Iran Banking On American Straits Strategy

Laughter is the only response Iran can have to the collision in the Iranian-controlled Straits of Hormuz between the USS Porter, a missile destroyer, and a Japanese oil tanker flying a Panamanian flag, earlier this month.

Photos that have been released show the extent of the damage. The collision left a humungous hole in the side of the destroyer.

The good news, as the US Navy was quick to announce, is that no one was hurt on either vessel and that no oil escaped into the sea.

The Straits of Hormuz is a narrow water passage with major responsibilities. On any given day 20-30 per cent of the entire world’s oil supply passes through those waters. The straits are by no means international waters; they are controlled mutually by Oman and Iran.

For months the Iranians have murmured about and hinted that they would shut the straits. If they were to make good on their muted intentions, it would have a devastating impact on the price of oil. And actually, almost every time the Iranians do hint at closing the straits, the price of oil shoots up. That price increase bolsters the impact of the sanctions against them. The higher the cost of oil, the less Iran must sell to make their budget.

The way the Iranians have it figured, sanctions work for them, not against them. The US hasn’t figured it out yet.

Instead, to protect the world’s oil interests and the price of oil, the US has dispatched the 5th and 6th fleets to the tiny, narrow Straits of Hormuz.

In total the US now has four carrier fleets over there and the French have their ship called the Charles de Gaulle. The US also has the USS Lincoln, the Eisenhower, the Enterprise and the John Stennis. All but the Enterprise are Nimitz-class supercarriers, which means they each have 90 planes on them. The numbers for the US are staggering. For the Iranians, they are laughable.

And there’s more. The US also has also deployed a slew of underwater minesweepers and submarines to try to gain some advantage over the Iranians. The ramming of the Japanese tanker shows just how hard that is to accomplish.

Iran’s subs are tiny. They utilise rubber speedboats with high-calibre machineguns and rocket launchers. They swarm around and then they disappear. They are on and off the radar all the time and run circles around the big guns of the West. They are made for waters such as the Straits of Hormuz.

The West, on the other hand, is unfamiliar with those waters and those waters are very dangerous. At the narrowest point the Straits of Hormuz is only 21 nautical miles wide. And only six of those miles are wide and deep enough for a ship or tanker to sail through. The straits are divided into three sections. The centre section is a two-mile buffer to prevent collisions. Each side section has two, one-mile-wide lanes for travel in each direction.

Iran knows that the more ships clogging the waters, the more collisions there will be. And when the ships have no direction but are there, sitting, watching, waiting, collisions are even more likely. They remember how several years ago a US nuclear submarine called the USS Hartford rammed into another US ship called the USS New Orleans, an amphibious craft. The New Orleans is almost the size of an aircraft carrier. It was hard to miss.

The damage from that collision was extensive. The commanders of the ships were relieved from duty. The ship, the New Orleans, sustained $US2.3 million in damages.

The nuclear submarine, the Hartford, was damaged to the tune of nearly $US103m. That recollection is making the Iranians laugh even louder.MORE HERE