Word: hormuz
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...shudders through the House of Saud and the monarchies that rule the gulfs ministates. In the waters of the gulf itself, a Soviet guided-missile cruiser and its frigate escort have replaced the Shah's navy in patrolling the shipping channel through the 40-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz. The U.S.S.R. now maintains 85,000 troops in Afghanistan and has military advisers in South Yemen and Ethiopia, while a fleet of ten Soviet warships and 16 support vessels cruises the Indian Ocean...
...force would have to be quickly whipped into shape and airlifted to staging areas mear the combat zone. There it would "marry up" with equipment and supplies prepositioned on ships now cruising off Diego Garcia, a British-owned island in the Indian Ocean some 2,500 miles south of Hormuz. The U.S. has leased base rights on the island...
...Qaboos, then 29, staged a palace coup and set about bringing the country into the 20th century. Today Oman boasts 375 schools and 14 modern hospitals. A rebellion in the Dhofar region, fanned by Marxist South Yemen, has been snuffed out as Oman, gatekeeper of the Strait of Hormuz, has built up its military forces. Oman has no large Palestinian presence; Qaboos' top advisers and military commanders are British-two factors that may help explain Oman's special relationship with...
Moreover, radicals could counter any American military action by mining the narrow Straits of Hormuz, through which practically all of the Persian Gulf oil flows to the West. While two or three burning oil tankers in the waterway would be a fiery spectacle for American television viewer, it would not be a pretty sight for Western policymakers. Although many American hearts would pound at the sight of our boys jumping off helicopters onto the Arabian sands, emotions don't light homes...
Whoever controls the Middle East's oil, or the area's Strait of Hormuz (40 miles wide at its narrowest) between Iran and the Sultanate of Oman through which most of it passes, acquires a stranglehold on the world's economy. The U.S.S.R. today is self-sufficient in oil, but it could well become a major net importer in the 1980s?and thus be in direct competition with the West for the crude pumped out of the desert sands. The warm-water ports so ardently desired by the Czars since the 18th century retain almost as much importance today. Soviet...