Posted on 08/04/2008 1:41:18 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
WASHINGTON—Two days after a diplomatic deadline has passed for Iran to enter negotiations with the world's great powers and end the reprocessing and enrichment of uranium, the chief of the country's Revolutionary Guard Corps is threatening to close down one of the world's most critical oil chokepoints, the Straits of Hormuz.
Speaking to Iranian reporters after testing a new anti-ship missile, Mohammad Ali Jafari said it could sink "enemy ships" at a range of more than 200 miles, and that shutting down the Straits of Hormuz would be easy.
"Enemies know that we are easily able to block the Straits of Hormuz for unlimited period," Iran's official news service quoted Mr. Jafari as saying.
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
“Is there some silly reason why a canal cannot be dug here?”
............
PLUS as an added bonus,
they could use all the sand from digging the canal
to build some more of those silly palm tree shaped islands!
Blockading countries is an act of war.
My major complaint is that we provide the service for free to the rest of the world, while it costs us a good chunk of our GDP. I'd rather see the US drill and build nuke plants until we were self sufficient. And then when the world needed us to smack somebody down, demand payment, cash, up front, before we lifted a finger
Madam Pelosi says that you will have to explain that in simpler terms. Her vast storehouse of knowledge on the development of high tech squirrel wheel generators, and her well proven expertise in the field of converting recycled Bud Light bottle caps into hydrogen doesn't cover strategic oil reserve issues.
And anyway, according to what her Sierra Club advisors tell her even if we started drilling in her CA district today it would take 957 years for that oil to affect prices at the gas pump.
All of that puts the U.S. in a position that war for oil or
complete economic collapse will be our only choices.
You can't frustrate every source of domestic energy
without consequences. Our enemies will blackmail us
to the extent that we are vulnerable to blackmail.
The Democrats are leading us into a real war for oil.
A war we won't have the energy to fight.
And whose ships will they hit to block it. Neighboring countries or US Navy?
Well put.
Well, I'm all in favor of that, but we're talking about the Iranians shutting down the spigot in the near future.
We certainly cannot drill our way out of THAT, it will take time to get horses' asses in Washington pointed the right direction, and it will take time to drill, and it will take time to build production/refinery capacity.
We can't be without oil for all that time.
That's what I thought until I was recently told on another thread that the Iranians could block the navigable channels through the Hormuz straits just by sinking a few tankers with their conventional warhead missiles, and it would take a year of more to clear the blockage. I know practically nothing about that area, but apparently those shipping channels through the Hormuz Straits are very narrow and easy to close off.
xlnt
At the most narrow point of the Hormuz strait, it is 21 miles wide. It would take more than a "few" tankers. Most of the strait is rather deep.
--At its narrowest point, the Strait is only 34 miles (55 km) across.
--The Strait consists of 2-mile (3.2-km) wide navigable channels for inbound and outbound tanker traffic as well as a 2-mile-wide buffer zone.
--The entire strait is only 180 kilometers long, and at its narrowest points only about 45 kilometers wide. It contains two shipping lanes used for large vessels. The channels are each 3.2 kilometers wide, with a 3.2-kilometer buffer zone between them. The northern channel is within only a few dozen kilometers of the Iranian coast.
Here is scholarly article on assessing the threat to the Strait of Hormuz It estimates that an Iranian mine laying attack could close the strait for up to a month.
So is attacking commercial shipping in international waters.
These idiots think we are toothless and they are untouchable. We are tigers and they are entirely mortal. It is high time someone taught them that fact.
And God bless you and your daughter and keep her safe.
Thank you both.
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