The Hormuz Maneuver

Iran’s proxies have the commercial world by the short hairs.

It is nice to get feedback, and I’ve gotten a bit from my suggestion on Wednesday that Iran might block the Strait of Hormuz — that tight crimp where the Persian Gulf empties into the Gulf of Oman. And why not? Iran has been talking about holding the strait hostage for years, and it’s certainly within the narrow ability of what the Islamic Republic calls a navy.

Mind, the shooting fight is to the west, in the Gulf of Aden and another strait called Bab al-Mandab, which takes us into the Red Sea. On the map (thank you, Google) Bab al-Mandab is circled in red, Hormuz is in Green — because you know — the Islamic Republic.

Now that we’ve gotten our bearings… Hormuz is, at its narrowest point, only 30 miles wide. Despite the states on either side of the Persian Gulf hating each other with the passion of a thousand eternities, the strait is reasonably well run. There is a two-mile wide “lane” on the Iranian side for inward traffic, another two-mile wide lane for outbound vessels and a two-mile wide buffer between them. Upstream of this choke point lies about 55% of the world’s known crude oil reserves.

The Play:

A year after Iran’s revolution in 1979, neighboring Iraq tried to invade, which resulted in a war over (among other things) the shared border on the Shatt al-Arab waterway. So this sort of thing is in Tehran’s playbook. As it was, the eight-year war was a draw and accomplished nothing but a population control. Iran learned an important lesson: It’s easier to bankroll proxies to spread chaos abroad than the fight at home.

So far, the modus operandi has worked out well by threading a glaring loophole in the entire concept idea of collective security and the legal frame work of organizations like the United Nations. Prior to World War I, nations had relied on what was called “Balance of Power”, or the more Machiavellian realpolitik — where the operating rule was, it ws the power to do something, rather than you had the right, that mattered. Brutal, true, but everyone knew where they stood. The legal framework provided by the UN is without a doubt, a moral improvement but there are yawning chasms in this logic:

1: Down here on Earth, as messy as it is, it’s hard to get a dozen people outside of a cult to agree on what defines collective security. National interests are too strong and varied. A moral framework is even more slippery.

2: Once we get into legal frameworks, people start talking like lawyers and splitting hairs on technicalities and semantics. Anyone who’s ever been involved in a court action knows that no two lawyers can agree on the legal definition of anything. The UN is a court without a bailiff to haul you off to prison.

To date, that cover of “plausible deniability” has been enough to shield Iran from its actions: They technically haven’t attacked anyone. Tehran is gaming the legal and moral framework to get away what simple power says it can get away with. And the US retreat ahead of Russia aggression has only emboldened them.

Pro:

If your object is global chaos, then blocking the Strait of Hormuz would be the Red Sea crisis by an order of magnitude. Whereas some 12% of seaborne oil and gas goes through the Red Sea, if that route is cut off completely (and the crisis has still only dropped traffic load by 20%) you are looking at delays and increased shipping costs, something akin to the Covid supply disruptions created by the demand whiplash. But the oil will get there.

Block up the Strait of Hormuz and half the global oil supply can’t get out. Saudi Arabia has some pipeline capacity to move oil overland to terminals on the Red Sea — above the Bab al-Mandab’s current Houthi infestation — but it is limited. The world is looking at serious delivery disruptions.

For its part, Iran has been constructing oil and gas shipping terminals to the south/east of the Strait, on the side of the Gulf of Oman. So were they to block the Persian Gulf at Hormuz, it wouldn’t do too much to harm to Iranian oil and gas exports that are the only thing keeping the economy afloat. The fact that prices will likely triple on the maneuver, would be a boon to the regime in Tehran. So what’s stopping them? Well there is one, existential-sized con looming.

Con:

Currently most of the world sees the Middle east as an Arab problem — and the US would really like too. The danger for Tehran is that their “I’m not touching you” strategy of aggravating everyone around them may hit the breaking point if they put a stopper on half the world’s oil. Such a move would cripple the single commodity economies of the Gulf States — who are currently only dreaming of strangling Iran. If anything will prompt them into action, that’s it. This won’t be some abstract war about who Allah loves more, either.

Mind, the West and its leaders are very silly, but cut off the energy in warm, comfy, rich and powerful democracies and all bets are off. The West will be forced to quit the UN legal masturbation and sort the matter out by force. That would be a war the current Iranian regime simply couldn’t survive.

Richard Murff is the founder of 4717 Insights. For more on the world, how it got here and a stiff drink, head to the 4717. Murff is the author of Pothole of the Gods: On Holy War, Fake News & other Ill-Advised Ideas, Drunk as Lords, and the upcoming Horrible Political Jokes in Ukraine. For a flight of insights delivered three times a week, please subscribe.