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Closing the straits of Hormuz

In the Cold War, there were a series of existential nightmares that kept policy planners awake at nights. One of them was the cutting of the vital oil supply lines from the Persian Gulf to the West. Today, the Iranian regime has threatened to cut the straits of Hormuz, if the United States tries to returns its carrier to its base in Bahrain. Iran has also tested a missile that could sink a carrier in the precise same place.


Iran has also, rather mysteriously, shot down a US unmanned drone. The best technology to do that is in Russia. Russia, the logical conclusion must be, has supplied technology to Iran in order to do this. Closing the Hormuz straits would certainly increase the price of oil- which might save the increasingly unstable Putin regime. When one therefore thinks "cui bono?", the answer must be that Moscow and Tehran have several things in common.


"Some damn thing in the Balkans" was the policy nightmare a hundred years ago. Now, it is the cutting of oil supply to the West by an Iran supported by the criminal regime in Moscow. The fact that China also took a look at the drone cannot have gone down well in the US.


This is spectacularly dangerous.


If Iran tries to close the straits, the response will be overwhelming force. 


The slightest miscalculation will start the Third World War. 
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