Word: hormuz
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...Pentagon video showed it clearly: Iranian speedboats buzzing dangerously close to three U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway at the base of the Persian Gulf, on Jan. 6. A foreign voice called over the radio, "You will explode in a few minutes"--chilling words for those who remembered the small-boat attack on the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 in 2000. Then, before the warships could fire, the boats turned away...
...that it kept a worse mess out of the news: Iran. But that was never going to last, and indeed it didn't. On Sunday, five armed naval units from Iran's Revolutionary Guards aggressively challenged three U.S. Navy ships passing into the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. There were no shots fired or damage caused, but no doubt this was an Iranian reminder to the United States that the Gulf is called the Persian Gulf for a reason. And the Iranians chose Hormuz, the only real egress for Gulf oil, to remind us that they have their hand...
...given the opportunity, Iran would take the Gulf and its oil, the only reason we care about that miserable body of water. Sixty per cent of the world's reserves sit underneath its shores, and 17 million barrels of crude oil exports pass daily through the Strait of Hormuz. Should the Iranians ever find themselves in a position to close it, Americans would pay for a gallon of gas - what, $10? It's no wonder that Iran's Revolutionary Guards decided on Hormuz to draw a line in the sand...
...nuclear facilities, but the Chiefs said they were opposed to such a strike because of the probable "blowback." The Iranians, Bush was told, could make life very difficult for the U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq. They could shut off the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, thereby creating a global economic crisis. And they could use the threat of Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks on the American homeland...
Next, there is oil. The Persian Gulf, a traffic jam on good days, would become a parking lot. Iran could plant mines and launch dozens of armed boats into the bottleneck, choking off the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz and causing a massive disruption of oil-tanker traffic. A low-key Iranian mining operation in 1987 forced the U.S. to reflag Kuwaiti oil tankers and escort them, in slow-moving files of one and two, up and down the Persian Gulf. A more intense operation would probably send oil prices soaring above $100 per bbl.--which may explain...