Tonight we discussed Iran's threat to close the Straits of Hormuz.
I started by showing a map of the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz. http://www.insideofiran.org/en/images/stories/march11/womrights/Strait_of_Hormuz_map.jpg
After reviewing the countries that surrounded the Persian Gulf, I asked the kids what these countries had a lot of - they quickly arrived at OIL. We then talked about who bought the oil from the Persian Gulf - the United States, Europe, China etc. and how the oil got from the Persian Gulf countries to these customers (by boat).
We then looked at a second map showing the route of the oil out of the Persian Gulf: http://www.sitesatlas.com/Maps/Maps/MEast-pol.gif which showed that all the oil tankers had to pass through the Straits of Hormuz.
I then talked about today's headlines - how Europe announced they were no longer going to buy Iranian oil as a result of Iran's failure to stop its nuclear program and Iran responded by threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz. As my kids summed it up "so Iran said, if you wont buy our oil were not going to let you buy anyone else's oil either."
This led to a discussion of what sanctions were (penalties), and ultimately to the question of the evening - "if you were president Obama, what would you do?"
The kids came up with a variety of responses. Jamie, the 7 year old, advocated bombing the Iranian fleet so the ships could get through. Olivia thought we should get china to make a deal with Iran and Nicholas wondered if perhaps there was another route the oil could take. This last idea invoked several interesting ideas - trucks to the other side of the straights, submarine tankers or even airplane transports. In the end though, they realized that you couldn't really carry enough oil that way.
Net, net, the kids learned a bit about oil politics, diplomacy and the threat of war in the middle east. Not a bad accompaniment to ribs and collard greens.
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