(HOST) Commentator Bill Seamans has been thinking about some military maneuvering that could be putting the U.S. in a tight spot.
(SEAMANS) The aircraft carrier has reclaimed its political stature as the Bush administration’s bully pulpit du jour. We recall that four years ago, President Bush landed on the carrier Lincoln and under that big Mission Accomplished banner declared that major combat in Iraq had ended. Time has proven him wrong.
Then last weekend Dick Cheney sounded a different tone when he spoke from the deck of the carrier John Stennis in the Persian Gulf – sailing a saber rattling 150 miles off Iran’s coast. Cheney bluntly warned that the United States will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, or close off the vital sea lanes that carry most of the Persian Gulf’s oil to the west, or reach for control in the Middle East. We must wait for what time will tell us after Cheney’s aircraft carrier speech…
Meanwhile, beyond his undiplomatic language Cheney attracted our attention to the little noticed story that we have two large aircraft carrier groups, led by the Stennis and the Nimitz surrounded by their protective fleets of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines sailing in the Persian Gulf, a 600 mile long inland sea between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Way back in 1987, when I was aboard a missile cruiser in the Persian Gulf for ABC News the captain told me that strategically speaking it was like maneuvering in a bathtub compared to the open seas.
There is only one entrance or exit – the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most strategic bodies of water in the world – at its narrowest only twenty-one miles wide. Ships sail very slowly through Hormuz via two one-mile wide channels – the only passages between the Persian Gulf and the open seas, a true test for the navigators of our huge aircraft carriers.
The question arises whether our two carriers could be trapped in the Persian Gulf if we attacked Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. It’s expected that in retaliation Iran would immediately try to block the Strait of Hormuz. Gen. John Abizaid, before he retired as the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, told Congress that Iran was expanding its naval bases along its shoreline near Hormuz. He said that Iran had what he called large quantities’ of small, fast attack ships armed with Chinese made high-speed sea skimmer missiles capable of sinking the largest ships. Newly developed Iranian medium range missiles fired from inland bases are said to be aimed at the Strait of Hormuz. Oil tankers could not get through which would create chaos in the world oil market. Thus Cheney’s warlike warning to Iran has a dimension that the Pentagon doesn’t talk about.
You can see satellite pictures via Google on your computer that dramatize the Strait of Hormuz threat in a way that mere words cannot.
Bill Seamans is a former correspondent and bureau chief for ABC News in the Middle East.