BlackFive

I have been on record for a while now saying some sort of military action against Iran is necessary before W leaves office. The risk of a Democrat winning the White House and refusing to consider a military option would more or less leave us accepting a nuclear Iran. I prefer a missile and air-focused strike on all known nuke facilities and we actually had a very interesting discussion of this at the Milblogger Conference last April on the Mother of all Podcasts hosted by Sparky and Lumpy, the boy lieutenants of Op-For. In this Chuck and I quibble about which missiles are best and Smash offers a sobering look at the havoc the Iranians could cause in the Straits of Hormuz. This piece from Commentary offers a serious look at what would need to be done in any military strike against Iran that envisions all the badness Smash was concerned with as well as how this could be a decapitating strike on the regime.

But neither are nuclear weapons the only threat posed by the Islamic Republic. While the international community has been preoccupied with this issue, the regime in Tehran has been taking steady steps to achieve hegemony over one of the world’s most sensitive and economically critical regions, and control over the world’s most precious resource. It is doing so, moreover, entirely through conventional means.

To put it briefly, the Islamic Republic has its hand on the throttle of the world’s economic engine: the stretch of ocean at the mouth of the Persian Gulf known as the Straits of Hormuz, which are only 21 miles wide at their narrowest point. Through this waterway, every day, pass roughly 40 percent of the world’s crude oil, including two-thirds of the oil from Saudi Arabia. By 2025, according to Energy Department estimates, fully 60 percent of the world’s oil exports will be moved through this vital chokepoint.

Spend the time and look hard at what needs to happen.