USA:
The relevant question, where lie America's national interests?
The Straits of Hormuz, like the Straits of Malacca, Gibraltar, Suez Canal and Panama Canal are fundamental strategic points on the seas. The Straits of Hormuz and the whole Persian Gulf are vital because it is a chokepoint for much of the world's flow of oil. Without reliable and reasonably priced oil the world's economy will crash.
What are America's interest in protecting a reliable and reasonably priced flow of oil? There are both an upside and a downside for America in a disruption of the supply of oil through the Straits. Thanks in part to technology of fracking and in part to Donald Trump’s deregulation, America has now become self-sufficient in oil. Indeed, America has now become a net exporter. To the extent that the flow of oil is cut off, the price of oil goes up and America prospers in a balance of trade sence. If the price does not go too high, America prospers without severe damage to the world's economy.
If the price of oil goes too high because there is insufficient flow of oil through the Straits of Hormuz, the world economy crashes and America would be left with no rich markets into which to sell its oil and no market into which to sell its exports. Our economy would founder. America's interests are to maintain a certain level of flow of oil through the Straits.
America's allies, including Japan whose ships were recently sunk while Prime Minister Abe was in Iran, are more dependent on oil from the Mideast yet they will be among the last to participate in any military action to secure freedom of the seas but they will be among the first to repudiate it. Many will secretly wish for America to act militarily while they hypocritically criticize the action as adventurism and demonize Donald Trump. Their reaction will no doubt put even more strain on the transatlantic mutual defense relationship, a consequence of American military action which no doubt would please Vladimir Putin who has long sought the disintegration of NATO.
There is simply no appetite among the American people for land-based military operations in Iran. Beyond the frustration of the Iraq experience, Americans have not entirely forgotten the folly of the Tonkin Gulf incident as casus belli . The president campaigned and won election promising to disengage the American military from the Middle East and to refrain from fighting pointless, endless wars there. John Bolton is probably being used by the president in a good cop, bad cop negotiating ploy with Iran. The probability is that the administration is not divided about the unwisdom of invading Iran by land.
Airstrikes and naval operations in the Persian Gulf are quite another matter.
Iran:
the main question, assuming Iran is guilty of attacking ships, is whether it is doing so as a puppet of Russia or rather lashing out in desperation because the corrupt, theocratic regime fears mounting discontent as the country's economy disintegrates under the pressure of sanctions imposed by Trump after his withdrawal from the Obama/Iran deal. Trump’s sanctions have brought the Iranian regime to a desperate place, inflation rages at 37%, unemployment is massive, there are electrical outages even food shortages. Unsurprisingly, civil unrest is increasing.
Whatever their motivation, it is vital to understand that if Iran should undertake to close the Straits after it becomes possessed of atomic weapons, the entire picture changes immediately. American military operations are reduced almost to the point of extinction because we cannot discount the possibility that crazed, theocratic mullahs in Iran would be apocalyptic enough to welcome Armageddon. Our costs of a land operation against an atomic Iran prohibit even the contemplation of putting boots on the ground. The risks of maintaining stand-off air and sea operations increase exponentially when applied against a nuclear Iran.
Iran is a far more powerful military state then was Iraq where we learned to our sorrow that invasion is one thing but occupation is quite another. I have come to believe that one of the major downsides of the war in Iraq was that it served to make an invasion of Iran a political impossibility even though Iran is a far more dangerous enemy than Iraq. Consider the stalemate in Korea, once Korea has the bomb the equation changed entirely. If Iran gets the bomb the geopolitical power situation in the Gulf inverts. Our ability to intimidate Iran by threatening it, as I believe John Bolton has been commissioned to do, will be dramatically diminished when Iran gets the bomb. Iran’s ability to break the fragile anti-Iran alliance that America is trying to cobble together among surrounding Gulf states will greatly increase.
All this is the cost of waging the wrong war, at the wrong time, against the wrong enemy, Iraq.
Russia:
Russia has only a weak economy based on the sale of minerals but primarily based on the sale of petroleum products. If the flow of oil through the Straits of Hormuz is reduced, the price of oil rises and Vladimir Putin's regime, generally believed to be suffering under sanctions and needing oil at a minimum of $80 a barrel to payoff Putin’s apparatchiks, prospers and its survival is more assured. Putin will have more resources to conduct more adventurism such as we have seen in Georgia, Crimea and Ukraine and to pay his henchmen. Supplying oil to Europe through pipelines, Putin will be in a leveraged position to push apart NATO.
Russia has extensive relations with Iran, even to the point of supplying them with nuclear know-how and equipment. It is not known to the general public what if any commitments or incentives the Russians might have given the Iranians to engage in mischief in the Straits of Hormuz but it is easy to calculate advantages running to Putin. We ought not to forget that the Austrians declared war on the Serbians in 1914 because they had a green light from Germany. The North Koreans invaded South Korea in 1950 because they got the green light from Stalin. We civilians simply do not know how motivated Vladimir Putin might be to do mischief through proxies. What ever action America might as the world's policeman undertake in protecting the flow of oil, we must never forget that Russia is still a nuclear superpower.
China:
China is insatiably thirsty for oil and it certainly does not want to see it supply interdicted or the price of oil spiked. Nevertheless, China has other very significant considerations on its plate. It is in a make or break war with the United States to become the world’s dominant economic and military power. Trump has directly confronted that ambition and threatens to derail it. In breaking off trade negotiations and reneging on its agreements, China has concluded that it must prevail over Trump if it is to realize its ambitions. It might be thinking that it need not prevail over the United States, merely temporize until the 2020 election or until internal domestic pressure to withdraw tariffs becomes too great for Trump to withstand.
Given this is state of affairs, it is not unreasonable to suspect that China is giving Iran every tacit support it can extend if it believes that Iran’s mischief in the Persian Gulf might so distract America or undermine Trump that China can prevail in this trade war. The extent or nature of this support simply cannot be known by armchair civilians. It might be coming in connection with support from Russia. It might be a prelude to these nations attempting to break through the sanctions currently crippling Iran.
Israel:
The threat of atomic war increases exponentially as Israel must ponder a pre-emptive strike against an Iran armed with the bomb to avoid annihilation. This possibility is not to be summarily dismissed. Committed to “never again,” Israel will certainly not passively submit itself to be extirpated again this time in a nuclear holocaust. Trump:
Donald Trump will be presented with a serious conundrum. If he permits the price of oil to spike to dangerous levels, he will be blamed. No doubt the Democrat media will blame him for antagonizing rather than appeasing Iran, that is, for breaking the Iran deal and applying sanctions. If Trump acts by putting boots on the ground in Iran, he will probably forfeit his re-election.. If he acts to keep the Straits open by deploying elements of air and see, he will undoubtedly be excoriated by the left and firmly supported only by his resilient personal base.
Is it within the United States' capability to maintain reasonable flow of oil through the Straits of Hormuz without too great an expenditure of blood and treasure?
My arm chair Guess is that by deploying elements of air and sea power together with selected missile strikes against land targets in Iran, the flow of oil can be maintained for a reasonable amount of time.
Crunch time, if it comes, will be a real test of Donald Trump’s character. Events may generate a crisis or Iran might simply get a bomb. Hence, Trump runs severe risks for the nation if he temporizes. His moral dilemma, if he acts he runs risks, if he delays he runs different risks, political risks not the least among them.
Democrats, committed to a green dream, do not necessarily want to maintain the flow of oil. Indeed, they would sacrifice the national interest of the United States in a heartbeat if it would unseat Donald Trump. Establishment Republicans might well prove as unreliable allies as Europeans.
In the real world of politics, he must weigh all of his priorities, all his hopes, which are dependent upon his re-election against a threat to the nation with both upside and downside potential as described. He must calculate that he will be acting almost entirely alone. Any failure, any perception of failure, even any protraction of the dilemmas presented by Iran’s mischief, can leave him beleaguered before the media and abandoned by all but his hardened base. If he missteps he might be confounded in the long-term existential economic war with China.
If the fails to take military action, he risks economic disaster and eventual nuclear war. If he uses military force, but fails to get the proportions exactly right, he risks defeat in 2020 and a socialist take over of our country. After Trump, the deluge. After Trump, the risks of economic and nuclear winter are not diminished in a new dark age brought down upon us by any one of the 23 America hating, Islam loving, socialist obsessed, arrogant, elitist candidates.
After Trump, the Chinese.
