Western powers this week readied a contingency plan to tap a record volume from emergency stockpiles to replace nearly all the Gulf oil that would be lost if Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz, industry sources and diplomats told Reuters.
They said senior executives of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which advises 28 oil consuming countries, discussed on Thursday an existing plan to release up to 14 million barrels per day (bpd) of government-owned oil stored in the United States, Europe, Japan and other importers.
We could do this for a month, if we all work together.
Obviously, a month of putting off disaster wouldn't calm economic jitters. But it does indicate that we have a month to pound the Iranian military into the ground while we shield our economies from their first blow.
If Iran is smart, they'll simply try their best to cope with the West's latest sanctions and not block Hormuz which would unify the oil-consuming world behind whatever actions we take to resume oil exports. There won't be large "no blood for oil" protests in Western Europe.
But accidents happen and escalate. Or leaders get stupid under the pressure of wondering what else can go wrong. Or they just make a wrong decision. Heck, enough of them might really believe God is on their side and ready to directly intervene on their behalf.
But consider that if the Iranians were really smart, they'd abandon their plans for nuclear weapons. Iran is the largest country in the Gulf region, and if they want to dominate their region, just getting out from under sanctions would allow them to build conventional capabilities that would allow them to bully their neighbors. Nukes just provoke the world to keep sanctions on Iran and will provoke neighbors to get their own nukes to counter Iran. Unless Iran is the only regional state to have nukes (and Pakistan would be a short step from having "the Islamic" bomb to having the "Sunni" bomb), it just becomes a world of mutually assured destruction with short flight times and religious fervor to really screw things up. Hello 12 Imam.
I hope our economic pressures really are going to compel Iran to halt their nuclear work rather than just provoke the Iranians into striking first:
At a time when U.S. officials are increasingly confident that economic and political pressure alone may succeed in curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the mood here has turned bleak and belligerent as Iranians prepare grimly for a period of prolonged hardship and, they fear, war.
This stark contrast has been evident in the Iranian capital this week as a top military commander declared a “critical point” in the country’s long feud with the West and ordinary Iranians stocked up on essential supplies. Merchants watched helplessly as the Iranian currency, the rial, shed more than a third of its value, triggering huge increases in the prices of imported goods.
I just doubt it. On the bright side, if the article's pulse of the public is accurate, the prospect of war with the American-led West isn't filling the Iranian public with bravado.
