Missile Crisis: A Threat to Iran's Oil Revenue

The three-day 'missile exercise in Semnan' following the issuance of a statement from the White House and 'official warning from the U.S. to Iran' has created conditions reminiscent of the final year of the war with Iraq, leading to the forced acceptance of Resolution 598 one year after its approval by the Security Council. The statement from the White House National Security Advisor was a reaction from the new U.S. administration to the previous week's attack by Houthi forces in Yemen against a Saudi ship, as well as a missile test conducted on the same Sunday in Semnan. Iranian media (including Fars News Agency) described the Houthi attack on the Saudi military ship as 'missile-based' and likened it to the 2006 Hezbollah attack on an Israeli military vessel, indirectly aligning themselves with it. Last October, the Houthis also fired missiles at U.S. ships stationed in the region. The Islamic Republic is accused of sending munitions and missile weapons to the Houthis, and in the past six months, two military shipments belonging to or linked to Iran have been seized by the U.S. Navy in waters near Yemen. During the final year of the eight-year war with Iraq, Iranian military forces were stationed in the oil-rich Faw Peninsula within Iraqi territory and threatened Kuwait's shores and oil tankers by installing Chinese missiles known as 'Silkworms' in addition to the city of Basra in southern Iraq. At that time, U.S. foreign policy strongly emphasized the need to end the war and ensure the security of commercial and oil tanker traffic in the Persian Gulf, while the Islamic Republic insisted on continuing the war with a miscalculation of its capabilities. In mid-October 1987, a Kuwaiti oil tanker that had placed itself under the U.S. flag to avoid Iranian attacks was targeted by missiles. Three days later, in the early hours of October 19, 1987, during an operation named 'Praying Mantis,' three U.S. military ships attacked Iran's oil terminal on Sirri Island and the Sassan oil platform, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to Iran's offshore oil facilities. At that time, Iran was extracting and exporting 150,000 barrels of oil daily from those fields. The U.S. Navy subsequently acted against Iranian military vessels in the Persian Gulf and targeted six warships. Following the U.S. Navy's attacks, the Islamic Republic, having lost its military retaliation capability, complained to the Security Council, but Tehran's complaint yielded no results. On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes, belonging to the U.S. Navy stationed in the Persian Gulf, shot down an Iranian passenger plane, killing all 290 passengers on board. A few weeks later, on July 20, 1988, the Islamic Republic accepted Security Council Resolution 598 calling for a ceasefire, ending an eight-year war that had inflicted hundreds of thousands of casualties and hundreds of billions of dollars in financial and economic losses on Iran. The priority of any government is to utilize the most effective available levers to ensure security, sustainable growth, and improve public welfare. Qatar has advanced through gas export development, Brazil has relied on increasing agricultural production, Saudi Arabia has maintained its sales quota in oil markets, and China has leveraged its production power and abundant cheap labor. Iran possesses the largest total oil and gas reserves in the world, and these two sources of national wealth are considered the most effective levers for developing security and sustainable growth in the country. Since the beginning of its rule in Iran, the Islamic Republic has regarded the easy and effortless exploitation of oil and gas resources as guaranteed and enduring, prioritizing foreign relations and the country's defense capacity over the preservation of oil and gas resources. During the first ten years of the revolutionary government, the export of the revolution was the government's priority, and Iran's oil production capacity, which had exceeded 6 million barrels per day ten years prior, fell below 4 million barrels per day; the priority of revolution export over oil export development! In the years following the war with Iraq, the need to increase revenues became more pressing, and oil became somewhat more precious than before, but the government's number one priority remained nuclear and missile development, not increasing oil and gas production and sales capacity. During Khatami's second term, the withdrawal of Japanese companies and INPEX from major oil development projects in the Azadegan field began the gradual exit of oil investors from Iran. Ahmadinejad's government, which came to power with the slogan 'Oil on the People's Table,' prioritized uranium enrichment and pursued questionable nuclear programs suspected of having military objectives over any other action, spending $800 billion in oil revenues during its eight years in office, and at the end of its term, instead of oil prosperity, left six Security Council sanctions and a 6% negative economic growth on the people's table. The Islamic Republic and Rouhani's government were compelled to accept the July 2015 nuclear agreement, subsequently funneling tens of billions of dollars of effortless oil wealth into the government's coffers. In repeating the behaviors of all previous Islamic Republic governments, this religious government of Iran, once again after acquiring oil assets, instead of focusing inward to rebuild the country's industry and agriculture and develop public welfare services; instead of preserving the priority of oil and gas in regional power equations and foreign relations, pursued a policy of proxy wars, equipping mercenary armies, and direct and indirect warfare under the title of 'advisory services' in four countries: Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. Following the recent tensions that began after the attack on a Saudi military vessel and missile testing in Semnan, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Aerospace Force of the IRGC, threatened during the three-day missile exercise 'Defenders of the Wilayat Shrine,' which has a much stronger political color than military credibility, stating, 'If the enemy makes a mistake, our missiles will roar down upon them.' A little over a year before his controversial death, Rafsanjani, who was one of the main factors in Iran's entry into nuclear and missile programs during his career, concluded that 'the world of tomorrow is the world of discourse, not missiles,' and paid a heavy price for this late revelation. Other leaders of the Islamic Republic, with a different view of the government's priorities, still see oil and gas as their 'milking cows' and threaten the world with the dispatch of 'defenders of the shrine' and the launching of 'Wilayat Shrine' missiles. The repeated criticisms of the new U.S. president regarding the nuclear agreement with Iran during his recent interview with Fox News, and the reintroduction of the Islamic Republic of Iran as 'the number one supporter of terrorism' could create conditions under which once again, Iran's oil and gas may become victims of missiles - repeating the confrontations of 1987 in the Persian Gulf.