Author Ben Pinnington
You don’t need What3words to find the Strait of Hormuz these days. The question is how this maritime choke point, which sits between Oman and Iran, was so underestimated by the US administration as it unleashed Operation Epic Fury.
Iran’s menacing of the Strait is a well-known perennial worry of the maritime industry. At Polaris, we first started writing about the Iranians holding the Strait to ransom 10 years ago when we began working with Oman Drydock in Duqm which Iran targeted with a drone attack in early March.
Oman Drydock’s number one selling point was it allowed ships to be repaired without risking navigating the unpredictable Strait of Hormuz, as Duqm is positioned on the Arabian Gulf in the south of Oman. I was lucky to visit Duqm twice and as spectacular as the $1 billion shipyard is its location felt remote and barren. The dream then was Duqm, which was little more than a hotel and some housing, could become a major city — today that no longer feels quite so far-fetched.
Nevertheless, it is astonishing that this most obvious of booby traps has tripped up the American war machine.
You do wonder who the maritime grown-up in the room was when this conflict was being discussed.
If anyone raised that, with a handful of cheap mines and drones, Iran could with disarming ease strangle one of the key shipping routes of the world, they were clearly not listened to.
Perhaps President Trump’s military muscle and deal-making prowess will coerce the Iranians to the table for self-preservation. But that scenario is looking more uncertain, as this most heinous of regimes seems intent on fighting to the death and squeezing America and its allies’ balls as hard as it can for as long as it can.
There can be no doubt the world would be better off without the vile regime, which machine-gunned 30,000 of its own people during protests in January, but with shipping at a virtual standstill — how?
The fact the US rowed back on threats to obliterate Iran’s infrastructure, as one solution, was partly apparently as a result of Oman, which issued dire warnings of the consequences.
Oman is better placed than almost any country to advise America on Iran.
Due to its maritime geography, Oman has never had the luxury of shunning its near neighbor Iran.
The result is that for as long as this shoot-out at the OK Corral goes on, maritime will remain front and center of mainstream attention.
Myopic sea blindness has found a cure in the worst possible way.
It will be very important that merchant maritime figures step up to the plate and use this moment to ensure the reporting hears expert industry insight.
The mainstream media is largely ignorant of maritime and wants and needs help reporting it.
It was excellent, for example, to hear Lloyd’s insurance tell Sky News that a naval escort was no guarantee of a merchant ship’s safety.
In fact, an escort could make a convoy a drone or missile target.
In addition, the plight of seafarers must not be lost in the fog of war. Macho talk of ships toughing out the Strait has mercifully been dropped.
Not only is the financial risk of losing a vessel worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions, carrying millions of dollars of cargo, intolerable, the threat of countless non-combatant civilian seafarers being expected to put their lives on the line is unacceptable.
So this is crunch time.
The maritime industry must fight for its voice to be heard.
The perils of maritime not promoting itself and its expertise not being listened are now there for all to see.
Taking out this evil regime hell-bent on slaughter and suffering is a noble cause, but as a result of the methods, shipping is set to get hit as hard as any industry.
It’s time to speak up as we stand on the precipice of the biggest energy crisis in history.