Monthly Archive for September, 2009

Can Iran Really Shut Down Hormuz?

Published on September 9, 2009 in Energy, Security, Shipping and Trade. 0 Comments

There is an interesting piece in Foreign Policy, in which Eugene Ghloz takes on conventional wisdom about Iran’s ability to disrupt oil shipping through the Straits of Hormuz. How hard would be for Iran to shut down the straits?

The answer turns out to be: very hard. Iran would have to disable many of the 20 tankers that traverse the strait each day — and then sustain the effort. Iran cannot rely on the psychological effects of a few hits. Historically, after a short panic, commercial shippers adapt rather than give up lucrative trips, even against much more effective blockades than Iran could muster today. Shippers didn’t stop trying during World War I. Nor did the oil trade in the Gulf seize up during the 1980s Tanker War, when both Iraq and Iran targeted oil exports.

Instead, tankers tend to move around dangers. The strait is deep enough that even laden supertankers can pass safely through a 20-mile width of good water, not just the 4-mile-wide official channel. Tankers already take other routes when it is convenient; during a conflict, they would surely scatter, as they did in the 1980s. Although the strait is narrow compared with the open ocean, it is still broad enough to complicate Iran’s effort to identify targets for suicide and missile attacks. The area is too large to cover with a field of modern mines dense enough to disable a substantial number of tankers, especially given Iran’s limited stockpile.

Gholz also questions the ability of anti-ship missiles or small craft warfare to disable craft:

Over five years of the Iran-Iraq War, 150 large oil tankers were hit with antiship cruise missiles, but only about a quarter were disabled.

But surely ship insurers would want higher premiums if silkworm missiles are being lobbed at their tankers. And surely any type of military conflict in Hormuz – even if it does not end up taking out a large number of tankers – would be enough excuse for traders to bid up oil prices. The real question, which Gholz is right to point out, is the question of how long Iran could sustain such a military effort in the face of the inevitable U.S. response. My own sense is that an attack on shipping in Hormuz would produce an immediate and severe spike in oil prices, but one that would subside fairly quickly.

-WW

Required Reading: Iraq and Gulf Analysis

Published on September 7, 2009 in Politics. 0 Comments

I’ve just come across a blog called Iraq and Gulf Analysis written by Reidar Visser who maintains the always excellent Historiae.org site on Basra and southern Iraq. As opposed to the longer essays on Historiae, this blog contains short analytical pieces and Visser’s archive of notes on Iraq from the last few years. Here’s a snip from his recent obit of Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, the late leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI):

Throughout the post-war period, Hakim masterfully managed to balance US and Iranian pressures and was successful in creating the impression in Washington that SCIRI was on course to liberate itself from Iranian overlordship. This involved theatrics such as a name change in May 2007, where SCIRI became ISCI (without the “revolution”) and where the rumour was circulated (but never officially confirmed) that ISCI would henceforth take its orders from the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf in Iraq, instead of from Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Simultaneously, Hakim, who himself was never an Islamic scholar of repute, managed to create the impression of religious authority among Americans by focusing on his status as the son of a Shiite luminary (the Grand Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim) and as a sayyid (descendant of the Prophet), thereby prompting many international journalists to describe him as a “leading cleric” and one of the most “powerful” politicians of Iraq. It was only gradually since 2008 – and more pronouncedly since the local elections in January 2009 – that the idea of ISCI as a loyal ally of Iran returned to US policy-making circles in earnest.

-WW

Curiouser and Curiouser: Kamran Daneshjoo's Revised Resume

Published on September 2, 2009 in Education and Politics. 6 Comments

AWT IMAGE Full Name: Prof. Daneshjo, KamranPosition: Professor

Phone: 98-21-77240540-50 Ex:2906

Fax: 98-21-77240488

Email: kdaneshjo@iust.ac.ir
Address: Iran University of Science & Technology, Tehran, IRAN

University Degrees

  • PHD, Imperial College of London , U.K. (The Viva examination hereby in Iran)
  • MSC, Imperial College of London , U.K.
  • BSC, Queen Mary College , U.K.

    • I concluded last blog by giving Kamran Daneshjoo the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps Ahmadinejad’s embattled nominee to head Iran’s Higher Education Ministry could, in time, explain the unexplainable inconsistencies in his academic record—the bachelor’s degree from a vaguely-defined but plausibly Anglican university, the advanced degrees, including a Ph.D. from Manchester Imperial Institute of Science and Technology, an institution that simply does not exist.

    But instead time has complicated his story and thus simplified any possible explanation: it’s a farce. Daneshjoo’s new resume, listed above, diverges so brazenly from his old one, listed below. Today, according to the details listed on the Iran University of Science and Technology website, Daneshjoo received his doctorate and MSC from the Imperial College of London, one of England’s finest tertiary institutions. Degrees from Imperial are certainly nothing to be ashamed of and not likely to be hidden in favor of a fabricated graduation from the fictitious Manchester Imperial. For the record, Manchester and London are difficult to confuse and are separated by a four-hour drive.

    Were Daneshjoo an avid reader of the “Iran in the Gulf” blog, he might have changed his BSc from “Queen Mary” to “Queen Mary, University of London” and not “Queen Mary College.” Queen Mary College, as I’d written in the last post, is a preparatory academy. It’s good if you want to explore some GCSEs or some A-Levels but no good for picking up a BSc.

    Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani has stuck up for Daneshjoo and offered a rather involved alibi: Daneshjoo was expelled from a London college for his participation in a rally against Salman Rushdie (the details of which college employs such a heavy-handed disciplinarian were left undefined).

    The fact that Daneshjoo, a former election committee chief who willfully repeated June’s questionable election results, is being defended after this backtracking is a very bad sign. In this morning’s NYT, reporter Michael Slackman doesn’t mention Daneshjoo by name but does hit on the very real possibility of an upcoming purge of the universities. Daneshjoo’s appointment could act to facilitate just that. And secondly, what kind of message over the value of credentials and academic honesty does this send to the nearly 3 million students currently in Iran’s universities? Iran is rightfully credited for its long history of knowledge production and strong network of tertiary institutions. So here’s to hoping that come Thursday’s parliamentary vote and the narrowing of Ahmadinejad’s inner circle, a newly-revised resume for Professor Kamran Danshejoo says nothing of Iran’s Higher Education Ministry. -SW

    UPDATE: The vote on Daneshjoo, 186 votes for, 75 against, 25 abstentions. Look for this to have a major impact on Iran’s universities and particularly the teaching of social sciences. For a good list of votes on all nominees, this works.