As the United States unleashes the destructive force of our incredible military power on our longtime enemy (and anyone else who happens to be around), we must remain mindful that Iran is not some abstract boogeyman. Iran is a real place. It is full of real people. And those people and that place are adjacent to a narrow seaway that is vital to international trade. And that seaway is full of real, beautiful, complex, fragile shipping containers.
In the fog of war, it can be easy to lose sight of the true victims of these endless attacks on the countries and people of the Middle East: shipping containers. Every bomb we drop, every missile we launch, we put at risk thousands of shipping containers.
I don’t blame shippers for not wanting to navigate the strait. If they lose a ship they are out-of-commission for the better part of a decade while a replacement is built.
Not to mention the civilian crew who did not sign up for this shit.
You can’t just go down to the barge store and walk out carrying a new superfreighter.
That’s bad enough for that business, but enough of those will have a significant impact on the global economy. Supply goes down, prices go up, customers suffer.
Of course, so would not navigating the strait. But that’s the point. They don’t even have to mine it, they could be bluffing, but even the possibility is just not worth it to the operators of those ships.