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Peril Awaits at the Strait of Hormuz
By Dr. Lawrence Prabhakar Williams
The Gulf-Southwest Asia region has always been a hyper-flash point of global conflict due to the dual strategic persistence of the Arab-Israel conflict and the geo-strategic and geo-economic rivalries over oil and its supplies across the critical sea gates of Straits of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandab straits. This has resulted in the near permanent forward basing of US and allied naval and air forces in the region with dedicated theater commands along with naval air assets with prepositioned amphibious and expeditionary capabilities. In recent years, the stakes of heightened conflict has increased by vast proportions by the intertwining of the conflicts in Iraq, the nuclear and missile proliferation in Iran and the domino effect that has followed by the Arab states.
Iran holds the position of a pivotal state in the Gulf Region and has been energized in its quest to seek a great power status leveraging its Shiite ideology over the vast numbers of the Sunni dominated Southwest Asian region. Iran also has a civilization complex of being the Persian civilization and its affirmed superiority over the Arabs in its geo-historical contexts. Controlling the Straits of Hormuz and the sea gates in the region that has the densest energy-laden shipping and leveraging its enormous oil and natural gas assets into a regional geo-economic and geo-strategic grand strategy matrix has been Iran's ambitions. Contending Iran in its aggressive quest of power expansion in its geo-strategic and religious ideology has been the US-western allied Arab states and the lone free democratic state of Israel.
Geo-strategic importance of the Strait: The maritime archipelagic framework of the Gulf-Southwest Asian region is characterized by the Persian Gulf (also known as "Gulf" avoiding the contending Persian and Arab nomenclature claims), Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman constituting a primary jugular of the sea way of the region.
The topography of the Strait is complex with the narrowest point the Strait being 21 miles wide. The shipping lanes consist of two-mile wide channels for inbound and outbound tanker traffic, as well as a two-mile wide buffer zone.
Iran's access to the Strait and the pivotal role as a littoral state to control shipping movements with the capability to jeopardize international shipping has been a critical sinew of strength. In terms of its power profile, Iran could marshal its economic, military and demographic power to overwhelm the fragile states of the Arabian Peninsula that includes the regional giant Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
The geo-strategic significance of the Strait of Hormuz would continue to increase in its criticality owing to Iranian motivations-capabilities of blocking oil shipping in the event of punitive actions against Tehran through very robust asymmetric naval capabilities of the Iranian navy and the sea-based elements of the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Council). Adding to these capabilities, would be Iranian ballistic and cruise missiles with nuclear or other WMD payloads that constitutes the critical gravity of threat in the region to the regional states, international shipping and for powers like China and India which have very critical hydrocarbon stakes in the region.
The Iranian move to close the strait would have a very steep impact of jeopardizing the oil trade and a possible re-flagging of the tanker traffic by US and western naval power could trigger an Iranian asymmetric naval attack on the convoying of the oil traffic in the region hitting both the tanker traffic as well as the naval task force units with supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles and even engaging in submarine warfare that could eventually witness a number of sunken ships thus blocking the strait of physical access.
Emergent Naval Dynamics of the Gulf: Five significant issues pattern the naval dynamics in the Gulf that has its impact on the region, Iran and the external powers that includes India:
One, The high stakes of Gulf Security in view of the enormous oil and natural gas reserves and the high volume of export-import trade have resulted in the high rates of economic growth and high rates of military expenditure. The slice of military expenditure has been quite high with specific reference to naval and air warfare and missile systems. The Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and the moderate Arab states have been recipients of US and western military hardware sales and often have built and operated their military hardware in doctrinal and operational patterns conforming to the US and western technological and operational matrices. They have alliance and operational support arrangements that warrants the direct US and Western naval and air intervention and support that comes into the region.
Two, Iran on the other hand was an earlier pro-US and western ally during the 1960s until the early 1980s having heavily relied on US and western technology for its civilian and military sectors. With the 1979 Shia revolution, Iran broke away from the US and Western alliance system. Its pursuit of policies of asserting its regional power and challenging the status quo based on an asymmetric grand strategy. Russia and China have been principal trading partners of military-industrial technology and more importantly in the civilian-nuclear and naval sectors. Iranian naval hardware has been increasingly Russian Kilo class submarines the Amur, the Kilo 636 class Mig-29 aircraft supplies of air defence systems including the much delayed S-300 systems sales and the Chinese supplied ballistic missile technologies and the naval anti-ship cruise missiles.
Three, External powers like France and India have increased considerable offshore access and basing presence in the region with naval support facilities for France in the United Arab Emirates where French naval special operation forces have access facilities along with forward deployment of French warships. Similarly, India has access and naval support facilities in Qatar. The Indian commitment includes a substantive naval security guarantee that would secure the offshore assets of Qatar and provides for the joint venture in production of weapons and military equipment. The maritime cooperation agreement provides India with a strategic naval base in the Gulf region. The India-Qatar maritime security initiative provides India and Qatar with a convergence of Indian naval power with Qatari naval forces to combat the variety of maritime asymmetric threats of terrorism, piracy and securing the offshore oil installations. It thus brings India into the Gulf Region with a secure access agreement.
Four, the role of the Israeli Navy in the region adds to the interesting complexity and power balance in the naval theatre. Even as the Iranian clandestine nuclear weapons program races ahead, with the possible targeting of Iranian nuclear-industrial estate being contemplated by the US and allied western powers, Israel has an autonomous naval role in the region with several of its Saar-V class warships outfitted with Delilah standoff missiles with high powered microwave warheads and its German Dolphin class submarines armed with its Popeye Cruise missiles (of ranges 1500km) with a nuclear payload of 200kg have been in frequent deployment in the Gulf Region. This deployment brings to fore the increasing critical importance of nuclear tipped land attack cruise missiles in preemptive strikes against hardened Iranian targets in a prospective joint US-led strike against Iranian nuclear installations.
Five, In an event of a conflagration in the Strait of Hormuz, there are increasing possibilities of an Iranian asymmetric move to use chemical or even radiation tipped warheads that could completely wreck civilian shipping with enormous primary and collateral loss and the crippling of shipping leading to an intense bottleneck preventing the entry of US-lead western allied intervention forces. The possibilities of such scenarios serve as important operational options for an Iranian leadership that is determined to stall a US-led preemptive strike.
These naval operational realities cloud and condition the naval theatre of the Strait of Hormuz that is increasingly vulnerable and prone to assertive asymmetric strikes / counter strikes by Iran.
Sources of Iranian Conduct and Responses: Iran's template of operational conduct and responses is influenced by several political, economic, religious-ideological, regional rivalry and military factors. Iran is being painted as an irrational actor with an overdose obsession on brinkmanship. While the radical religious clerical leadership and the vanguard of the revolution viz: IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Council) would like to ratchet and escalate the conflicts in the region by the attempt of a WMD strike in the Strait of Hormuz and even daring targeting Israel, the Iranians in their strategic calculus have always been calculated in their responses.
The penchant of an Iranian overdrive by an asymmetric operational strategy either by missile strikes or by naval disruptions could be either as an initiative to subdue the militarily weaker but the oil-rich Sunni Gulf Arab states and Saudi Arabia or as an attempt to deflect US-Israeli targeting by inciting the Hezbollah-Hamas terrorist brigades which are in effect the auxiliary units of the IRGC.
A second source of Iranian strategic conduct emerges from its maritime aspirations to control the Gulf and Caspian Sea. With both seas being critically important as oil and natural gas rich repositories, Iran would prefer to maintain sea-control and sea-denial capabilities employing an asymmetric operational approach of sea-based strike missiles, submarines and aggressive naval posturing that could dent the effectiveness of any naval interventionist force.
The third possible source of Iranian asymmetric conduct could come from its keen interest in developing EMP weapons (Electromagnetic Pulse) that could have perilous consequences both for onshore and offshore assets. In the last eight years, Iran has tested its missiles over the Caspian Sea with a potential EMP effect. With such serious intent, an Iranian attempt either to launch a Shahab-3 missile with an EMP payload off the US coasts from an innocent looking freighter or even using the same in the approaches of the Strait of Hormuz off the Arabian Sea coast could simply paralyze all interventionist forces.
Iranian responses to an offensive strike could include the intense barrage of sea-skimming supersonic anti-ship missiles. The Iranian arsenal includes anti-ship missiles like the C-802 and Kowsar (the Chinese Silkworms and the Russian Sunburns) The C-802 anti-ship missiles are missiles that originate from China. Kowsar anti-ship missiles are basically land-based anti-ship missiles (land-to-sea missiles) which can dodge electronic jamming systems. Deploying an aggressive package of supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles and the employ of EMP weapons could be a deadly cocktail that would complicate intervention and set the stage for more escalation of strikes against Iran and counter strikes that would cripple the maritime oil commerce skyrocketing the oil price over US $300 per barrel or even more dealing with a decimation to the global economy.
Assessment - An escalating conflict in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf Region would be very complex and could have portentous consequences that could have irreparable consequences:
Four critical vulnerabilities would emerge by a conflict and its escalation in the Strait of Hormuz:
a) The operational vulnerability of International tanker and freight traffic in the Gulf of Oman-Strait of Hormuz region;
b) The physical vulnerability due to the perils of war and possible radiation fallout on the International expat community in the Gulf region;
c) the economic vulnerability of collapsing Gulf economies and the skyrocket of oil prices that would have a double jeopardy on the remittance economy and the exodus of the International workforce from the Gulf necessitating a massive humanitarian rescue operation from the Gulf;
d) The military vulnerability that the navies would have to contend while evacuation of the expats from the Gulf to the high intense conflict in the region and the possible radiation fallout on Indian naval assets and on the forward facilities that India has in Qatar
The United States and other extra-regional powers have enormous geo-economic and geo-strategic stakes in the region. Amidst the swirling complexities and volatile regional security, lies buried an enormous Biblical eschatological oracle that would unfold cascading the region and the world into a global turbulence unprecedented in all proportions.
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* An elaborate version of this essay was published as "Strategic Importance of the Strait of Hormuz" Strategic Affairs July 15 2010, Vol 4 Issue 11 pp 61-63 (New Delhi, India: Centre for Asian Strategic Studies)
** Dr Lawrence Prabhakar Williams affirms his faith and conviction on the indispensable primacy of Biblical Eschatology in world affairs. The author is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Madras Christian College, Chennai, India; Founding Member, Centre for Security Analysis, Chennai, India and Adjunct Senior Fellow, Centre for Asian Strategic Studies, New Delhi , India. His academic and policy research work focuses on Nuclear weapons and Ballistic Missiles; Maritime security; Grand Strategy studies of India, US and China. His international teaching and research fellowships include Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the Henry Stimson Center, Washington DC, Center for Naval Analysis, Washington DC, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA; Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC, USA; Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies and Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia with numerous publications.
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