Out of curiosity I looked it up. The MV True Confidence is registered in Barbados, and so flies that nation’s flag. She is owned by a company that’s evidently based in Greece.
This “flag of convenience” stuff has got to stop. It can be fairly argued that the US Navy has a moral duty to protect all shipping. But it would be nice if more merchant ships paid US taxes and flew the US flag.
(And yes, I know that’s a minor point compared to all the chaos in the region.)
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the cost of being US flagged and taxed is ridiculously high for all circumstances except these. No?
India has been in that area a lot (Gulf of Aden), mainly to support ships with Indians on board as part of the crew, and doing a fine job within their capabilities. But, India does not have anything close to a US Arleigh-Burke destroyer, in terms of AD capability defending against missiles.
The US is probably loath to send any more destroyers, since the South China Sea is heating up further:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JrhaZrpKBc
Plus an unending mission to keep shooting missiles down is not very practical. Drones we can generally now take down with Harriers off Marines’ ships, but we have little such capacity in the region. Theoretically the Euro’s should be able to help out, although the Germans pretty well embarrassed themselves at trying to shoot down one of our big drones...
I suppose the shippers are gonna say - hey, you don’t have the ships to protect a lot of civilian ships, so why should we pay for inadequate protection? It’s sort of a chicken and egg problem, perhaps.
Everyone benefits from international commerce and the right of peaceful navigation. Admittedly the U.S. bears a disproportionate share of the burden. During the Iran-Iraq War a lot of ships were reflagged as U.S. to enjoy the protection of the U.S. Navy, and the Navy was effective in preventing attacks on U.S. Flagged ships, some or which were owned by Kuwaitis.