on Thursday said they were ready<\/a> “to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the strait.”<\/p>\nBut it remains a daunting mission.<\/p>\n
“This is not just a maritime issue, and escort ships will not solve the problem alone… it would need a whole wrap around it, of air capability, maritime capability, crewed, uncrewed, long-range strike, short-strike, et cetera,” a UK defence official said in a briefing on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“It’s a significant military challenge… This must be a multinational solution,” the official added. “We’re not anywhere near that at the moment.”<\/p>\n
Diplomatic off-ramp<\/p>\n
A purely diplomatic solution remains on the table and is the preferred route for many global leaders.<\/p>\n
Several governments are in bilateral talks with Tehran over an “emerging IRGC registration and vetting system”, said Richard Meade, editor-in-chief of maritime intelligence journal Lloyd’s List , referring to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.<\/p>\n
The proposed system would create an Iranian-approved “safe corridor” for ships to use, Meade told an online briefing on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“We know that several governments – including China, but (also) India, Pakistan, Iraq, Malaysia – they’re all in direct talks with Tehran, coordinating vessel transits,” he said.<\/p>\n
At least nine ships have already used this corridor, which routes ships close to Iran’s Larak Island for visual checks by Iranian authorities, he added.<\/p>\n
While this offers some movement, Meade warned that “negotiated safe passage… is unlikely to dramatically increase the trickle of tonnage”.<\/p>\n
Take the chance<\/p>\n
Another option is for shipowners to risk crossing the strait without dealing with Iran.<\/p>\n
“Greek owners and operators have, typically, a higher risk appetite” and continue to move tankers through the route, Bridget Dyken, an analyst at Lloyd’s List Intelligence told the briefing.<\/p>\n
Her colleague Cichen Shen added there was evidence of a potential Chinese exit plan where tankers pay a “7.5 percent of hull value” insurance rate for 72 hours of coverage to transit the strait.<\/p>\n
Muddle through<\/p>\n
Iran could continue to maintain a partial opening of the strait in the medium term, with opaque rules for transiting, Richard Luckyn-Malone of intelligence consultancy Herminius told the Marine Insurance London industry conference on Friday.<\/p>\n
“Strategic ambiguity is absolutely fundamental to what they do, and it would very much serve Iran’s purposes if this was where we sat,” he said.<\/p>\n
But he questioned whether “the world is actually going to sit still and accept the idea of the straits being ambiguously open for months and months.”<\/p>\n
Wait it out<\/p>\n
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf warned on Tuesday that “the Strait of Hormuz won’t return to its pre-war status”.<\/p>\n
“Even in the best-case scenario, going back to a fully reopened status is several months away,” Luckyn-Malone said.<\/p>\n
“There’s unexploded ordnance floating around. There may be minefields… and there’s going to be nervous security forces on either side.”<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Global shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has ground to a bare trickle, amid widespread conflict in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-340469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n