Could Iran Stop Ships From Using the Strait of Hormuz?

(Graphic: Wiki Commons)

Could Iran stop ships from using the straits of Hormuz? Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Jon Alterman, director and senior fellow of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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Marco Werman: Iran’s threats may not carry a great deal of credibility, but that doesn’t mean they should be ignored. Jon Alterman is director and senior fellow of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He say Iran can’t close the strait of Hormuz, but they can cause troubles there.

Jon Alterman: They can create mischief in the straits of Hormuz. They can create uncertainty in the straits of Hormuz. I don’t think for a minute they could close the straits of Hormuz. What they could do is they could make people uncomfortable enough that the insurance rates for shipping would go up and make it uneconomical to use the straits.

Werman: Well, how would they do that? I mean the US has a fifth fleet there. What can Iran do to create this havoc?

Alterman: On the one hand, they could lay mines, and on the other hand, they could use this huge fleet of very small boats, many of which are armed, to harass ships and make it dangerous to go through the straights.

Werman: I mean the US has twenty battleships there with a massive support crew. Is there an advantage to having a fleet and fast footed strategy?

Alterman: Well, the Iranians fight asymmetrically. They don’t want to come up against the US navy warship to warship, and, in fact, the Iranian navy doesn’t really work inside the straits of Hormuz. They don’t work in the gulf. The work outside the gulf, so what you’re dealing with in the gulf are the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp Navy which fights in a very, very different way than the US Navy, and what you find on the US side is you’re dealing with lots of very small targets that are moving quickly, sometimes swarming ships, nobody’s really sure what’s a threatening ship, what’s a threatening gesture, rather than battleship to battleship, because the Iranian know if it were a battleship to battleship battle, they would lose in about four minutes.

Werman: Iran has said it will close the straights if the US and The West continue to impose sanctions on the country. Is that threat consequential enough that it might actually prevent further sanctions?

Alterman: I don’t think it will, partly because the US sanctions will be driven by Congress, partly because, I think, the Iranians are misjudging the world’s attitude toward Iran. What I hear when I talk to Russians and Chinese and other in the gulf is they feel that the Iranians are too bent on conflict and what they’d like is for the Iranians to lower the temperature of their confrontation with the rest of the world. I think the Iranian’s instinct is to focus on their weakness and their isolation and to remind people that they can inflict cost, that they can inflict pain.

Werman: Tell me this, John. Given all the moving parts and disparate alliances in the region, it would seem that no amount of war games or modelling would be able to forecast how this would all end up.

Alterman: There are two things to keep in mind. One is that this is fundamentally political. This isn’t about a military exercise. This is about trying to work global politics, trying to work the sanctions game, trying to work the diplomacy of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, preventing sanctions from being against Iran. This is really a political game and we’re seeing people use military instruments, but it’s fundamentally political. The other part of this is that the more you raise the temperature, the greater the possibility that you’ll have a miscalculation, you’ll have an accident, it will be interpreted the wrong way, and you’ll slide toward a conventional war even if each side doesn’t want a conventional war. A little more than a year ago, there was an incident where the US was within a minute of firing on an Iranian ship that was perceived to be hostile, and it turned out not to have been that level of threat, but we came very close. Once you start cascading down that way, there’s no predicting how it’s going to turn out.

Werman: Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Thanks very much.

Alterman: Thank you, Marco.

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