Iran’s Hormuz Threat

[Geee]

National Review:


For the past two weeks Iran has committed a sizable portion of its military to rehearsing how it would go about closing the Hormuz Strait. For the most part, strategic analysts yawned, and declared Iranian blustering to be an empty threat. Judging from the oil markets’ relatively muted reaction, it appears that most of the folks who bet big money on what happens in the Persian Gulf share this opinion. So what is this consensus based on? First and foremost, it relies on the belief that the Iranian leadership will make a number of rational calculations and decisions concerning their own and their country’s future. Personally, I am not sure of the wisdom of betting on the rationality of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a few globally disconnected mullahs.

As the “Iran is bluffing” crowd sees it, Iran does not the possess the military wherewithal to close the strait: disrupt traffic, yes; close it, no. Everyone also assumes that Iran’s leaders understand that closing the strait would mean that Iran’s own oil shipments would cease. As Iran’s oil exports account for a almost a fifth of its GDP and fund 60 percent of its national budget, even a temporary closing of the strait would be an economic catastrophe. Moreover, as Iran still relies on imports for much of its refined fuel, any closure of the strait would rapidly shut down huge segments of its non-oil economy.


As the Wall Street Journal pointed out last week, however, these Iranian exercises closely coincide with “the U.S. and Europe at last mustering the gumption to target [with sanctions] Iran’s multibillion-dollar oil industry.” If sanctions do put a serious crimp in Iran’s oil and gas exports, the mullahs may decide there is little difference between the West’s closing off their access to export revenues and their doing it themselves — except that in the latter circumstance the rest of the world would share Iran’s pain. As the political and economic situation in Iran moves from dismal to catastrophic, one can easily envision internal scenarios where closing the Strait of Hormuz begins to appears as a rational option.
It may be true that, even if Iran wanted to close the strait, its military, when confronted by the U.S. Fifth Fleet, would be incapable of doing so. One should not, however, be sanguine about this being the case. Iran has hundreds of ballistic missiles, three Kilo-class submarines, and a host of fast attack boats (armed with anti-ship missiles). There is no end to the mischief a clever opponent can make with such an arsenal. For instance, in the 2002 Millennium Challenge war game, retired Marine lieutenant general Paul Van Riper, playing the Iranian side’s commander, caused so much damage to the U.S. and allied fleet that the game had to be stopped. Only after the fleet was resurrected from the bottom of the sea was the game able to continue.

[Valin]

Geee

 

Say hello to my little friend