The current White House regime might be engaged in a 21st century reality-television approach to foreign policy, but the ghosts of the previous century – especially the 1970s and 1980s – are haunting its approach. In 1971, the prime minister of Iran, Amir Abbas Hoveyda, declared his country would take the three strategic islands at the mouth of the Persian Gulf beside the shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz – Abu Musa, and the greater and lesser Tunb islands – after the withdrawal of British forces.
Hoveyda insisted the islands were the property of Iran “historically and legally” at a time when half the world’s oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz. It was for that reason the Shah of Iran described the strait as “the jugular vein” of his country and stated in 1976: “The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz in truth constitute Iran’s lifeline. If this area were in any way threatened, our very life would be endangered.” The strait was regularly referred to in the 1970s as “the global chokepoint”.
Tensions over control of the strait abounded during the Iraq-Iran war from 1980 to 88 and the “tanker war” with the US over control of shipping there from 1987 to 88. In 1980, the Iranian minister for executive affairs accused Washington of leading a “psychological campaign” against Iran since the ousting of the Shah.
In 1981, the rhetoric of the new US president Ronald Reagan, about tackling Iranian “barbarians”, was dismissed by an Iranian spokesman on the grounds that “Mr Reagan thinks he is still acting in a western”. In 1987, the US secretary of defence Caspar Weinberger insisted his government would do whatever it took to keep the strait open. Kuwaiti tankers were guarded by the US navy in what was described at the time as a “cat and mouse” game in the strait.
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The importance of psychological games continues today. The historic layers to this question expose the hollowness of cries of “epic fury” and “freedom”. Such bombast and recklessness underestimates the deep-rootedness of Iran’s resistance to encroachment, its long-standing navigation of territorial disputes in the Gulf and its experience of wars of attrition.
Given its dependence on oil revenues, Iran also has much to lose but, as the late US national security analyst Anthony Cordesman recognised in 2007, “even sporadic, low-level attacks on Gulf shipping and facilities” can have much effect.
Nor has it ever just been about the balance sheet for Iran. “Nations often fail to act as rational bargainers in a crisis,” noted Cordesman, “particularly if attacked or if their regimes are threatened.”
Echoes of the Irish 1970s are also being heard now, not just in relation to fossil-fuel dependency and inflation, but through a reopening of the debate on nuclear power. In November 1973, the government approved in principle an ESB proposal to construct a nuclear power station because of the level of dependence on oil, which had sharply risen due to the demand for electricity. For example, in 1961 oil-fired units accounted for 20 per cent of the ESB’s generating capacity; the figure by 1973 was 64 per cent. Several proposed sites were mentioned for a possible nuclear station, including Kilrush in Co Clare, Easkey in Sligo, Whiting Bay in Waterford and Carnsore in Wexford. Carnsore was chosen as the preferred site.
Des O’Malley, the minister for industry and commerce at the time, scorned opponents of the project, but protesters and the Nuclear Safety Association managed to mobilise a significant opposition. A festival was organised in August 1978 featuring prominent musicians, including Christy Moore, who then took their “anti-nuclear road show” on tour.
The success of the protest and the awareness it generated led to the Carnsore project being discreetly dropped. Such cultural mobilisation was an Irish manifestation of international resistance to nuclear power encouraged by the anti-war movements in the US, Germany and France in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Protests were also bolstered by concern over the plans of British Nuclear Fuels Limited to expand the Windscale plant’s reprocessing capacity. The Three Mile Island reactor meltdown in the US in 1979 also galvanised opposition.
In 1977, taoiseach Jack Lynch was told by a senior civil servant in the Department of the Taoiseach: “Our oil imports went up from just over £60 million in 1973 to a current level of about £300 million as a result of the oil crisis. We are among the countries in the EEC which are most dependent on external sources for our energy. This makes us extremely vulnerable to another oil crisis. The 50 per cent increase in prices mentioned [in the international media] could well wreck any hope of economic progress here.”
It is likely similar memoranda are circulating within Government departments now, emphasising the endurance of energy vulnerability.
