FOIAWEAR — HORMUZ / The Strait the Estimate Said Would Close Tee

FOIAWEAR / ARCHIVE SERIES 068

HORMUZ — on 13 October 1983 the CIA's Board of National Estimates issued Special National Intelligence Estimate 34/36.2-83: “Iran-Iraq War: Increased Threat to Persian Gulf Oil Exports.” It is about a war that had been running for three years, and about a specific fear: that it would reach the tankers.

The estimate opens on the pressure rather than the fighting: “The seemingly endless war with Iran and Iraq's worsening financial problems are forcing Baghdad to consider drastic military measures.” The new ingredient that year was a French aircraft sale, and the paper is explicit about what it might unlock: “The French sale of five Super Etendard aircraft to Iraq increases the possibility of an escalation of the Iran-Iraq war that could disrupt Persian Gulf oil exports vital to the West.”

Then it does the arithmetic that makes it worth printing forty years later. Iraq would have three objectives in attacking Iran's oil lifeline — to deny Iran revenue, to force it to negotiate, or, failing those, “to force the West to intervene in the Gulf.” And it names the counter-threat, in the Ayatollah's own public words: “Khomeini has warned publicly that Iran will retaliate against all oil shipping in the Gulf if its own oil exports are disrupted.”

The analysts then make a judgement they cannot verify and say so in the same breath: “Given our lack of information on Iranian plans and the decision-making process in Tehran, we cannot be confident about the nature of Iran's likely military response.” What they can assess is capability, and they do not discount it — Iran “has the capability to close the Gulf by mining or blockading as long as the action is not contested by Western navies.”

And the consequence, stated plainly: “Severe damage to the main Saudi facilities or closure of the Strait of Hormuz, however, would create a worldwide oil shortage and push up oil prices substantially.”

The artwork is the 1983 tanker war drawn as a technical plate: a laden supertanker, an offshore loading terminal with its flare lit, a missile boat running out, a drifting mine, derricks and a helicopter — separate objects on bare ground, the way an analyst's brief would have them. No faces are depicted.

The QR code on the front opens the source: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/05258569 — the released SNIE 34/36.2-83, approved for release 26 July 2019. Every quotation above is from it.

Garment: Comfort Colors 1717, 6.1 oz garment-dyed cotton, S–4XL. Front print only; plain back. Artwork approximately 6.9 × 4.6 in, QR approximately 1.8 × 1.8 in.

Colours: the drawing is warm cream and amber on Black, Graphite, Espresso and Navy, and the same plate struck as a dark ink drawing on White, Ivory, Butter, Chalky Mint, Blossom, Light Green and Chambray.

Care: machine wash cold, inside out, tumble dry low. Do not iron the print directly.

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