More thoughts on the port deal

For all those people who are wondering why the president could be so politically tone deaf, so plain stupid, as to still be pushing the DP World port deal go here.

What you will see is a map of the UAE in relation to the nation of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait is the choke point in the world's oil supply. If Iran were able to cut the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz for any length of time it could crash the economies of the free world.

There are two relatively easy ways that Iran could accomplish this. One would be to sink supertankers at the narrowest part of the strait. The other would be to mine the strait.
We know that the Iranians have, thanks to our good friends the Russians, bottom tethered mines that could sink a tanker, or an American aircraft carrier. The simple fact is that the UAE's geographic location makes it strategically essential both as a base for operations protecting the Strait of Hormuz and operations against Iran itself.

In the near future it may, in fact probably will, be necessary to strike Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program before they have functioning bombs or warheads. Surgical strikes will not work because the Iranian nuclear program is so dispersed and hardened. We will need soldiers on the ground and they will have to stay for some time. It will also be necessary to remove the theocratic regime in order to keep them from starting over once we're gone.

This thinking must be weighing heavily on Mr. Bush's mind. As the man constitutionally responsible for setting the nation's diplomatic and military policy he does not have the option (if he takes his duty seriously) of doing the politically expedient thing and calling the deal off. He must navigate through a political minefield, balancing the future strategic needs of the nation against the public's reasonable fears of turning over control of ports of entry to a nation with questionable past associations with murderous terrorists.

The best outcome would be for the UAE to drop the American ports from the deal with the British company and walk away with the 27 Asian ports which are what it really wants. The United States government should then find (or create) a domestic corporation that can manage the US ports. As the contracts with other nations that are currently managing American ports expire those ports can then be brought under American control as well.

It would be better if the compromise came at the behest of the UAE. That way everyone involved could save face and our strategic partnership with the UAE would not be threatened. The fact is that we need each other. We need them for their location and they need us for the same reason. They are positioned between two much larger and more powerful nations, each representing the two most fanatical, intolerant and generally malignant forms of Islam