Strait Of Uncertainty

India, and the world, stand to suffer if the US-Iran Persian Gulf stand-off gets out of hand.

- Pranay Sharma

That the current US administration has no use for volumes of history is another matter, but past experience shows imposing ‘crippling sanctions’ to force adversarial nations to fall in line has seldom worked for american presidents. armed interventions, too, send out dire warnings across the years. afghanistan and Iraq are two notable examples, where strong-arm tactics had backfired devastatingly, effects of which blight the region still.

As US President Donald Trump and his team of hawkish advisors ratchet up war rhetoric on Iran after the downing of an US surveillance drone by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps—an incident preceded by attacks on several oil tankers from unidentified sources in the Persian Gulf—policy planners across the world are watching the developments with trepidation and a touch of scepticism.

More than one-fifth of the world’s oil passes through the Straits of Hormuz— the 39 km-wide choke point that passes from the Persian Gulf to the Straits of Oman on to the Indian Ocean—making the region’s stability and security a global issue. The current turmoil has already started affecting oil prices, pushing it up to $65 dollars a barrel. The fear is, it could rise further and growing tension could affect the uninterrupted supply of oil.

The Trump administration has put Iran under sanctions (top Iranian military and civilian leaders were also specifically targeted by sanctions after the drone incident) and used its economic clout with other countries to stop them from buying Iranian oil to choke Tehran. India is one of the eight countries that have been prevented from buying oil from Iran — New Delhi’s third largest supplier.