And Apple is forcing all other browsers to use its JS engine on iOS - so when Safara/its JS engine falls, they all fall.
What they don't allow third parties to do is JIT compile. The "execute writeable pages" entitlement is only allowed to Safari and in iOS 8 WKWebViews.
So your bigger point stands -- third party browsers all need to use a single JS implementation if they want to have the speed of a JIT.
I think I prefer a single trusted implementation by Apple to N implementations by whoever wants to give it a shot.