Word: straitly
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...Pakistan is 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...
...face it, 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...
...military and 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...
...Beijing may have thought it was making a clear diplomatic demarche. But the flip-flopping over the Kitty Hawk made China seem both vindictive and indecisive. It led a lot of observers to wonder what would happen if there was a real crisis in the Taiwan Strait, where there is always the potential for a disastrous "misunderstanding." It also highlighted a lack of communication within the Chinese government that makes the possibility of a military confrontation in the Strait even more worrying...
...authority and plain old dumb decisions. But because of its burgeoning importance in helping to manage world affairs, China now has a responsibility to set its house in order. With 900 missiles aimed at Taiwan on China's coast and U.S. carrier battle groups sailing through the Taiwan Strait, there's ample opportunity for miscalculation. And if shooting started because some general didn't want to pander to a lowly member of the striped-pants set, that wouldn't just be dumb. It would be a disaster...