By Jonathan Power

June 19, 2019

In
1980 in his State of the Union address President Jimmy Carter said: “Any
attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf will be
regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States and such an
assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Dear
President Donald Trump: We’ve been here before and it’s as ludicrous this time
as it was nearly 40 years ago. Why on earth are you sending in a flotilla of
ships and 2,500 troops? Why are you so convinced that the mines that exploded
on two oil tankers, neither of which were American, in the Persian Gulf are the
work of the Iranians?

The
Persian Gulf, and in particular the infamous Strait of Hormuz, the narrow
waterway (21 miles wide, the same as the English Channel) that is its entrance,
is no longer the “jugular” of the Western economies, even less so than it was
in Carter’s time.

In
Carter’s time the rapid construction of overland pipelines was reducing the
Gulf’s importance by the day. Besides, as the Iran-Iraq war had revealed, it
was not possible to block the strait by sinking ships at its entrance. Its
waters run too deep and its currents are too strong.

Moreover,
that war showed that large modern-day tankers are not especially vulnerable targets.
Their very size makes them difficult to sink and crude oil is not particularly
flammable. It’s nothing more than a myth that shipping got through during the
war because of the presence of American, British, Dutch and French naval
forces.

As for the present day, oil is in abundance. The present day price is a low 62 US dollars a barrel, and has slipped by over 20% over the past month. A year ago it was 65. OPEC used to take advantage of dangerous situations like the present Gulf crisis to push up oil prices.

They no longer do, as its members have learned that they are as much the losers when they help push Western economies into recession.

Moreover, the Western world is not as dependent on Gulf oil as is often thought, even though 30% of the world’s sea-borne oil passes through the Strait. American shale output, leading to the US turning from a big importer to a big exporter, has had a major impact.

The steady increase in Western Europe of the use of Russian gas also has contributed to making the Gulf countries’ oil exports less significant, at least in the short run, which is all that matters in a situation like this.

At the time when the Carter Administration was winding up the sense of anxiety and panic one of the arguments put forward was that the Soviet Union, having invaded Afghanistan, would next push on to the Gulf to grab the oil to make up for its own falling production.

It seemed to many a ludicrous idea then, given the mountainous terrain. Now it seems nonsense.

Russia
will remain for as far as one can see a major oil producer and exporter and has
no need, if ever it did, to grab some other country’s oil wells.

Still,
even if the US is misreading the situation, it can’t be allowed to just boil
over. The international community has to get involved. The Europeans, apart
from the British, are being careful not to back the US up in its conviction
that the mining of two oil tankers has been carried out by Iran.

By what authority does the US insist on freedom of passage? Is it the Law of the Sea, the great negotiated text fathered by the United Nations with the enthusiastic participation of the US, which carefully chiseled an accommodation between new coastal jurisdictions and traditional high seas freedoms?

No, because one of the early acts of President Ronald Reagan was to turn his back on nine years’ work and pull the US out of the negotiations. Nothing much has changed in America’s position in the years since.

In
short, there is a legal limbo.

While
the US calls for “freedom of navigation” in the Gulf, much of the world notes
quietly that Washington seems only prepared to cite international law when it
is in its own interests. If the US can interpret sea law as it chooses, so will
everyone else. Indeed we know that China already has in the South China Sea.

The
UN Security Council must take urgent action and issue a mandate to a
representative group of maritime nations to send in a flotilla under the UN flag.
Something similar was done to defeat the pirates off the coast of Somalia more
than a decade ago with naval ships sent by countries as diverse as China and
the UK.

This
is the way to dampen a flashpoint before passions and principalities get out of
control.

Copyright:
Jonathan Power.

  freedom of navigation, Gulf oil, international law, the Persian Gulf, The UN Security Council, US-Iran relations