ATHENS — Maritime leaders meeting in Athens on Monday called for explicit rules governing vessel passage through the Strait of Hormuz in any future peace deal between the United States and Iran. They emphasized that even if a diplomatic agreement is reached, clarity on transit protocols is essential for commercial shipping to resume normal operations.
"What we need is obviously a framework, a set of rules, a regulation, whatever tells us exactly how we can go in and get out. So even if a peace deal was signed, that needs to be clarified, and that we don't know as yet," said Pankaj Khanna, President of Heidmar Maritime Holdings Corp. Khanna added that his company has had a vessel stranded in the Gulf for the past three months, disrupting crew schedules and personal lives. "Obviously, the seafarers on board are missing out, not only on seeing their families but also on births, on deaths, on marriages," he said.
Greece’s shipping minister, Vasilis Kikilias, echoed concerns about the unpredictability of the conflict. "Can somebody predict (the end of the conflict)? Unfortunately, no. It has been proven that there is no prediction, and things get messy in terms of conflicts very, very easily, and they get untangled very, very difficult." He added that global shipping must be excluded from geopolitical disputes: "We are hoping, of course, that there will be a solution. We cannot accept that there will be no free pass for ships all over the globe. I wish that they would leave shipping, the shipping industry, the seafarers, and global trade out of the equation, but it seems like this is impossible."
Yiannis Procopiou, CEO of Centrofin Management, stressed the high risk of current transits despite insurance availability. "While insurance might be available, this does not mean that the straits is really a place where you want to be transiting, at least until we have clear rules of engagement as the shipping industry as to how we deal with the two nations that are involved here, the US and Iran. That's right now, a very high risk proposition," he said.
The discussions took place during a Capital Link conference ahead of Posidonia, a major biennial shipping exhibition in Athens. Maritime officials noted that before U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February, over 100 commercial ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz daily. Since then, traffic has declined sharply, with U.S. Central Command coordinating about 70 vessel transits in the past three weeks—averaging just three per day—far below pre-conflict levels.