Iran's Hormuz Threat

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204720204577126892281200220.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

As a military matter, this is mostly bluster. If it struck first, Iran could sink a few ships and do some damage. But Iran is no military match for the U.S. and its allies in the Persian Gulf. The Pentagon and the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet both sent that message to Tehran yesterday. "Any disruption," the Bahrain-based U.S. fleet said in an email, "will not be tolerated."
Yet the Iranian tantrum is educational. Iran knows that Western leaders fear the economic and political impact of higher oil prices, not least with elections coming in 2012 for President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Iran's leaders are trying to see if they can intimidate those leaders into backing down. The Western response should be to tighten sanctions further to show such tactics won't work.