with Iran. And even then there’s always the possibility Iranians fire at it by mistake.
I agree, not the least as the US would hit these fuckers and blame Iran if they could, and they can.
The other issue is the insurers won’t touch these vessels at this time, these are expensive ships, 100 million I think, and the orders take several years to fulfill, mostly chinese and east asian shipyards I’ve been informed.