The Strait of Hormuz has been a matter of serious concern for the world for some time due to the mounting tension and bellicose rhetoric between the US-Israel and Iran. Furthermore, it seems it may again become a venue for a military confrontation between the US and Iran because of a recent threat made by the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (RGC), Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, last week in his interview to the local Jam-e Jam newspaper.‘’Naturally every country under attack by an enemy uses all its capacity and opportunities to confront the enemy. Given the main route for energy to exit from the region, one of Iran’s steps will definitely be to exercise control on the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Should a confrontation erupt between us and the enemy, the scope will definitely reach the oil issue. Oil prices will dramatically increase. This is one of the factors deterring the enemy from taking military action against Iran,’’ Jafari said.
Other more ambiguous threats from Iran’s oil minister and other government officials that an attack on Iran would result in oil supply turmoil made matters worse and further increased concerns in both official and commercial circles over the repercussions of a probable closing of Hormuz.
In response to these threats, Vice Adm. Kevin J. Cosgriff, commander of the US 5th Fleet stationed in Bahrain across the Persian Gulf from Iran, with a carrier strike force led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln warned that such an action by Iran would be considered an act of war and that the US would not allow Iran to effectively hold hostage nearly a third of the world’s oil supply.
So with Iranian threats and counter-threats by the US Navy, the Strait of Hormuz is again at the forefront of a possible military confrontation between the parties. In fact a series of naval standoffs between Iranian RGC speedboats and US warships in Hormuz occurred in December 2007 and January 2008.
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway between the Gulf of Oman in the southeast and the Persian Gulf in the southwest. On the north coast is Iran and on the south is the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The strait at its narrowest is 34 kilometers wide. The shipping traffic corridor itself is mere nine kilometers wide, with 3.2 kilometers each for incoming and outgoing traffic, separated by a three-kilometer buffer area. It is the only sea passage to the open oceans for large areas of the petroleum-exporting Persian Gulf states. More than 90 percent of all oil exported from the Persian Gulf, or nearly 17 million barrels per day (bpd), goes through this narrow outlet. Nearly two-fifths of the world’s oil supply passes through the strait, making it one of the world’s main oil arteries.
Given these facts, if the strait were to be closed or controlled by Iran, only about 3 million bpd of oil out of 17 bpd could realistically be redirected via an alternative trans-Arabian pipeline, which is about 2,000 kilometers long, through Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea. However, there is no alternative route for the 18 percent of global liquefied natural gas volumes exported from Qatar and the UAE. Therefore, shutting Hormuz or preventing sea traffic would thus have a very real impact on world energy markets, not to mention the already nervous equity markets.
If the tension between the US and Iran were to increase, Hormuz would be the place to watch, not just for the opponents but for the whole world.
