Recently, BBC Monitoring revealed that Hoseyin Shariatmadari, adviser to the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei asserted that three islands held by the United Arab Emirates are "an inseparable part" of Iranian soil. Iran's possession of the UAE's islands would give it a strategic edge that would allow it to close access to the Persian Gulf. At the same time, Shariatmadari also called for the "province" of Bahrain, a sovereign state, to be reunited with Iran.

Iran's claims highlight the potential perils involved if the U.S. takes a neo-isolationist course. In the absence of a clear and explicit U.S. security guarantee against aggression aimed at seizing the territories in question, Iran could be tempted to "settle" the matter through military force. If a "non-interventionist" policy is pursued by the U.S., as some desire, Iran would have little to worry about. It would have much to gain, and at almost no cost.

Then, Iran would have the ability to shut down the Persian Gulf's flow of oil or use its newfound strategic position to blackmail the world's oil-consuming nations, especially if it possessed nuclear weapons by that time. Although the Persian Gulf region currently produces 27.8% of the world's oil based on the latest EIA statistics, it holds 55.3% of the world's proven oil reserves. Therefore, barring major oil discoveries outside that region, its importance in terms of oil production will grow in the years ahead.

Under such a scenario, one could not dismiss the prospect that a damaging "energy mercantilism" could take place, with some states scrambling to secure agreements to receive oil while others would be locked out. Most likely to be locked out by Iran would be the U.S., Israel, and other close American allies.

During the 1973 oil embargo, some states made some moves in that direction. National economies would be disrupted by such a development. Any war to regain that area once Iranian control were established could be enormously destructive and much of the region's oil production facilities could be badly damaged or destroyed.

An explicit U.S. security guarantee could deter Iranian aggression, as the calculated "price" for seizing such territory could be too high for Iran to risk the effort. Unfortunately, a strict neo-isolationist stance ignores the vital importance of the Persian Gulf region. As such, it would seek to avoid the "entanglement" of a U.S. security guarantee, even as such a guarantee could deter possible Iranian aggression, minimize the risk of Iran's gaining control over important waterway, and serve to safeguard one of the United States' most vital interests.