Small Boats
On Iran, Emulate TR (National Review Online)
In the first week of 2012, President Obama finally approved tough sanctions on
Iran’s central bank, aiming to cripple Iran’s oil trade and thwart its
advanced efforts to possess a nuclear weapon. Iran’s armed-forces commander,
Gen. Ataollah Salehi, threatened military action against the USS _John C.
Stennis_, an aircraft carrier operating in international waters: “We warn this
ship, which is considered a threat to us, not to come back . . . ” The next
day, Iran’s parliament began to prepare a bill that would prohibit all foreign
warships from using an international waterway, the Strait of Hormuz, to enter
the Persian Gulf without the Iranian navy’s permission. Although recently
validated analyses by the U.S. Navy confirm that Iran could not maintain a
disruption of oil flows through the Strait for more than a few days, the same
studies acknowledge that even a temporary loss of predictability in the
movement of roughly 15 million barrels per day to the global market would send
the price of crude to more than $200 a barrel for a prolonged period of time.
Such a price increase could soon lead to renewed recession or the collapse of
the global …
Small Boats, Big Seas