Iran's Hormuz threat is a bluff.
It's not yet clear if the Obama administration's saber-rattling toward Iran is an elaborate bluff, but we can be fairly confident that Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz is a ruse. In fact, when members of the Iranian government are insisting it's a bluff, you can be pretty sure it's a bluff:
'And Iran â?? which has enjoyed record oil profits over the past five years but is faced with a dwindling number of oil customers â?? relies on the Hormuz Strait as the departure gate for its biggest client: China.â??We would be committing economical suicide by closing off the Hormuz Strait,â? said an Iranian Oil Ministry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. â??Oil money is our only income, so we would be spectacularly shooting ourselves in the foot by doing that.â?Â
Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a political scientist running for parliament from the camp of hard-line clerics and commanders opposing Ahmadinejad, said it is â??good politicsâ? for Iran to respond to U.S. threats with threats of its own.
â??But our threat will not be realized,â? Ardestani said. â??We are just responding to the U.S., nothing more.â?Â
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There seems to be a good deal of confusion about this point among Washington's Iran hawks. Iran's one true potential for mischief is tampering with the flow of oil from the Gulf into global markets - and it's a threat that is percieved, by Iranians, as being too dangerous to fool around with. An Iran with a crude nuclear weapon, or the latent capacity to assemble one if they wanted to, can't change this basic dynamic.