Over 200 vessels are anchored in the Persian Gulf right now and nobody is moving. Every operator is running the same calculation: "if I go first and get hit, I become the example that keeps everyone else docked for another two weeks. If I wait and someone else goes first, I follow with little risk." It's rational at the individual level and a total disaster in aggregate. No insurance policy fixes that.
And here's the part nobody is talking about. The ships aren't even safe at anchor. Iran already struck a tanker sitting stationary in Kuwaiti waters, the northernmost attack of the entire conflict. There is no safe zone. They are rationing strikes deliberately to maintain leverage, not to cause maximum destruction all at once. The threat doesn't need to be everywhere to paralyze everyone.
Iraq has already cut 1.5 million barrels per day because storage is filling up with oil that has nowhere to go. When Gulf storage hits capacity, producers have no choice but to shut wells. That's the moment this stops being a logistics disruption and becomes actual supply destruction. The Strait is closed by a game nobody wants to play first, and the clock is running.
If you want to track how this develops, I've been following the maritime and geopolitical data closely over at breakingmetrics.com. The World in Conflict console at worldinconflict.net is also live and mapping the escalation in real time.
