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The shadow fleet, of course, has no such restrictions. The West may just be too risk-averse to win a war, because while a war is happening, you do need to continue to do things despite risk imposed by the enemy.
The WSJ published an article yesterday handwringing about the Dubai Airport remaining open. Yeah, like the country should grind to a halt because risks have unavoidably increased. It's that kind of thinking that got us COVID lockdowns, too.
Dunno how much it actually factors into anybody's decisions here, but the Trump admin's urgings in the spirit of 'oh the strait is open now, just sail, we've blown everything up and it's pretty safe now actually' and 'hey Euros/Japanese/etc please send escort ships, come on, don't be sissies' and related forum discussions of how doing otherwise is pathological risk aversion, feel a bit unconvincing while the US has a ridiculously formidable naval presence thereabouts, and keeps it way, way away from the Gulf, flying all the sorties in an expensive tricky way using tanker planes.
Like, I'd expect that those carrier groups include several of the very best ships on the planet for defending against every sort of airborne threat. If the new lethal warlike US Department of War visibly doesn't dare risk dipping a little warrior toe in the gulf, is it very surprising if most big slow unarmed tankers won't be that enthused either, nor the inferior warships of every other country. Maybe something even changes up a bit if the US actually brings in those Marine landing ships instead of leaving them hovering menacingly a few hundred km away.
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It's not really the West so much as modern multinationals from my understanding who actually transport the oil.
It's not the multinationals transporting the oil, but the insurance cartel based in London. Which would rather pressure the US to stop the war so they can continue to collect war risk premiums with no war risk than actually sell insurance when there might be claims.
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