CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING – Lower than a month in the past, with international consideration fastened on the Ukrainian offensive, U.S. Admiral James Stavridis (ret.) sought to open the safety aperture a bit extra by pointing to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and its seizure of a pair of giant oil tankers close to the Strait of Hormuz.

Billed because the world’s most essential power chokepoint, transiting one-third of whole seaborne oil exports and 1 / 4 of its liquefied pure gasoline, Stavridis mentioned that to guard transport within the strait, the U.S could also be drawn again into a task it assumed throughout anti-shipping campaigns of the Nineteen Eighties, referred to as the “Tanker Battle.” Again then, amidst ongoing battle between Iraq and Iran, American ships escorted oil tankers by the Persian Gulf – a positioning that resulted in a one-day battle between Washington and Tehran.