Only a handful of dominoes remain

Way back in Feburary I blogged about Abqaiq, the massive Saudi petroleum processing facility through which a substantial portion of Saudi Arabia's substantial oil exports flow. See below.



Northeast of Abqaiq is the likewise massive oil terminal at Dammam. Both are roughly 300 miles from Iran's Persian Gulf coast.

Roughly 500 miles to the east is the Strait of Hormuz, "at its narrowest, 21 miles wide, having two 1 mile wide channels for marine traffic separated by a 2 mile wide buffer zone, and is the only sea passage to the open ocean for large areas of the petroleum exporting Persian Gulf States". The Strait is bounded on the north by Iran, and so I think we might all become intimate with it in the next sixty days.



See what I'm getting at?

I figure Syria and Iran have already joined in Lebanon (Hezbollah didn't build no UAV), but if they really join, well then America will join as well and that is when we all find ourselves in jeopardy as Iran could easily topple a domino across the Strait, which doesn't just mean expensive oil, it might mean, for hundreds of millions worldwide, no oil.

If the mullahs are on the losing end then they might take a stab at Abqaiq or Dammam, which would have no strategic value, but it seems clear that Radical Islam is engaged in economic warfare with the West moreso than they have engaged the West with bullets or other weaponry.

As the title states, I think only a handful of dominoes remain between where we are today and real worldwide economic strife, and maybe even catastrophe.

Melodramatic? Perhaps, but my guess is that just about every American combat aviator, in the next two weeks, will study the arena until he knows it like the back of his hand, right down to the turds of camels in the desert west of Bandar Abbas. Any move Iran makes on the Strait or the Saudis must result in an American response that is just plain wicked.