The West’s sanctions and warmongering policies are leading to accelerating chaos in shipping. Earlier this year, writing on April 1, 2024 for Splash, a shipping and maritime magazine, Charles Watkins, CEO of Mental Health Support Solutions, described his mental health visit to a commercial vessel whose crew were upset after the ship had narrowly escaped a rocket attack while travelling the Red Sea. Watkins observed: “One particular aspect of this ordeal was that many crewmembers understandably expressed a reluctance to travel back through those dangerous waters. The fear instilled by the attack was so profound that there was a general consensus among the crew that they would sign off rather than face the risk again.”
Under threats posed by piracy, wars in the Black Sea and Red Sea, and the risk of being assigned to so-called dark tankers (clandestine and working at night), hiring becomes a real problem. According to the shipping consultant Drewry, officer supply shortage has hit an all-time high and is unlikely to improve: The officer availability gap was 5% in 2022, and increased to 9% in 2023, the highest level since records began to be kept in 2005.
To make matters worse, just one week ago Israel slapped the first-ever shipping sanctions on Iran’s “dark tankers,” and ordered 18 tankers to be seized for alleged involvement in clandestine sale of Iranian oil to finance militant operations.
