35.89 miles;
or 57.75 kilometers. That is the distance that separates the battles raging from Lebanon to the Indian subcontinent. The difference between a a very hot summer of penny pitching parents draging their kids to and fro in the back of minivans to finding out that your stranded on an airport somehwere because the airline(s) went bankrupt. That is the distance in miles separate the fighting in Lebanon from the so called World War that conservative bubbleheads screech about in public but eagerly await in private. Still don't know what I'm talking about? Ok, maybe it's because you don't recognize the neighborhood in which these 35 or so miles live:
The Straits of Hormuz. In military parlance, a place like this is called a choke point, a place where an army or navy (and more importantly their supplies and reinforcements) must pass through. In this case it the bulk of the oil production coming from the Gulf States. Further although the stratits may appear wide enough for several supertankers to pass through without any fear of colisions, the actual "deep water" channel is only about a mile wide in the narrowest point. That means that all but the smallest blue water vessels have to go through there, making this area one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world (at the tune of $78 dollars a barrel).
And what does this have to do with current events? Nothing much, as long as the U.S. forces where preocupied in Iraq and the Israeli army was messing about in Gaza. But the moment that Hezbollah entered the fray the risk of Syria and more importantly, Iran, became a dire possibility. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Iran/Hezbollah/Syria triumvirate has strengthened under the constant threat of American military action. Now the posibility exists that either side might decide to prempt the other. The Israelis or the U.S. might decide to use the current situation as cover to take out the Iranian nacent nuclear capability and as a response the Iranians might decide to close the straits with mines, airstrikes and above all hordes of deadly land based anti-ship missiles such as these:
If that the case, then what would happen next? I'll explore that scenario in the next part of this series.
(Images brought to you in part by Google Earth and Wikepidea)