[Download] "Flashpoint Hormuz (Gulf-Report: Security)" by The Weekly Middle East Reporter (Beirut, Lebanon) * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free

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eBook details

• Title: Flashpoint Hormuz (Gulf-Report: Security)
• Author : The Weekly Middle East Reporter (Beirut, Lebanon)
• Release Date : January 11, 2009
• Genre: Reference,Books,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 59 KB

Description

With Iran torn by political turmoil over the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Gulf and its energy riches is once again in the eye of the storm and the focus is on the Strait of Hormuz, the only gateway to the Gulf and arguably the world's most strategic chokepoint. Iran's leaders have repeatedly warned over the last two years that if the United States or Israel launch military strikes against the Islamic Republic's controversial nuclear program and other strategic targets, they would seek to close the narrow strait and cut off oil supplies to Asia, Europe and the US. Ayatollah Ali Khameni, Iran's supreme leader, declared as long ago as 2006, that if the US or Israel attacked Iran then "definitely the shipment of energy from this region will be seriously jeopardized." There have been several confrontations in the Gulf, particularly since the US invaded Iraq in March 2003. Fortunately, these were largely probing exercises. But, "incidents in the Gulf can escalate quickly in ways that neither Iran nor its potential opponents intend," cautioned Anthony Cordesman, a veteran American military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington who has written extensively on the Middle East. In recent months, Britain's Royal Navy has reinforced its mine warfare flotilla attached to the US-led naval armada in the Gulf region. And in June, the US Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, midway up the Gulf from the strait, announced that it was expanding its headquarters in Manama, capital of the island state, by 70 acres under a January 2008 agreement with the kingdom's government. These and other deployments have been described as routine by the Americans and their allies, but they are clearly taking no chances. Iran has also been making deployments around both ends of the strait. On May 5, the Saudi Arabian newspaper AL-WATAN reported the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the most powerful military force in Iran and the praetorian guard of the Tehran regime, had deployed surface-to-air and anti-ship missile batteries along Iran's southern coastline on the Gulf.

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