The Strait of Hormuz: Trading Lives for Money — How the US-Iran Standoff Is Shifting the Cost of War onto Indian and Filipino Seafarers

According to ABC News Australia, United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) data show that at least 24 seafarers have been killed in 100 confirmed incidents since the outbreak of hostilities. In the current month alone, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) recorded nine attacks on oil tankers.

The number of workers bearing the cost is far higher than 24. Indian Ministry of External Affairs data show that more than 4,500 Indian nationals are currently deployed aboard commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf; India, the Philippines and China are collectively referred to as the world's main source countries for seafarers. The crisis created by the standoff between two governments and their military forces — the United States and Iran — is being borne almost entirely by workers from third countries with no connection to the conflict.

### On One End: Six-Times Monthly Pay

Indian ship engineer Harshal Singh told ABC News Australia during a podcast in late September that captains he knows normally earn around 150,000 rupees a month (about US$22,000), and that on this voyage segment they can now "earn 100 million rupees in a month." According to ABC News Australia's conversion, that is equivalent to roughly US$100,000 (about A$143,000), approximately six times the normal rate.

Facebook recruitment advertisements seen by ABC News Australia in the Asian region show that some ship management companies are recruiting oil tanker crew at "market rate plus double wages"; other shipowners are offering second and third mates a one-off "danger bonus" of US$1,500 for signing on. One of the industry's top offers came from commercial shipping company Sinokor — according to Bloomberg, the company set the condition of an additional six months' pay for seafarers to complete a one-month round trip in these waters.

### On the Other: Threats of Replacement

The flip side of the high pay is the threat of replacement and self-funded repatriation. According to ABC News Australia citing Manoj Yadav, general secretary of the Forward Seamen's Union in Mumbai, some crew members who are unwilling to sail have been threatened with replacement and required to pay their own repatriation costs. Yadav summarized it this way: "There are two kinds of offers."

RP Veettil, president of the Sailors Union of India, criticized shipowners for arranging ordinary commercial vessels to sail through Hormuz as if it were a "war zone." "Seafarers' work is extremely dangerous, and shifting responsibility onto seafarers, saying they went voluntarily and died… that is not a good idea," he said. He argued that companies should pay genuine danger bonuses to workers operating in hazardous conditions, rather than using high pay or threats to induce them to risk their lives.

### Two Sets of Blockades Operating in Parallel

The costs being offloaded do not come from an abstract market, but from two parallel sets of government decisions.

ABC News Australia reporting noted that the Strait of Hormuz carries roughly 20 percent of the world's oil and gas trade. In late February, Iran was the first to impose a de facto blockade on the shipping corridor; after months of deadlock, the United States imposed its own blockade on Iranian shipments transiting the route. The reporting also documented that Washington and Tehran signed a memorandum of understanding in June aimed at ending the hostilities, but the attacks did not stop with the agreement — a new round of strikes on oil tankers came after signs that shipments were "beginning to return to pre-war levels."

According to disclosures from the U.S. Navy-led Joint Maritime Information Centre, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) continues to harass passing vessels with drone overflights and surveillance, and has attacked oil tankers sailing within the strait; the U.S. Navy is escorting vessels in the southern segment of the strait, near the Omani coast, and has deployed unmanned surface vessels for reconnaissance. U.S. forces are also intercepting vessels attempting to trade with Iran.

### Conflicting Numbers From All Sides

There are sharp differences among the parties over whether traffic through the strait can return to "normal."

U.S. Secretary of State Rubio publicly claimed this week that Iran has "completely lost control of the strait," and that "the oil now flowing out is almost as much as before the conflict began." However, IRGC adviser Majid Mirahmadi pushed back against that account, saying that in October only an average of 10 ships per day transited the strait, far below the pre-war daily average of 125. Maritime data firm Kpler shows that transits in late September were "beginning to climb back toward the pre-war baseline" — but still below pre-war levels, and the figures from each side are difficult to independently verify. In the shadows, some vessels are switching off their GPS signals and engaging in so-called "dark voyages," slipping through under cover of night. Marine intelligence firms have previously told ABC News Australia that some of these passages were reportedly carried out with tacit Iranian approval through diplomatic channels, while others were not; the legality and responsibility for these grey-zone transits remain unclear.

### Costs That Cannot Be Written Into a Contract

Former Australian naval officer Jennifer Parker told ABC News Australia: "The question is more whether there are crew willing to make these dangerous crossings… it is the seafarers who pay." She noted that it is regrettable that people from countries unconnected to this war have been drawn into it.

Whether it is A$143,000 a month or a sixfold wage premium, neither can offset a single figure: at least 24 people have died so far — a figure recorded by a United Nations agency, not by any of the governments imposing the blockades. Along the profit chain formed by great-power blockades and wartime freight rates, the costs ultimately land on the deck, on the bodies of ordinary workers, most of them from India and the Philippines.