Jakob Larsen, chief safety officer at the Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO), the world's largest shipping body, said on 18 June that Strait of Hormuz transits were "still very risky"1. His verdict came hours after CENTCOM lifted its blockade, and it explains why the lift changed almost nothing on the water.
Foreign-flag commercial traffic stayed away on 18 June. Transit ran at 5 to 10 per cent of pre-war volume, almost entirely Iranian domestic-flag ships, which means fewer than ten vessels a day crossing a channel that once carried over a hundred2. London war-risk cover, withdrawn in March, had not returned. Premiums for the few crossings still being underwritten had run to 3 to 8 per cent of hull value, up to $8m a passage, against 0.25 per cent before the war3.
Mines laid across the channel would take 40 to 50 days to sweep at the conservative estimate, up to six months for a full clearance4, so the oil cannot physically return for weeks even with the blockade gone. The Conwartime clause in standard charter contracts, which lets a captain refuse a passage judged too dangerous, remained triggered across the Gulf.
Three separate actors hold three separate locks on the strait: the US Navy, the London insurers, and whoever laid the mines. CENTCOM opened the naval lock and left the other two untouched. The International Group of Protection and Indemnity Clubs in London covers roughly 90 per cent of ocean-going tonnage, and its war-risk exclusion, not the US fleet, is now the operative closure. Zero new foreign-flag transits followed Trump's signature, because the levers that remained never answered to him.
