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Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna
Great summary of the situation; probably pretty accurate.
A blockade of Iran's outbound shipments of oil would obviously be at the Straight of Hormuz. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that almost all of their shipments of oil to Russia and China go thru there. It's probably not reasonable to think that Iran could negotiate a way to ship oil overland from their northern borders thru Armenia and Georgia to get to the Black Sea (to supply Russia), so the naval blockade might work.
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A blockade of Iran's shipments would not be this difficult. Approximately 90% of Iran's shipments go from Kharg Island in the very northern end of the Persian Gulf. Shipments from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE would not be impacted. There might be some impact on the southern Iraq shipments, but none on the northern pipeline shipments. Russia does not rely on Iranian oil, but China does. There would be a great deal of diplomatic bluster, but China lacks the military resources needed to challenge us in the Middle East.