As with other recent trade wars, the value of this kind of behavior goes down when other nations start to retaliate. A ship might be able to pay the insurance from Iran, but can they afford to pay the same fee for each time they pass some other nations territorial waters? At some point the US blockade won't matter and the profitability of the venture will be zero.

They are shooting down neutral tankers outside of their territorial water, so stop with the bullshit. If they only shot ships in their own waters traffic in Hormuz would already have returned to normal.

> the idea that western powers would scrupulously adhere to international mores if subjected to a full-on kinetic attack by another nation state is absurd on its face.

We know they are, we have Ukraine as an example they don't start attacking neutral nations civilian vessels just because Russia attacked them. Only evil regimes do that, you don't "defend yourself" by committing terrorism against innocent neutral country ships that aren't shipping anything related to the country you are fighting.

There is no reason at all for Iran to start shooting ad Indian ships just because USA attacked Iran, no western nation would defend themselves that way, many western nations has been attacked and conquered in history so we know how they act.