Abstract

"“Chokepoint for Freedom”: The Reagan Administration’s Persian Gulf Policy during the Tanker War"

Grace Easterly, University of Connecticut (grace.easterly@uconn.edu)

This paper examines the Reagan administration’s Persian Gulf policy during the tanker
war, a maritime conflict that erupted during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War when Iranian and Iraqi
forces attempted to hinder each other’s oil exports by attacking Gulf oil tankers. In response, the
Reagan administration deployed naval forces to the Gulf in what was at the time the largest naval
action since the Vietnam War. The Reagan administration’s intervention only deepened when the
state-owned Kuwait Oil Tanker Company (KOTC) requested for its tankers to be reflagged
under US flags, qualifying them for US naval protection. In public statements, the Reagan
administration’s rhetoric emphasized that US naval forces would secure the “freedom of
navigation” and the “free flow of oil” through the Gulf. Although this discourse emphasized the
free movement of oil, US foreign policymakers viewed the Persian Gulf waterway in two distinct
spatial configurations: as both a short-term passageway for oil tankers and a future reservoir for
the western world’s oil. Solidifying geopolitical control over oil factored larger in Washington’s
decision to intervene in the tanker war than preserving the short-term flow. The Reagan
administration therefore deployed “passageway” rhetoric — freedom of the seas — to justify
“reservoir” strategy — preventing Iran or the Soviet Union from gaining control over the west’s
oil reserves. During the tanker war, the US Navy positioned itself as policeman of the commons
and defender of the global circulation of oil, employing the vocabulary of freedom to maintain
the flow of oil and influence the outcome of the war on land.