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  • Hacker News
  • Were straits not doing insurance at all before? Would have thought that all straits were charging for it after the Ever Given disaster. The strategy can’t permanently be “wait for the EU or US to fix it in a week as worldwide markets crash”.
    by jimbob45
  • The Ever Given was stuck in the Suez Canal.

    Narrowest width:

    - Strait of Hormuz (33 km)

    - Bab-el-Mandeb (26 km)

    - Strait of Gibraltar (13 km)

    - Strait of Malacca (2.8 km)

    - Bosphorus (700 m)

    - Suez Canal (205 m) <- Ever Given

    - Panama Canal (55 m)

    by gtirloni
  • I don’t understand why we’re calling it insurance? Does it pay out if something bad happens?
    by daft_pink
  • It’s called a protection racket. If you’re insured then the you are assured nothing bad will happen.
    by solumunus
  • It's a weird editorial choise to call them insurance and fees in the headline. Usually only the extortioner uses euphemisms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket
    by geor9e
  • I think everyone is aware this is a toll, but here's NYT from June 15: Iran Says Strait of Hormuz Won’t Have ‘Tolls’ but It Will Have ‘Fees’

    > Charging a toll is illegal under international law, but some fees are allowed for services. It is not clear what services Iran would provide, but there were no fees charged before the war.

    by culi
  • Why would they not just build a pipeline from Kuwait to Oman or even UAE to the other side of Oman? If the Keystone pipeline is profitable, so would this I would think. Seems like a temporary problem or a fine line for Iran to charge fees low enough the effort would not be worth it...
    by BashiBazouk
  • Imagine thinking this was a good idea when you cut your ribbon after all that money and effort and then a ~$500 drone flies over and with one explosion has it leaking.

    Do you think people are dumb? Obviously beneficial and easy actions that no one has taken rarely exist in the real world. You're basically suggesting the people actually there who have a better view than you are profoundly stupid.

    by godwinson__4-8
  • They already did:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habshan%E2%80%93Fujairah_oil_p...

    But it obviously wasn't designed to carry all the oil going through the Strait.

    by decimalenough
  • 1. They already did, Fujairah is a major oil port.

    2. Fujairah is within drone and missile range of a lot of remaining Iranian strike capability.

    3. Fujairah is not really equipped with a large amount of high precision, reliable, expensive, slow to procure and replace air defense systems.

    4. Fujairah has already been struck repeatedly since this conflict kicked off.

    5. The oil pipeline capacity from the 'west' side of the UAE to Fujairah is nowhere near enough to meet demand, even if the port and oil terminal were considered totally safe by ship owners and cargo owners, which it isn't.

    by walrus01
  • Al Capone couldn't have come up with a more "attractive" insurance plan himself.
    by fuzzfactor
  • "Pay us and we won't fuck your shit up" is the history of civilization
    by Fricken
  • The low bar path out for Iran is not to charge US ships insurance. The people most likely to complain would not complain if America has an exception.
    by ggm
  • > US ships

    What US ships?

    by unmole
  • There is zero commercial shipping through the Strait with US flags, everybody uses flags of convenience.
    by decimalenough
  • It affects global prices and sets a precedent against rules on international waters and freedom of navigation.
    by yousif_123123
  • If the only recourse is to spend tens of billions on another bombing campaign, or even more on a land war, why would Iran be looking for a path out of anything?
    by Zigurd
  • Does anything America imports through the Strait travel on U.S.-flagged vessels?
    by JumpCrisscross
  • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47200879

    I wonder what happened to the Iranian buddies? So many HN accounts whose Iranian friends were all supposedly celebrating the US-Israeli bombings of their country of origin. Are they still cheering?

    by bjourne
  • Those that lived in Iran were executed by Iran.
    by TiredOfLife
  • To the victor belong the insurance policy commissions
    by Zigurd
  • Something that I found interesting was how far away the USA had to keep its navy. What's the pint of having 11 aircraft carrier groups when you can barely even use them?
    by comrade1234
  • Is there a map that shows generally where they are?
    by dv35z
  • The US is too used to wars where they have absolute domination and has developed a very low tolerance for casualty. If any ship, not even just a carrier, any ship, gets sunken by an Iranian missile, it will sink the already abysmal approval of the current administration to the bottom of the ocean and if we have learned anything from Biden and Afghanistan it is that you never recover from a shock like that.
    by pibaker
  • Why do you think they were barely used? I dont know, but assume they were being used nearly non stop to support bombing runs. They dont go on land and they dont have cawasn't.

    I'm no expert, but the attack range of the carrier flight wing is 4-500 miles

    by s1artibartfast
  • They were still used heavily... you think aircraft carriers are only useful if you can get right next to your target? A huge part of American doctrine is to kill the enemy before you are ever in their view. This is also just basically intuitive. I'm not sure what is confusing you. Its like asking why isn't a bomber parked next to its target before taking off and deploying its munitions.
    by godwinson__4-8
  • It's a good question and there are three aspects to this:

    1. The US Navy is designed for the Cold WAr. It's often called a "deep blue" Navy because it's designed to operate in the open ocean in deep water. Also, it's designed to operate in colder climates like the North Atlantic and the North Sea. The Persian Gulf is none of those things. It's shallow, warm and narrow. The warm part also matters. It increases wear on ships, it's harder to keep them habitable, you get faster biofouling and so on;

    2. Geography just isn't a friend here. The navigable part of the Strait of Hormuz at its narrowest is about 6 miles wide. You'll hear claims about it being 2 miles wide. That's incorrect. There are 2 mile wide navigation channels, one in each direction, and they're separated by a ~2 mile wide buffer; and

    3. Another clue here was the continued use of so-called "stand off" weapons [1]. Rather than using gravity bombs, missiles continued to be fired from ships and planes. That's inefficient because you lose weight for the munition part to fuel. So you only ever do this if you can't safely use gravity bombs. Therefore, one can conclude that the military could protect air or water assets. Water assets can't be protected mainly from drones. There was a lot of talk about mines and that is a threat but the same drones that essentially destroyed Gulf military bases could overwhelm the defenses of an aircraft carrier battle group too. Plus there's drone boats. But the way aircraft were used also demonstrated a lack of air supremacy.

    [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48380176

    by jmyeet
  • Are we all tired of so much winning yet?
    by walrus01
  • "Help is coming". Came that indeed.
    by penguin_booze
  • Mission accomplished!
    by fnordpiglet