I would like to hear more public discussion by military experts about the possibility of using a blockade against the Islamist regime in Tehran. Iran, whose economy relies heavily on oil exports, and which has a long coastline and a very weak navy, seems to be vulnerable to one. Why could empty tankers en route to Iranian ports not be turned back well outside the Straits of Hormuz, while tankers bound for other Gulf ports were escorted in and back out again?
No doubt other Gulf nations, seeing the opportunity to sell more of their own oil, would increase their production to make up for what was no longer coming from Iran. The notion that Iran could block the Strait against the world's most powerful navy, using swarms of speedboats, strikes me as alarmist and far-fetched. And it might choose not even to try, if the U.S. made clear it would respond by destroying Iran's nuclear sites and many other military targets from the air. The regime might not survive the humiliation either way, but the idea would be to make it accept a blockade as the lesser of two evils.
President Kennedy used a blockade in 1962 to prevent any further deliveries of Soviet nuclear missiles to Cuba. Even though the USSR had an enormously powerful military with about 3,000 nuclear weapons, it chose not to challenge the blockade with force. Part of the reason it did not was that Kennedy had made clear the blockade was a first step, and that depending on how the USSR responded, other actions might follow. He was obviously referring to air strikes on the missile bases in Cuba as a next step, and after that a full-out invasion. The fact about 1,000 armed aircraft and 100,000 troops had been moved into position to do these things made the implied threat something Khrushchev and his advisers had to take very seriously.
This President's pandering to the Khomeinists has allowed them to come very close to making nuclear weapons. If they get them, Israel may not be able to survive under that pressure, and nations like Saudi Arabia will probably try to get nuclear weapons of their own. What's not talked about as much is that a nuclear-armed Islamist Iran, with so many terrorist proxies at its disposal, would present this country with a threat of nuclear terrorism that we could never afford to live with.
