Re: Closing the Strait of Hormuz

I'd check out what happened the last time the Iranian Navy went up against the US Navy.
As I recall, they very quickly lost nearly all their warships at sea, several drilling platforms, and some harbor capabilities. Theyt then fled and cried like babies.

This time they could obviously then resort to asymetric attacks with small boats, skidoos, etc, but they wouldn't want that at all.
They will never go ahead with this.
I'd call their bluff in a heartbeat. Bring it, oil price rises and all.

On Dec 29, 2011, TC Burnett <tcburnett@gmail.com> wrote:

I have no idea what the US government is talking about when they say they won't allow Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz.  Iran can close this waterway in an hour.  There are only two shipping lanes and the water is VERY shallow.  Theoretically the lanes belong to Oman, but that is disputed by Iran.  They could just anchor a few dozen empty oil drums along the shipping lanes.  They'd look like mines and no one would transit the strait.  Then the US would send in minesweepers and right behind them the Iranians would dump more oil drums.  Hard to call that an act of war within ~12 miles of their coast.

Or they might throw in one or two real mines - or launch a torpedo at an oil tanker from a small boat at night and SAY it was a mine.  That would be it.  No ships would dare go through.

Someone told me yesterday words to the effect that the Iranian threat to close the Strait is great because it gives the US an excuse to attack them and remove their nuclear capability.  Great thinking.  Really. I suppose the Chinese will keep loaning us 2 BILLION dollars a day to fight Iran and bail out Wall street and the European banks while our citizens happily starve to death. 

That won't work.  Iran either HAS a nuclear capability now, or it could borrow a few from it's neighbor, PAKISTAN, which we thoroughly pissed off.  Even our puppet leader Karzai of Afghanistan says he'd fight against us.  But it won't work for purely logistical reasons.  Iran borders the entire Strait of Hormuz.  They can drive freakin' pickup trucks with Exocet missiles up and down the coast and knock off ALL the damn shipping in the strait.

--

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-T

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