Jack Risko of Dinocrat.com takes a close look at what Iran may be planning for its nukes, based on release of an Army document on Iran's nuclear strategy. 

As a business strategist himself, Jack understands that the threat of using nukes is much more valuable than their actual use could ever be. He sees the possibility of Iran taking control of the Straits of Hormuz in order to drive up oil prices, detering retaliation with its nuclear weapons. Our Douglas Hanson has been writing about Iran's designs on the Straits for almost two years.

Iran doesn't have much of a military; its military budget is less than 1% of America's. But Iran has oil and a very strategic location for the worldwide flow of oil. We think it is quite likely that Ahmadinejad will use Iran's nuclear weapons to blackmail, cajole, or otherwise control the price and availability of oil. We think that is one of the things that was in Jacques Chirac's mind as well. And when we look at that map above closely, we perhaps get a better understanding of why the administration and a number of Democrat foreign policy elites want the ports deal to go forward: the United Arab Emirates flanks both sides of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Ahmadinejad talks a big game. He can't play such a game with his minimal conventional forces, but that changes if he can use nuclear blackmail plus his military assets to control a very small bit of the sea to rig oil prices. We have little doubt that he will try to do so.

In an update, Jack added:

...what would happen if Ahmadinejad were to explode a couple of Iran's unimportant facilities and, in the manner of the Reichstag fire, blame the attack in Israel and the United States, and then claim that his mining of the Strait of Hormuz was a defensive act in reprisal for Zionist and Crusader aggression? We all saw the violence in Iraq after the bombing of the Al Askari mosque. What would happen if Ahmeadinejad were to couple an attack on some Potemkin Iranian nuclear support facility with the bombing of some Islamic holy site, and blame everything on the US and Israel?

Thomas Lifson  3 7 06