| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran Prepared to Block Gulf Oil and Wreck Western Economies |
| 2010-05-18 |
| Iran's recently-concluded war games concentrated on preparations to block the Persian Gulf and wreck Western economies in the event that the United Nations Security Council tries to place harsh sanctions against it. Forty percent of the world's oil and gas sails through the Persian Gulf, and an Iranian blockade would cause an inflationary spike in energy prices and a fuel shortage that could cause catastrophe for the West, which is dependent on Iranian crude to fuel their gas-hungry economies. Public affairs consultant Lenny Ben-David, a former senior Israeli diplomat in Israel's embassy in Washington, pointed out on Cutting Edge.com Monday that the Islamic Republic stopped, searched or photographed several Western ships durng the eight-day war games. The Revolutionary Navy searched a French and an Italian vessel for "environmental" checks, buzzed the U.S. Eisenhower in what American officials called a “close encounter,' and patrolled the Gulf, also known as the Straits of Hormuz, stopping and checking destroyers and cargo ships. The Iranian Air Force also drove away a U.S. reconnaissance drone that was monitoring Iran's massive Gulf military exercises that concluded last Thursday. During and after the war games, Tehran issued daily press releases boasting of new and advanced speed boats, an anti-submarine torpedo and advanced arms for attacking ships. Ben-David noted, “While the press focuses on the Iranian military exercises, uranium enrichment, and long-range missile development, the navies of dozens of countries have been relatively quietly gravitating toward the Persian Gulf. “ The war games exercises in the Gulf sent a clear signal to the West regarding what may be in store if it succeeds in placing tough sanctions against Iran as a way to try to force it to comply with international rules on the development of its nuclear program. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #22 ION IRAN FREEREPUBLIC > HEZBOLLAH'S GROWING BALLISTIC MISSLE STOCKPILE TURNS FROM TERROR THREAT TO MILITARY THREAT. and ISRAEL FORUM > DEBKA > ALL THREE ARMIES PRACTICE WAR SCENARIOS; + SYRIA, HIZBALLAH BUILDING MASSIVE [fortified] WALL IN EASTERN LEBANON. LEBANESE ARMY NOT allowed in SYRIAN-CONTROLLED, HIZBALLAH-OPER ZONE = ANTI-ISRAELI TANK TRAP-ARMOR FUNNEL inhabited mostly by DRUZE + CHRISTIANS??? * ALso from ISRAEL FORUM + DEBKA > IRAN BUILDS NUCLEAR-CAPABLE, LR CRUISE MISSLE [KH-55 derived] THAT CAN STRIKE ISRAEL FROM AFAR. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2010-05-19 00:02 |
| #21 Well, negotiation has been tried for years and the west only gets rope-a-dope. Iran gets a message like described above if they try to choke of the Straits and the problem is solved. Then Syria is isolated and all the Hizb'Allah goons in the south of Lebanon get the rug pulled out from underneath them. Suddenly the strategic picture without Iran looks better, even to the Saudis. This type of hard, kinetic solution is a last resort, but unfortunately, we are running out of viable resorts. The question is: how much more of a game of chicken will Dinnerjacket play? |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2010-05-18 22:04 |
| #20 It's a good thing I'm not in charge. If I were, the first time Short-round made a move, a dozen Iranian cities would be vaporized, including Bandar Abbas (home port to that "navy" they're going to try to shut the Straits of Hormuz with), Bushehr, and Qom in the initial strike. Other initial strikes would be against the Revolutionary Guards Corps wherever they had a suitable contingent to make a nuke worthwhile. Do NOT nuke Tehran - use conventional weapons to make the city unlivable. Also wipe out all the weapons factories around the country, and nuke their nuke facilities so they'll NEVER be capable of being used again. Until we literally grind one of these pissant little countries into the dirt, they will continue to peck away at us, costing us huge amounts of money and loss of capability. Thoroughly crushing one of them will make the rest of them significantly less willing to poke that beehive again. If we struck them overwhelmingly in say, 36 hours, giving them no respite until they're so totally destroyed they cannot recover, places like Syria, North Korea, even Russia and China, would be less willing to cause trouble. Chavez would have to change his underwear several times a day, for years, fearing he'll be next. As long as our actual and potential enemies view us as being "paper tigers", as Saddam Hussein did, they'll continue to attack us asymmetrically. Once we strike back, especially if we strike back with overwhelming force, that behavior becomes too risky to continue. Unfortunately, using overwhelming force once is the ONLY thing that will keep us from having to use less force elsewhere, time and time again. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2010-05-18 20:44 |
| #19 And Iran imports a large proportion of its petrol (40%?) mostly from South Asia. If Iran blocks the Gulf, setting 3 or 4 Iranian refineries ablaze would bring Iran to a grinding halt in less than 2 weeks. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2010-05-18 20:21 |
| #18 Forty percent of the world's oil and gas sails through the Persian Gulf, and an Iranian blockade would cause an inflationary spike in energy prices and a fuel shortage that could cause catastrophe for the West, Most of that oil as well as well as natural gas goes to south and east Asia. Rather more than 50% of Saudi output goes via pipeline to their west coast. China would be the big loser if Iran blocked oil exports from the Gulf. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2010-05-18 20:12 |
| #17 The effort to build a Transregional OIL-GAS Pipeline has hit major snags everywhere - at current, it will likely be several decades before Iran will see any redux in export dependency via Persian Gulf routes. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2010-05-18 19:22 |
| #16 Strategypage has an article explaining why this can't possibly work. Bottom line: Iran is even more vulnerable if the strait is closed than we are. |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2010-05-18 19:00 |
| #15 Not only do we execute OldSpook's plan but seize the oil wells to extract the costs of the 'war' and compensation for the costs incurred by the US in lives and dollars for the act of the Iranian regime since the Shah. EFPs in Iraqi IEDs, terrorism costs in lives and security preparations. I figure we remove the regime and make a 5oo billion in the deal. |
| Posted by: Hellfish 2010-05-18 18:46 |
| #14 President Bush didn't have the political support for another war after Afghanistan and Iraq Whoops! I missed the final point: President Bush didn't have the troops or materiel to fight another war with, even had he the political support to do so. Sorry about that. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2010-05-18 17:02 |
| #13 Once Iran goes, the region becomes a LOT more stable. The only cancer left would be Pakistan. And Saudi Arabia, as Paul2/Paul D. mentions frequently. And Pakistan might become more tractable after taking down the mullahs. I don't think so. Pakistan's leading politicians and military men have never lived in the real world, by all accounts. Years of extracting jizya affects the mind, after all. Besides, how often has it been repeated that Pakistan is too difficult to conquer, due to terrain, the madness of the citizenry, and Pakistan's legendary nukes? True or not, the Pakistani leadership believe that, also. Bush made a big mistake by leaving it for Obummer. President Bush didn't have the political support for another war after Afghanistan and Iraq; even some Republicans were backing away from the efforts, either because they weren't worth doing or because they weren't being done right. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2010-05-18 16:52 |
| #12 Once Iran goes, the region becomes a LOT more stable. The only cancer left would be Pakistan. And Pakistan might become more tractable after taking down the mullahs. Iran has been a huge pain in the derriere since the days when Jimmy Carter refused to do much about the seizing of our embassy and kidnapping of our personnel. Iran has been responsible for a lot of deaths in the M.E. If allowed to progress with nukes, they will be responsible for a lot more. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-05-18 16:22 |
| #11 What OldSpook said should have been done a long time ago. Bush made a big mistake by leaving it for Obummer. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2010-05-18 15:56 |
| #10 The big pipelines have never been built, partly due to the expense and partly due to the fact that pipelines are hard to protect in the same way shipping lanes are to protect. Plus it hasn't really been necessary, businesses are a bit reluctant going to spend that kind of cash. Iran blockading the Persian Gulf would amount declaring war on the rest of the world. This would justify acts of war in response, along the lines of what has already been proposed. I believe mankind's traditional 'common law' of warfare has followed that line for centuries. Perhaps our distinguished |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-05-18 15:53 |
| #9 This is perhaps blister in the hope the people in the west would overreact. 'OMG! $7/Gal Gas! WE MUST DO ANYTHING! PROMISE THEM ANYTHING TO AVOID IT!'. I can already hear the cries for Berkley, the media, etc... He knows that Bumbles is a vapor tiger and will do anything to avoid argument. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2010-05-18 14:47 |
| #8 Why aren't there big honking pipelines from Kuwait/Southern Iraq and the oil rich part of Saudi Arabia over to the Western Coast of Saudi Arabia. Massive pipes, surrounded with cement, and buried beneath sand to make them invisible and hard to target. It is not as if they don't have the money or that Iraq and Iran haven't been a threat to oil since oh, the tanker war days of the 80s. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2010-05-18 14:13 |
| #7 You're a hard dude OS. But I think you've got it just about right. The worst Iran could do to us is make us pay $7 a gallon for gas for a few months. Canada is our biggest importer of oil now, it would be painful in the wallet but it would put an end to the Iranian threat forever. Their country's industrial infrastructure would be laid to waste fairly easily and with much less risk to us than to them. If the little squirrels want to scrap, lets oblige them. |
| Posted by: bigjim-CA 2010-05-18 13:24 |
| #6 Moose that's why you have to hit hard, fast and deadly. End the "crisis" in 72 hours in terms of any military efforts Iran can make in the Gulf. And within a week, end Iran's government - not by invading but simply take the infrastructure down so that no government can function except at a local level. We will not be in the business of taking Iran over, only of smashing its government. If the region wants to get into nation building they are welcome to it. Once Iran goes, the region becomes a LOT more stable. The only cancer left would be Pakistan. The sad thing is that Obama is fundamentally incapable of taking the needed actions. He would rather our economy collapse and tens of millions of Americans be put into misery than killing a few thousand Iranians bad guys and making a few million of them suffer temporarily for their support of an evil government. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2010-05-18 13:20 |
| #5 For example, hits on approximatley 25 sites puts Tehran completely without power for and include water distribution pump stations as well as sewage and water treatment. Up the number top 50 and you take out all the major bridges (think overpasses too) for rail and road transport to/from Tehran. Bump it to about 75 and you can take out communications. 100 cruise missiles. followed by 10-12 bombs a day aimed at keeping those things off line and 10-12 to take out any government centers that appear functional. No power. No water. No sewage. No phones or cell phones. No radio broadcasts. After 3 days, food is gone. Fires without water. Raw sewage means cholera and dysentery. Hospitals reduced to 1890's technology. Tehran has a population 13 million. Far too many for the police and baseej thungs to control when the people start rioting for their lives. Ugly picture. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2010-05-18 13:13 |
| #4 The problem here is that the commercial oil tankers are very skittish to threats. When this happened during the Iran-Iraq war, the US Navy not only had to guarantee safe passage, but pay hefty insurance costs, huge crew bonuses, but deal with a major uptake in the price of crude oil at the same time. This could actually be worse, because Venezuela would both support Iran by cutting back on its oil exports, and because of Chavez incompetence, their oil production is being cut back anyway. Russia is pretty much out of the picture, and Canada as well as the US would need to be in full development and production for six months to catch up. This is about how much oil we have in the strategic reserve, but it can only be pumped at a given rate. So we would be looking at $10/gal gasoline, to start, with increasing shortages. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-05-18 13:06 |
| #3 Iran does this, Iran gets destroyed. Simple as that. Military command and control first, then the nuke sites, then government and military HQ centers. C3I targets within the first 4 hours (inclduign civilian radio and TV transmission towers), the HQ within the first 24-48. COmplete and utter destruction of any deployed Iranian military forces must be part of this (even the boghammers get strafed out of the water, and fishing boats destroyed). If they refuse to surrender (via abdicating completely) within 12 hours of phase one, then destruction in detail via cruise missiles and bombs. Communications and transport infrastructure first (telecom, air facilities, bridges, major highways). After that, if there is still resistance, then water and electrical distribution infrastructure. Let them be in the dark, without water or electricity, and no hope of food to their cities. During all this: Turn back refugees at all borders, unless they agree to take up arms against Iran's government. They want the 6th century? Give it to them. Its a shame we do not have a president that could calmly and credibly make this scenario clear to Short Round and the Ayatollahs, in private. It might be enough to serve as a deterrent, especially if accompanied by a small demonstration - say a single cruise missile impacting on an Ayatollah's residence during the call. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2010-05-18 13:03 |
| #2 Iran's economy is far more dependent upon exporting than the world is dependent upon her oil. The world will be discomforted. Iran will implode. In this case, maybe we shouldn't talk the dude out of shooting himself, but give him the old Clint Eastwood reply. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2010-05-18 12:43 |
| #1 here we go again.......this time it needs to be done from the sky.....relentlessly |
| Posted by: armyguy 2010-05-18 11:41 |