Protection rackets with policy numbers

Iran and the United States are reconceptualising passage through the Strait of Hormuz as a chargeable service, each in its own way, and the consequential fact for anyone who prices maritime risk is that neither scheme fits the machinery built to price it. Whatever governments have named them, these schemes are not insurance. They are a new category of cost, levied by sovereigns on transit itself, and their arrival will do little to resolve the uncertainty hanging over the Strait.

Whichever regime prevails, and in whatever form, a shipowner now faces an exposure that no war risk clause, no Joint War Committee listing, and no Additional War Risk Premium was designed to capture: compelled payment to a combatant state as the price of passage. That exposure is unpriced today because the instruments that would price it do not recognise it, and it is unlikely to disappear with the next ceasefire.