Word: hormuz
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...Gulf in 1971, Iran's Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi has engaged in an expansionary policy aimed at filling the power vacuum. His troops have occupied the Persian Gulf islands of Greater and Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa, which-despite their comic-opera names-guard the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which 120 tankers a day carry a little more than half the oil consumed by the non-Communist world. Iran earlier had abrogated a treaty granting equal navigational rights to the crucial Shatt al-Arab, a confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates that leads to the gulf. Iraq feared...
...world's most valuable and vulnerable waterway. At such desert-edge ports as Ras Tanura, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Dhahran and Kharg Island, scores of supertankers congregate like wallowing whales to suck up crude oil. Daily they plow through the gulfs warm waters and out through the Strait of Hormuz carrying some 20 million bbl. of oil-almost half of the non-Communist world's consumption. If the gulf were closed, the effect on the U.S., Europe and Japan would be devastating...
Extending Influence. The Shah is also spending heavily on military installations. He plans to expand the five-year-old naval and air force base at Bandar Abbas, which overlooks the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the gulf. A new, even bigger base for the two services is planned for Chah Bahar, close to the Pakistan border on the Gulf of Oman, extending Iranian influence into the Indian Ocean. A complex to handle a helicopter force of 10,000 men is to be built at Isfahan, in the interior. In addition, a vast communications network and automated logistics system...
...border guards are common. Russia (along with China) has supplied weapons to guerrillas trying to overthrow Sultan Qabus of Oman. If these rebels were successful, they could bottleneck the gulf by sinking a supertanker in the narrow channel that is now negotiated by 100 ships in the Strait of Hormuz each day. The short-range Soviet aim seems to be to keep the U.S. on edge by disrupting the calm of the gulf. But there is a long-range possibility that, by adroit maneuvering through middlemen, Russia could cut off oil supplies to the West...