by Durga Velayudham
The Strait of Hormuz has once again emerged as the Rubicon in Donald Trump’s confrontation with Iran, a perilous threshold across which the contemporary superpower system appears increasingly inclined to stumble. In recent years the narrow maritime corridor has been invoked repeatedly in the rhetoric of geopolitical crisis, portrayed as the hinge upon which global energy security turns. Yet the apprehension surrounding the strait is hardly new. Long before the present turbulence, intelligence analysts were already treating the waterway as a strategic pressure point whose disruption could reverberate across the industrial world. The declassified archives of the American intelligence community reveal a persistent analytical fixation on this narrow passage of water and the fragility of the energy system that flows through it.
In a July 1979 intelligence assessment titled “The Strait of Hormuz: A Vulnerable Lifeline,” drafted in the immediate aftermath of the Iranian Revolution, CIA analysts described the scale of the dependency with restrained but unmistakable clarity. They wrote that “approximately 19 million barrels of oil per day transit the Strait of Hormuz,” a volume they calculated to represent “about one-third of the world’s daily petroleum production.” Within the austere language of intelligence reporting, the implication was profound. A single maritime corridor, scarcely fifty kilometres across at its narrowest point, had become a structural component of the global economic system. The analysts therefore referred to the passage as “the most critical oil chokepoint in the world.” The phrasing carries the quiet authority of bureaucratic precision, yet behind it lies an admission of remarkable strategic vulnerability.
The authors of the assessment also devoted considerable attention to the physical characteristics of the channel itself. In language that reflects the technical culture of intelligence analysis, the report notes that “the Strait at its narrowest point measures roughly 50 kilometres in width,” while the depths of its navigable waters “generally exceed 45 metres.” Such details were not included merely for geographical completeness. They were intended to test popular assumptions about how the waterway might be disrupted in the event of conflict.
One frequently circulated conjecture held that hostile forces might scuttle large oil tankers in the shipping lanes in order to obstruct passage entirely. The CIA analysts rejected this possibility with engineering certainty. “The sinking of several large tankers would not block the channel,” the assessment states, explaining that the draught of even the largest vessels “rarely exceeds 30 metres.” In other words, the physical geometry of the strait itself made such a crude method of obstruction impractical.
Yet the same document immediately turns to more subtle forms of disruption. While the waterway could not easily be blocked by wreckage, it might nevertheless be rendered temporarily unusable through other means. “Burning oil slicks could halt shipping temporarily,” the analysts observed, raising the prospect of a maritime environment transformed into a corridor of fire. The phrase evokes a grim image: tankers immobilised not by sunken hulls but by infernos spreading across the water’s surface.
The report’s authors were equally attentive to the psychological dimension of maritime commerce. In the highly sensitive ecosystem of global energy markets, physical destruction was not always required to interrupt the flow of petroleum. “Even a single successful attack on a tanker,” the assessment cautioned, “could produce a chain reaction among insurers and shipowners.” This observation reflects a sophisticated understanding of how modern commerce operates. The global oil trade is sustained not only by pipelines, terminals, and tankers but also by complex networks of insurance, finance, and risk calculation. If insurers judged the strait too dangerous, the logistical machinery of the oil market could seize up almost instantly.
For that reason the report concludes with an observation whose understated phrasing belies its strategic significance. In the volatile environment of the Persian Gulf, the analysts wrote, “fear alone might prove sufficient to interrupt oil shipments.” It is a remarkably concise statement of how fragile the global energy system can be. The movement of millions of barrels of oil each day ultimately depends upon confidence as much as upon steel and concrete.
The urgency of this analysis was inseparable from the political upheaval that had just transformed Iran. The collapse of the monarchy of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and the emergence of the revolutionary regime led by Ruhollah Khomeini shattered the strategic arrangements that had governed the Persian Gulf for decades. For years the Shah had functioned as what American officials informally described as the “policeman of the Persian Gulf,” maintaining naval forces capable of safeguarding the shipping lanes that carried Gulf oil to global markets.
The CIA assessment notes that the revolution had “severely disrupted Iran’s military readiness,” a deterioration attributed to purges within the officer corps, shortages of trained personnel, and the breakdown of maintenance systems across the fleet. As a result, the analysts concluded with dispassionate bluntness that “Iran can no longer be relied upon to ensure the security of the Strait.” The sentence appears almost casual in its brevity, yet it encapsulates a dramatic geopolitical shift. A waterway upon which the industrial economies of the West depended had abruptly lost the regional power that had previously guaranteed its stability.
While the 1979 assessment focused primarily on the strait itself, other intelligence documents examined the vulnerabilities of neighbouring states whose territory lies along the same maritime corridor. One such study, produced in April 1983 by the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence and titled “Oman: Oil System Vulnerability,” analysed the petroleum infrastructure of the Sultanate of Oman, a country whose Musandam Peninsula forms the southern flank of the Strait of Hormuz.
The report describes the Omani economy in starkly quantitative terms. According to the analysts, “more than 90 percent of Oman’s export earnings and 60 percent of its gross national product are derived from crude oil sales.” Such a degree of dependence meant that the functioning of the country’s political and economic system was inseparable from the uninterrupted operation of its petroleum infrastructure.
The vulnerability becomes even clearer in the report’s discussion of Oman’s export facilities. “The destruction of oil facilities at Mina al Fahal, Oman’s only export terminal, would totally shut down exports,” the document states. The consequences would be immediate and severe. According to the analysts, such an attack would eliminate “over 90 percent of Omani export earnings during repairs.”
The report proceeds to describe the structure of the country’s oil production network with remarkable specificity. Crude oil was extracted from nineteen separate fields operated by Petroleum Development (Oman), along with an additional field managed by the French firm Elf Aquitaine. These fields were distributed across several production zones, including the important Fahud–Yibal complex. Yet despite this geographical dispersion of wells, the export process ultimately converged upon a single maritime facility.
As the report explains, “the crude oil terminal at Mina al Fahal handles all of Oman’s petroleum exports.” At this location, tankers are loaded through “two single-point moorings capable of loading crude oil and bunker fuel.” The infrastructure is efficient, but its efficiency comes at the cost of redundancy. The analysts therefore conclude that the Omani system’s “simplicity…makes it highly vulnerable to military or terrorist action.”
The authors also consider the possibility that Iran might target such facilities during the protracted conflict known as the Iran–Iraq War. The report notes that Tehran had already “demonstrated its willingness and ability to destroy foreign oil production and export facilities.” As evidence, it cites Iranian attacks against Iraqi export terminals at Mina al Bakr and Khor al Amaya. Those strikes, the analysts note, “eliminated about two-thirds of Iraq’s export capacity for the remainder of the war.”
Given this precedent, Omani infrastructure could easily become a target if political tensions escalated. The report suggests that Oman’s diplomatic alignment might itself create a motive for such an attack. Its cooperation with the United States, the analysts write, could provide “an excuse for a punitive attack.” The phrase illustrates the analytical habit of intelligence reporting, where strategic vulnerability is assessed not only through geography and engineering but also through the lens of political relationships.
Among the more unusual documents preserved in the declassified archives is a memorandum produced not by the CIA but by the Defense Intelligence Agency. Dated 2 September 1987 and titled “SUN STREAK Operational Report – 8712,” the report records the results of an experimental intelligence programme associated with the broader Stargate Project. The initiative attempted to explore whether individuals claiming psychic abilities could perceive distant or future events through a method known as remote viewing.
The document begins with a procedural summary that reflects the rigid format of intelligence reporting: “During the period of 31 August 1987 through 2 September 1987 inclusively, seven sessions were conducted by four remote viewers against Project 8712.” The bureaucratic tone remains entirely intact even as the subject matter drifts into territory that borders on the paranormal.
Participants in the sessions were tasked with perceiving potential events in the Persian Gulf during a period of heightened tension between the United States and Iran. Their impressions were recorded in language that mirrors the structure of more conventional intelligence reports. According to the memorandum, “the first three weeks in September 1987 were identified as periods of heightened military activity as a result of the presence of US-flagged vessels in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.”
One viewer offered an especially dramatic claim. The report notes that this participant “reported a perceived, pre-emptive US military strike conducted against Iranian land-based targets on or about 6 September 1987.” Another described a vivid scene near the coastline: “an oil slick on fire with billowing smoke in absolutely smooth waters close to land.”
The imagery reads almost like a fragment of speculative fiction, yet it appears within a formal intelligence document produced during the final years of the Cold War. Even so, the authors of the memorandum included a note of scepticism regarding the reliability of the material they had collected. In their concluding remarks they acknowledged “a conspicuous absence of correlation among sources describing individual incidents devoid of mutual corroboration.” The phrasing suggests that the analysts themselves regarded the results with caution, even as the programme continued to explore unconventional methods of intelligence gathering.
These documents suggest that what Donald Trump is doing in the region today is not fundamentally new. Much of the strategic thinking—about controlling the Strait of Hormuz, managing tanker traffic, and striking regional infrastructure if necessary—was already present in intelligence planning decades ago. In that sense, the current posture reflects the execution of long-standing assumptions rather than a sudden departure. What has changed is not the strategy itself, but its visibility. Earlier administrations often wrapped such policies in the restrained language of deterrence and stability, whereas under Trump the posture appears more overt. The underlying planning remains familiar; only the brutality of the rhetoric and the theatrical nature of the signalling have become more plainly visible.
