An eye for an eye, a tanker for a tanker. The lex talionis or law of Talion, the oldest rule of humanity, has reached the sea and has overturned the principle on which global trade was built since 1948. This year it was written that merchant ships are neutral, that the seas are free and that wars between states do not have to become wars against trade. That agreement, which had already been mortally wounded in recent months, was completely killed by a three-word strategy that the Pentagon (with Trump's blessing) called "tanker for tanker": for every ship that Iran attacks, the US will sink an Iranian oil tanker.
For 78 years, the sea was the only space where the rules of the planet continued to work even if the world was broken. While armies clashed on land, while borders were closed and agreements were broken, merchant ships continued to cross the oceans under the protection of an international order that no one had asked for but everyone needed.
Control of the Strait of Hormuz has involved the targeting of supertankers linked to Iran or Washington's allies. In the last 10 days, the US Navy has taken 10 Iranian tankers out of action. It is the response to the Iranian bombings since the war began on February 28: dozens of cargo ships, bulk carriers and tankers were visited by Iranian drones. The difference is qualitative, not just quantitative. Iran attacks merchant ships from third countries to put pressure on global trade. The US exclusively attacks Iranian oil tankers to destroy the regime's source of income.
Last Tuesday, five Iranian oil tankers were destroyed in the largest day of ship bombing of the entire war off the island of Jarg, Tehran's large oil terminal. The most severe consequence: a barrel of Brent is now trading at more than $100.
For decades we have witnessed attacks on cargo ships in the Gulf of Aden, hijacking of merchant ships off the coast of Somalia or theft of merchandise in the Strait of Malacca, but these actions were carried out by militias and armed groups. Now, bombing a civilian vessel is already the doctrine of some states. Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command or CENTCOM, formulates the new unspoken rule of the sea: "If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even greater economic cost by destroying three of yours."
Escalating situation
The situation has escalated so much that 18 of the world's leading maritime powers - including Greece, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Norway, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom - issued an unprecedented warning on Tuesday: "The rules that have underpinned international maritime trade for decades are beginning to collapse." They have done so through the Maritime Transport Consultative Group (CSG), in a statement titled In defense of free maritime transport. Member countries represent more than a fifth of world trade by tonnage.
The accumulation of major wars such as the US against Iran or the invasion of Ukraine, the disruption of choke points such as the straits, increasingly larger ghost fleets and discriminatory trade measures represent a structural change in maritime transport.
The law of the jungle is now that of the seven seas, and has created parallel navigation systems where risks increase, environmental and safety standards are circumvented, and trust and predictability in maritime markets are damaged. The result is a two-tier system: one governed by rules, the other by opacity, which ultimately weakens both.
Why have supertankers now become the most coveted pieces of the sea? Each Iranian tanker destroyed is oil that does not reach the so-called Chinese teapot refineries (outside the reach of sanctions), foreign currency that does not enter the regime's coffers and money that does not finance the Revolutionary Guard or its proxies in Lebanon, Yemen or Iraq. Furthermore, a ship burning in the Persian Gulf is an image that appears on all the front pages in the world. Attacking one of these vessels is a way of communicating to the adversary and international public opinion that the situation is deteriorating and that the country that suffers must submit and negotiate.
A tanker loaded with crude oil is not just a ship: it is a floating industrial facility with millions of dollars of merchandise on board (about 200 million at current prices in the case of the largest), extremely vulnerable to fire and practically militarily defenseless. Destroying one does more economic and political damage than destroying many conventional military targets, at a fraction of the cost (with a drone costing around 20,000 euros). That's why modern naval warfare tends toward tankers: they are the point where economic pain and psychological impact converge most efficiently.
The Strait of Hormuz is not the only place where this new doctrine has escalated: the Black Sea has been the other major theater of naval warfare in recent years. Russia blocked and intimidated the Ukrainian grain export corridor from Odessa, attacking ports, silos and port infrastructure with missiles and drones to deprive kyiv of the agricultural income that finances its war effort and, in the process, use the hunger of Africa and Asia as a lever of pressure on the West. Ukraine responded with its own version of naval economic warfare: autonomous marine drones and missiles against tankers and cargo ships that supplied fuel, construction materials and supplies to occupied Crimea, whose land connection to Russia was vulnerable and whose bridge - the Kerch bridge - was attacked twice.
The objective was the same as that of the US with the Iranian oil tankers: to make the logistical cost of maintaining an occupied territory unsustainable. The moral difference that some tried to draw between both strategies - Russia attacked grain destined for poor countries, Ukraine attacked military supplies - became blurred as the war dragged on and both sides hit any objective that weakened the adversary, civilian or not, turning the Black Sea into the first modern laboratory of what the Persian Gulf confirms today: that in 21st century war, merchant ships are as much military objectives as armored vehicles or fighter jets.
ghost fleets
The Persian Gulf war has also turned ghost fleets into a global threat, those hundreds of oil tankers that sail without recognizable insurance, with interchangeable flags of convenience, disconnected identification systems and names that change every few weeks, and that Iran and Russia have used for years to circumvent international sanctions.
With the collapse of maritime rules denounced by the 18 nations of the CSG, this opaque fleet, sometimes sailing with old oil tankers for scrapping, has ceased to be a regulatory compliance problem and has become a war actor: the same ghost ships that transported Iranian crude camouflaged as Malaysian are now military objectives for the US, which sinks them without always distinguishing between a warship and a commercial ship. The result is that no one any longer knows for sure which ship carries what cargo, who it works for, or under what law it sails, which is exactly the ambiguity that ghost fleets were designed to create and that war has made the permanent state of the seas. According to TankerTrackers.com, the ghost fleet of tankers now exceeds 1,500 vessels, approaching one-fifth of global tanker capacity.
