Turns out Iran never did need a nuclear weapon…it has geography
Strait of Hormuz. Public domain
In all the kerfuffle over Iran’s nuclear weapons aspirations and its supposed capabilities, the pointy-headed types seem to have missed a key fact: You don’t need a made-up nuclear weapon if you’re in possession of a natural one.
For Iran, that is the narrow waterway called the Strait of Hormuz.
It’s the only path from the Persian/Arabian Gulf to the open seas, which is why 20 per cent of the world’s oil exports pass through the strait.
On the north coast of the strait lies Iran. On the south, lies the Musandam Peninsula, which is shared by the UAE and Oman.
Iran has been able to choke off the waterway to all but the vessels allied to the US.
As the Financial Times’ chief foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman has written about the strait’s closure. It creates “both an immediate crisis and a long-term strategic quandary. The current problem is that the longer it is closed, the greater the threat of a global recession. The future dilemma is that Iran now knows that control of the Strait of Hormuz gives it a stranglehold over the world economy.”
Quite so. Much like a nuclear weapon. The implied threat of having one is enough to deter aggression, as countries like North Korea have found. No one messes with Kim Jong Un anymore, not even the Trump White House.
Whatever your views on the ongoing war on Iran, it’s reasonable to say that all sides should have the right to retaliate or defend themselves. Equally, it’s entirely to be expected that an embattled Iran will employ any defences it can.
The strait is a good one.
In some ways, the strait may be even better than a nuclear weapon because closing a waterway doesn’t kill people. It just prevents shipments
