The strike on Larak Island and Iran's retaliation against US bases in Jordan have done something specific to the shipping market that is easy to miss behind the oil price headlines. Larak sits inside the Strait of Hormuz, and once ordnance lands on either side of that water, the Lloyd's Joint War Committee updates its Listed Areas, the map of waters where war risk is not covered by ordinary hull insurance. That map is not a commentary. It is a contractual trigger.
Here is the part that is genuinely unusual about this class of insurance. A standard hull war policy carries an automatic termination and cancellation provision that lets the underwriter withdraw cover on seven days notice, and cover for a transit through a listed area is then bought back voyage by voyage as an additional premium quoted as a percentage of the vessel's insured hull value. Almost no other insurance line works this way. Property catastrophe cover is annual and reprices only at renewal, months after a hurricane has already been paid for. War risk reprices inside a week, before anything is paid at all, and the percentage charged for a Gulf transit can move by an order of magnitude between one quotation and the next. The same structure applies to aviation war and to political violence and terrorism cover for onshore assets in the region.