The Strait of Hormuz /hɔrˈmuːz/ (Persian: تنگه هرمز Tangeh-ye Hormoz, Arabic: مضيق هرمز Maḍīq Hurmuz) is a narrow, strategically important strait between the Gulf of Oman in the southeast and the Persian Gulf. On the north coast is Iran and on the south coast is the United Arab Emirates and Musandam, an exclave of Oman.
The strait at its narrowest is 54 kilometres (34 mi) wide.[1] It is the only sea passage to the open ocean for large areas of the petroleum-exporting Persian Gulf. About 14 tankers carrying 15.5 million barrels (2,460,000 m3) of crude oil pass through the strait on an average day, making it one of the world's most strategically important choke points. This represents 35% of the world's seaborne oil shipments, and 20% of oil traded worldwide in 2011.[2]
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Ships moving through the Strait follow a Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS), which separates inbound from outbound traffic to reduce the risk of collision. The traffic lane is six miles (10 km) wide, including two two-mile (3 km)-wide traffic lanes, one inbound and one outbound, separated by a two-mile (3 km) wide separation median.
To traverse the Strait, ships pass through the territorial waters of Iran and Oman under the transit passage provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.[1] Although not all countries have ratified the convention,[3] most countries, including the U.S.,[4] accept these customary navigation rules as codified in the Convention. Oman has a radar site Link Quality Indicator (LQI) to monitor the TSS in the strait of Hormuz. This site is located on a small island on the peak of Musandam Peninsula.
The opening to the Persian Gulf was described, but not given a name, in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a 1st-century mariner's guide:
Compare the Pillars of Hercules at the entrance to the Mediterranean. Scholars, historians and linguists derive[5] the name "Ormuz" from the local Persian word هورمغ Hur-mogh meaning date palm.[6] In the local dialects of Hurmoz and Minab this strait is still called Hurmogh and has the aforementioned meaning. The resemblance of this word with the name of the Persian God هرمزHormoz (a variant of Ahura Mazda) has resulted in the popular belief that these words are related.
On 18 April 1988, the U.S. Navy waged a one-day battle against Iranian forces in and around the strait. The battle, dubbed Operation Praying Mantis by the U.S. side, was launched in retaliation for the 14 April mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) by Iran. U.S. forces sank one frigate, one gunboat, and as many as six armed speedboats in the engagement and seriously damaged a second frigate.
On July 3, 1988, 290 people were killed when an Iran Air Airbus A300 passenger jet was shot down over the strait by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes, in a case of mistaken identity.
On January 10, 2007, the nuclear submarine USS Newport News, traveling submerged, struck M/V Mogamigawa, a 300,000-ton Japanese-flagged very large crude tanker, south of the strait.[7] There were no injuries, and no oil leaked from the tanker.
A series of naval stand-offs between Iranian speedboats and U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz occurred in December 2007 and January 2008. U.S. officials accused Iran of harassing and provoking their naval vessels; Iranian officials denied these allegations. On January 14, 2008, U.S. naval officials appeared to contradict the Pentagon version of the Jan. 16 event, in which U.S. officials said U.S. vessels were near to firing on approaching Iranian boats. The Navy's regional commander, Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, said the Iranians had "neither anti-ship missiles nor torpedoes" and that he "wouldn't characterize the posture of the US 5th Fleet as afraid of these small boats".[8]
On June 29, 2008, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Ali Mohammed Jafari, said that if Iran were attacked by Israel or the United States, it would seal off the Strait of Hormuz, to wreak havoc in oil markets. This statement followed other more ambiguous threats from Iran's oil minister and other government officials that a Western attack on Iran would result in turmoil in oil supply.
In response, Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet stationed in Bahrain across the Persian Gulf from Iran, warned that such an action by Iran would be considered an act of war, and that the U.S. would not allow Iran to effectively hold hostage nearly a third of the world's oil supply.[9]
On July 8, 2008, Ali Shirazi, a mid-level clerical aide to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted by the student news agency ISNA as saying to Revolutionary Guards, "The Zionist regime is pressuring White House officials to attack Iran. If they commit such a stupidity, Tel Aviv and U.S. shipping in the Persian Gulf will be Iran's first targets and they will be burned."[10]
In the last week of July 2008, in the Operation Brimstone,[11] dozens of U.S. and foreign navy ships came to off the eastern coast in the U.S., to undergo joint exercises for possible military activity in the shallow waters off the coast of Iran.
As of August 11, 2008, more than 40 U.S. and allied ships reportedly were en route to the Straits of Hormuz. One U.S. carrier battle group from Japan would complement two more, which are already in the Persian Gulf, for a total of five battle groups, not counting submarines.[12]
On March 20, 2009, United States Navy Los Angeles-class submarine USS Hartford (SSN-768) collided with the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock USS New Orleans (LPD-18) in the strait. The collision, which slightly injured 15 sailors aboard the Hartford, ruptured a fuel tank aboard the New Orleans, spilling 25,000 US gallons (95 m3) of marine diesel fuel.[13]
On December 27, 2011, Iranian 1st Vice President Reza Rahimi threatened to cut off oil supply from the Strait of Hormuz should economic sanctions limit, or cut off, Iranian Oil exports.[14] A U.S. Fifth Fleet spokeswoman said in response that the Fleet was "always ready to counter malevolent actions", whilst Admiral Habibollah Sayari of the Iranian navy claimed that cutting off oil shipments would be "easy". [15] Despite an initial 2% rise in oil prices, oil markets ultimately did not react significantly to the Iranian threat, with oil analyst Thorbjoern bak Jensen of Global Risk Management concluding that "they cannot stop the flow for a longer period due to the amount of U.S. hardware in the area". [16]
On Tuesday, January 3, 2012, Iran continues to feed uncertainty in the region by threatening to take action if the U.S. Navy moves an aircraft carrier back into the Gulf. Iranian Army chief Ataollah Salehi said the United States had moved an aircraft carrier out of the Gulf because of Iran's naval exercises, and Iran would take action if the ship returned. "Iran will not repeat its warning...the enemy's carrier has been moved to the Sea of Oman because of our drill. I recommend and emphasize to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf," [17]he said.
The U.S. Navy spokesman Commander Bill Speaks quickly responded that deployment of U. S. military assets would continue as has been the custom stating: "The U.S. Navy operates under international maritime conventions to maintain a constant state of high vigilance in order to ensure the continued, safe flow of maritime traffic in waterways critical to global commerce." [18]
While earlier statements from Iran had little effect on global oil markets, coupled with the new sanctions, these terse comments from Iran are driving crude futures higher, up over 4%. Pressure on prices reflect a combination of uncertainty driven further by China’s recent response – reducing oil January 2012 purchases from Iran by 50% compared to those made in 2011.
The U.S. led sanctions may be “beginning to bite” as Iranian currency has recently lost some 12% of its value. Further pressure on Iranian currency was added by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe on Tuesday calling for "stricter sanctions" and urged EU countries to follow the US in freezing Iranian central bank assets and imposing an embargo on oil exports. [19]
A 2008 article in International Security contended that Iran could seal off or impede traffic in the Strait for a month, and an attempt by the U.S. to reopen it would likely escalate the conflict.[20] In a later issue, however, the journal published a response which questioned some key assumptions and suggested a much shorter timeline for re-opening.[21]
In December 2011 Iran's navy began a 10-day exercise in international waters near the strait. The Iranian Navy Commander, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, stated that the strait would not be closed during the exercise; Iranian forces could easily accomplish that but such a decision must be made at a political level.[22][23]
Captain John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, was quoted in a Reuters article: "Efforts to increase tension in that part of the world are unhelpful and counter-productive. For our part, we are comfortable that we have in the region sufficient capabilities to honor our commitments to our friends and partners, as well as the international community." In the same article, Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution, said, "The expectation is that the U.S. military could address any Iranian threat relatively quickly."[24]
