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Tehran's Hollow Hormuz Strait Threat

(New York Daily News) Michael Rubin - While the threat from a resurgent Iran is real, its bluster about closing the Strait of Hormuz is more diversion than danger. The waterway may be an economic chokehold, but it is also a vital passage for Iran's survival. Any Iranian challenge to the strait would be suicide. When the Iranian government mined the Persian Gulf in 1988, damaging a U.S. guided missile frigate, President Ronald Reagan launched Operation Preying Mantis, simultaneously attacking two Iranian oil platforms. In the surrounding firefight, Iran lost a frigate, a gunboat, three speedboats and, temporarily, two oil platforms. The U.S. lost one helicopter, the casualty of a crash rather than battle damage. The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
2012-01-02 00:00:00
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