Velayat-90 - Go Ahead, Test Us

Iran is set to hold its war games in the Strait of Hormuz, a 50-kilometre-wide passageway critical to shipping for the international community dependent on oil from the region, that the Islamic Republic of Iran claims to control as its very personal territory. The country is preparing to conduct a military exercise with its considerable fleet of vessels, including some 200 missile patrol boats with sea-skimming anti-ship missiles.

"These light naval forces have special importance because of their potential ability to threaten oil and shipping traffic in the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, raid key offshore facilities and conduct raids on targets on the Gulf Coast", explained Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington.

The Strait of Hormuz sees passage to roughly a third of the world's oil tanker traffic. This is a choke-point critical to the region's oil exports. Whoever controls the Strait, virtually controls the Middle East's economy, politics, power structure. And Iran contends that this is their personal bailiwick to have and to hold. And it will hold the Strait closed as punishment toward those who seek to punish Iran.

"If the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world insecure", promised Parviz Sarvari, of the Iranian parliament's National Security Committee. The Strait of Hormuz would be closed as part of the planned military exercise. See our strength, cower before us lest we deem it necessary to shut you out, and you will suffer.

"The importance of this waterway to both American military and economic interests is difficult to overstate", according to a report by geopolitical analysts at the global intelligence firm Stratfor. "Considering Washington's more general - and fundamental - interest in securing freedom of the seas, the U.S. Navy would almost be forced to respond aggressively to any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz."

This is an edgy, dangerous poker game Iran is playing. It is entirely feasible that Iran is not merely bluffing, but plans to close the 'Gulf' for more than a mere few days. Hedging its bets that the U.S. too is bluffing, unprepared with its current financial frailty, to embroil itself in yet another costly war which, like the last two, may have no end in sight, costing American lives and treasury it can now ill afford.

A treasury drained in large part by its recent-past and current embroilment in other Islamic countries, the outcome of which may seem, in retrospect, not to have held the value in what was achieved, that was assumed to be possible. "It would almost certainly lose far more than it gained from such a war, but nations often fail to act as rational bargainers in a crisis, particularly if attacked or if their regimes are threatened."

And no outside observer could ever conceivably err in describing the provocative and volatile decisions made by Iran on the world stage as rational. The world, staggering as it is, in the wake of its global financial downturn, would face the prospect of crude ripping up to $500 a barrel, should the Strait be closed for any length of time, and conflict ensue.

Not a happy prospect in any dimension, for any concerned. Least of all for Iran, for if it did indeed carry through on its threat, it would invite onto itself the wrath of those upon whose fortunes it so carelessly tramples, risking considerable damage from retaliatory attacks. And would this bother Iran? Not particularly.

This is, after all, the fanatical regime that believes anything it does to enhance the prospect of the return of the Hidden Imam - and thus the ushering in of the faithful to Paradise while all others are doomed to perish in the perpetual anguish of living death - could only find comfort in martyring itself so that it may ultimately be raised up in triumph before the throne of Allah.