Word: hormuz
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...decided just what the carriers should do; Washington's hope is that their mere presence near Iran will deter Khomeini and the street mobs from harming the hostages. If a greater show of force seems called for, one possibility is that the fleet would blockade the narrow Straits of Hormuz, through which tankers carry Iran's oil to foreign markets. A blockade would cut off Iran's international revenues, but it would also produce a serious world shortage of petroleum and a sharp increase in prices...
...about the size of Kansas and has time and again been caught up in the vortex of international politics. Its 1,060-mile coastline is on the direct sea route from Europe to Asia; the country's northern tip overlooks the preferred deep channel of the Strait of Hormuz, 40 miles wide at its narrowest, through which pass half of the world's oil tankers. Says a British major on contract duty with the Oman army: "One battery of artillery or missiles on the Omani side of the strait holds life or death power over the passage...
...tanker out to refuel an American carrier task force running low on oil in the Indian Ocean. In the closing days of the Viet Nam War, at U.S. request, he instantly dispatched a squadron of F-5s to Saigon. His planes and ships have patrolled the Strait of Hormuz for years, watching over the tankers headed west...
Could not the U.S. send in troops with the explicitly limited, and therefore non-provocative, mission of protecting the Strait of Hormuz from any Soviet or radical Arab attempt to exploit the chaos...
...have its hands full. The crew will have to be alert as the Tigris is towed down the Shatt al Arab, the narrow river that flows from the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Then they will sail into the Persian Gulf and through the tricky Strait of Hormuz before they try crossing the Arabian Sea to the shores of Africa or India. These waters, surrounded by oil-rich nations, are crisscrossed daily by huge supertankers that could miss the reed boat's small kerosene running lights and run over the Tigris at night without their crews...