Greek sailors are on strike demanding that Greek crews stranded in the Persian Gulf be brought home.
After the US and Israel attacked Iran, the Revolutionary Guards in Tehran announced that they had closed the Strait of Hormuz.
The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean. The water arm is between 40-100 kilometers wide, bordered to the north by Iran and to the south by Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Approximately 20% of the oil consumed in the world passes through Hormuz.
The closure of the strait blocked this immense naval traffic. Crews from all over the world sit on ships waiting outside the strait.
Because they fear for the lives of their colleagues in the Persian Gulf area, sailors in Greece have announced that ferries going from Piraeus to the Greek islands will remain in port on Thursday due to a 24-hour strike called by the PNO union, Ekathimerini newspaper reports.
The strikers' demand is the immediate repatriation of all Greek crew members stranded on merchant ships in the war-torn Persian Gulf.
The union called for the entire area to be declared a no-go zone for commercial shipping and urged Greek authorities to “immediately” extricate sailors stranded in the Gulf due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
In a statement on Tuesday, the PNO also expressed strong opposition to government plans to divert Greek ferries to Israel – presumably to help repatriate civilians stranded by Middle East flight bans.
“If this information turns out to be true, we consider it provocative and dangerous to approve a route to the war zone,” the PNO said. “No vessel will leave Greece to go to the Middle East,” he added.
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