“Oil War” – seize the oil fields before they’re blown up.
I can’t recall precisely, but I have a feeling I typically didn’t “win” playing the US/Europe…
On a completely separate note, RUSSIAN comments on proposals to seize Kharg Island:
Suggestions that Trump may want to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s most important oil export terminal facility, sound sensible theoretically, but the logic dissolves under scrutiny. Taking or destroying this facility would severely dent Iran’s export capabilities, but Iran has plenty of other (albeit smaller) export terminals it could use. And Iran is a state where the collective memory is of extraordinary economic suffering during a bitter eight-year long war with Iraq in the 1980s that killed around half-a-million Iranians. Otherwise, Kharg is at the north end of the Gulf around 800 km past the Strait of Hormuz and 1000 km away from the comparatively safe open waters of the Arabian Sea. Operationally, any move against Kharg would be extraordinarily risky, placing US forces well within the Iranian ambit. If the US wants to impede Iran’s oil exports, a far simpler way would be to blockade Iranian exports in the Arabian Sea under an ‘Open For All or Closed To All’ plan, as Richard Haass outlined.
