troung

How many ships do they have to hit to push up prices by a dollar or two per gallon?

How many ships to bring it up to 6-9 dollars a gallon?

How many ships bring the price up to 10 dollars per gallon?

How much would a threat of hitting ships bring up the price?

canoe

I'd say 2+ tankers being sunk would be sufficent to cause a major increase in oil prices. Top end increase I'd guess at around an increase of about 40-80 dollars a barrel above current prices in the open markets. Iran could prolong things by mining the waters.

The reason I beleive their would be such a drastic increase in price is because not only Iran's oil shipments would be distrupted but so would every major producer near them. The shortage would be temporary however. There would be major pressure on the powers in the region to resolve the crisis one way or another quickly.

And in otherways this senario would infact be good for the U.S by helping to increase domestic support for their alternative energy initatives.

Galrahn

The answer to all questions is 0, for proof see your local gas station.

Tokyo Drifter

Iran is ready to share its missile systems with friends and neighbours, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards said, after he showed off missiles including some he said had cluster warheads.
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_i...2803961290B265

Officer of Engineers

You must be one of the stupid ones. Iran is not only ready to share but has shared. The Israeli-Hezbollah War showned it.

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Chimo

SnowLeopard

It's an age old question of blocking a narrow area to bottle up a fleet. In the early 80's when there were claims of putting Tomahawks thru a certain window of the Kremlin, we "looked" for enemies, all in hypothetical, where we could bottle them up if they had a port like San Diego. Ie, put a Tomahawk or so on those bridge spans and lockup up the fleet behind it.

In the Mid-80's, it was a tactical problem of what to do when the fleet needs to get thru the straits of Messina and it MIGHT be mined. What do we do, how to we mentally approach the problem, can we send a different ship thru to test the waters so if it is mined, if it does go boom, it won't be the carrier that gets it, ................ and then there was a secondary consideration that if the carrier goes down in the straits, will it block them for the duration of the campaign?

But consider this: the Suez canal was blocked with ships, junk, perhaps mines, and we got it cleared, anyhow. It took a while, it cost a lot, but it was cleared.

Jeddah harbor in the 70's had more junked ships in it than a person could count on two hands. The Goggle satellite pictures show it now as a clear, modern, if treachous, harbor.

QE, Normandie, Pearl Harbor, Scapa Flow, etc., all situations where if there is a will, if there is a need, if there is the cash, there will be people who will go in there and remove the ship(s). Even in the worse case of something like the plot in The World is Not Enough, oen could probably find people to do the job.

Could they do it? Probably. Would it be there for long? Probably not and further, afterwards, Iran would probably pay heavily for it from the world's view.
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(Zorin holds up a mine to the face of Soviet diver that he planted. "I believe this is yours. Disarm it, please.", (w,stte), "A View to a Kill")