The escalating stakes over Iran’s Soverign Rights, including the Right to Self Defense

Playing Poker in the Strait
By James R. Holmes – 30 January, 2012 – The Diplomat

Does Iran boast the capacity to bar the Strait of Hormuz to commercial and naval shipping, as influential officials and lawmakers have repeatedly vowed to do? Doubtful – but Tehran can make serious trouble for the United States, the West, and its Middle East neighbors short of putting a stopper in the bottle of the Persian Gulf.

Just after the New Year, Iranian army chief Ataollah Salehi cautioned the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis to stay clear of the Persian Gulf. “I advise, recommend and warn them over their return of this carrier to the Persian Gulf,” intoned Salehi, “because we are not in the habit of warning more than once.” The U.S. Navy paid these words little if any heed. Stennis remained in the area and was joined by its sister ship, USS Carl Vinson, in the Indian Ocean theater a few days later. Last week, after the European Union levied new economic sanctions to dissuade Iran from pressing ahead with its nuclear-weapons program, Muhammad Ismail Kowsari, deputy head of the Islamic Republic’s committee on national security, warned that the strategic waterway would “definitely be closed if the sale of Iranian oil is violated in any way.” Kowsari proclaimed that regional and Western navies would be unable to force the Strait should Iranian forces close it.

We have to allow for the bluster quotient in any pronouncement issuing forth from Tehran. Still, the Iranian armed forces possess sufficient seaward reach – in the form of anti-ship cruise missiles, speedboats and other small craft, sea mines, and so forth – to give Western capitals pause. The logic of “access denial” and “area denial,” two terms much in vogue among American commentators, involves manipulating perceptions among antagonists as much as it does girding oneself to actually fight battles on the high seas. Amassing and displaying the capacity to do significant damage sends a message. Tehran may believe it can convince Washington and its partners that persevering with sanctions will exact costs that vastly outstrip any gains the coalition can hope to extract from economic coercion. In effect, the Iranian leadership has threatened to hold hostage the 17 million barrels of oil that passes through the Strait every day, and the prosperity of oil-dependent economies with it. …more