It is asymmetrical warfare. A hundred plus ships went through the straight daily. Attackers only need to occasionally damage a ship to make the crossing look deeply unappealing. No military intervention can promise 100% defense to passing vessels.
If you don't like making those kinds bargains in the future, maybe next time don't upset the status quo[1] by starting a war that you then go on to lose[2], which forces you to bargain from a position of weakness.
Everyone in the DoD with triple-digit IQ knew that this would be the most likely outcome of starting a war with Iran, but all of those people got purged by Trump last year.
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[1] The status quo was that Iran was not in control of the strait, and all shipping traffic could pass through it.
[2] Iran has so far accomplished it's objectives in the war, the US and Israel did not. It didn't get regime-changed, and its in now in control of the strait.
As the value of the oil goes up it becomes worth it to risk the ship. Even if you're paying to insure it there's an equilibrium point between odds and value.
Obviously 50-50 doesn't pencil out at $100 or even $200 a barrel. But 1:50 might at $2xx. IDK I'm not a shipping expert.
Technically true, but ship + cargo are going to be worth over a billion dollars. Any ship carrying petroleum products is going up be a juicy target for the Iranians looking to flex their muscles.
Someone could say the risk is financially worth it, but you are not going to have many takers. Also might find few crew who want to sign onto your vessels.
There are a lot of human beings on those ships. It strikes me as awful that their lives would be risked under these circumstances, and that happening wouldn't really be a proper solution to the overarching problem. It would be something of a tragedy if things got so severe that the risk was assumed worthwhile and presumably, people on board were exposed to it outside of their will or control. I suspect many of them don't have a lot of options.
People kept sailing past the Houthis even though some ships got attacked. They sailed past Somali pirates too. So ships obviously tolerate some level of risk from violence.
100 people will die on American roads today, and another tomorrow. Most of them die because they commute to work because a lower paying job closer, or a smaller dwelling near their job, isn't that appealing. Another portion will die because driving aggressively and fast seemed fun. Another portion will die because they like alcohol more than safety.
Yes, but I don't think we should accept these deaths either, and I see them as worth preventing and avoiding as well.
I also see false equivalence here in that the risk of death doesn't seem fungible. You're taking an aggregate death toll distributed across hundreds of millions of people, involving totally different voluntariness and causal structures.
