Shipping executives meeting in Athens on Monday said that any peace deal worked out between the United States and Iran would need to offer clear rules allowing vessels to resume normal business via the Strait of Hormuz.
Shipowners and maritime industry officials met at a Capital Link conference and other events to begin Posidonia, a week-long biennial shipping exhibition.
"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.
He says the company had a vessel stuck inside the Gulf for the past three months and noted the impact on seafarers.
"Obviously, the seafarers on board are missing out, not only on seeing their families but also on births, on deaths, on marriages."
'Not a place you want to be transiting without clear rules of engagement'
Vasilis Kikilias, Greece's shipping minister, reflected on the ongoing conflict, saying, "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.
"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."
Meanwhile, Yiannis Procopiou, CEO of Centrofin Management, said, "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."