Appearing on Fox Business yesterday, former Bush administration National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley described a harrowing threat to energy security posed by Iran: the Islamic Republic closing the Strait of Hormuz where the Persian Gulf goes out to sea. The strait is a crucial transit point for oil tankers from Gulf kingdoms such as Saudi Arabia, but Iran controls one side of the bottleneck.

While omitting the elephant in the room, Hadley effectively outlined one of the likely disastrous effects of an attack on Iran. In town for a war game organized by an advocacy group that emphasizes energy insecurity, Hadley told Fox’s Eric Bolling:

HADLEY: [I]f you think about it, most of our oil comes from states that are unstable and in the Middle East or states like Venezuela and Libya and Iran that bear is no good will.

BOLLING: Sir, I have pointed this out in the past, a scenario that could happen. They tried it in the past. Iran could close off the Strait of Hormuz, that very, very short world oil choke-point, cutting off not one or two million barrels a day but 17 million barrels a day. A very easy put them to do. What would happen to the price of oil and the American economy?

HADLEY: The price of oil would skyrocket. I am sure you would see more than 200 barrels — dollars a barrel for oil. The economy would be in severe straits. Our military will tell you that in time there will be able to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but it wouldn’t have to be closed very long to have a devastating impact on our economy and the global economy. It’s not just the United States. But the United States is particularly vulnerable because we are struggling and it is of course where we live so we care about it.

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Leaving aside that Canada and Mexico export vastly more oil to the U.S. than “unstable” Middle East states or enemies, Hadley and Bolling put forward a scenario where Iran decides unprovoked to close down the Strait of Hormuz. While that’s unlikely, other plausible situations exist where Iran would likely be very tempted to close down the transit point for about a quarter of the world’s oil: in retaliation for a strike. This, too, is not a certainty, but military analysts have noted the distinct possibility and the Iranian military itself has said it would react to an attack by closing the Strait.

In short, if you want to avoid “skyrocket(ing)” oil prices and “a devastating impact on our economy and the global economy” due to an Iranian closing of the Strait of Hormuz, the best way to do it would be to not attack Iran.

U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford recently made news when he traveled to the Syrian city of Hama and joined anti-government demonstrators in a protest against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Syrian activists welcomed Ford and thanked him for his display of solidarity. One Syria expert here in the U.S. called Ford’s move “impressive” and a “significant statement.”

But all this may not have happened if many Republicans had their way. GOPers such as Marco Rubio and Tim Pawlenty were calling on President Obama to recall Ambassador Ford in the wake of the government’s violent crackdown. And on top that, the U.S. would not have an envoy in Syria at all if the Republicans in the Senate got what they wanted. Last year, Senate GOPers refused to confirm Ford because they saw sending an ambassador to Syria as a “reward” for bad behavior.

Indeed, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney recently countered Republicans calling for Ford’s recall, saying his presence there is “useful.” And there’s at least one person who agrees with that: Robert Ford himself. Over at Foreign Policy, Marc Lynch writes than in an interview, Ford “dismissed” the idea that he has not been able to engage with Syrians:

Ford dismissed the idea that prior to Hama he had been a captive in his Embassy, unable to engage with anyone. Quite the contrary. He has had access to both the Syrian government and to key sectors of Syrian society such as the business community. The threat of violent retaliation and intimidation of Syrians who meet with American officials is real, though, and he acknowledged that some had refused invitations out of this fear. Senior administration officials have told me several times in other conversations that Ford’s conversations were one of their most important sources of information in assessing the Syrian scene. This is one key reason why they considered his presence essential even before his electrifying visit to Hama persuaded most of their critics of his value.

Ford also told Lynch he can expect more Hama-like visits across Syria. “He plans to take further trips around the country, to continue to meet with as many Syrians as he can, and to push to open political space and to restrain regime violence,” Lynch writes. And Ford doesn’t seem to want to back down. “I’m not going to stop the things I do,” he said. “I can’t. The President has issued very clear guidance. It’s morally the right thing to do.”

And Ford has high regard for those challenging Assad. “I’ve met enough of them, and believe me, they are a lot tougher than anyone in the Washington Post or the U.S. Senate. They know exactly what they are doing,” he said.

But it’s unclear how much longer Ford can be in Syria representing the United States. The Washington Post noted this week that unless the Senate officially approves his post, Ford will be forced to leave Syria at the end of the year. But that might require Senate Republicans to admit that perhaps they were wrong. It is possible, however. As Brookings Middle East expert Shadi Hamid tweeted yesterday, “I previously said Obama admin should recall the US ambassador in #Syria. I was wrong.”

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (WSJ) contained an otherwise forgettable opinion piece by the Journal’s editorial board, except that buried in the fourth paragraph was a call for war with Iran.

The opinion piece, titled “The Battle Over Iraq: Tehran Kills America GIs and Undermines Iraqi Democracy,” offers a lengthy defense of military aid to Iraq and a long term security relationship with Iraq — “The U.S. has kept troops in South Korea and Japan for six decades after the end of the wars there, and a similar presence in Iraq might be as salutary” — but the fourth paragraph contains the following endorsement of what could only be considered acts of war against Iran. It reads:

The U.S. has chosen not to go after the militias directly to shield the government of Nouri al-Maliki from the domestic political fallout of unilateral American military action. Such considerations are cold comfort to soldiers under attack. The U.S. has a legal and moral responsibility to respond. We ought to go after the militias in Iraq as well as their backers in Iran who’ve decided to make Iraq a proxy war.

For the sake of clarity, the WSJ editorial board should explain exactly what it means by “going after” the Iranian supporters of Shiite militias. Do they propose cross border raids into Iran? Targeted bombing of suspected arms smugglers in Iran?

But such loose talk of a potentially disastrous war shouldn’t be so surprising coming from hawkish deputy editorial page editor Bret Stephens, who is widely understood to author the unsigned foreign policy columns and referred to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a “Hitlerian figure.” Furthmore, Stephens attended a secretive, off the record 2007 conference in the Bahamas hosted by the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which included an entire session dedicated to the discussion of various military options against Iran’s nuclear program.

Indeed, recent statements from senior military and intelligence officials about Iranian support for Shiite militias in Iraq has been leveraged by neoconservatives to push for more aggressive, yet vaguely defined, action against Iran.

Former George W. Bush Middle East adviser Elliot Abrams hit a similar note on his Council on Foreign Relations blog, writing twice in the past week on the failure of the Obama administration to take “action” against Iran. On July 8, he wrote:

What credibility can we possibly have when they know we know that Iran has been killing American soldiers year after year without any significant American response.

Much like the Wall Street Journal, Abrams never bothered qualifying what “response” was appropriate. What seems inappropriate, however, is the calling for “action” against another sovereign country without bothering to define what action is actually being endorsed.

Perhaps more importantly, if countering the extensive Iranian influence in Iraq is the new metric for success, the U.S. should plan to extend its mission there forever.

The Liz Cheney/Bill Kristol-led outfit Keep America Safe released a web ad this week attacking President Obama’s Afghanistan troop withdrawal plan, criticizing him for ignoring the generals and putting U.S. soliders’ lives at risk by asking them “to do more with less.” Of course, it’s people like Cheney and Kristol who wanted American soldiers to do more with less when they were pushing for the invasion of Iraq.

But while the Washington Post and groups like FactCheck.org and Media Matters have pointed out the ad’s various distortions and falsehoods (FactCheck said the ad is “hasty” with quotes and “quotes U.S. military leaders out of context”), even Fox News — where Kristol is a “contributor” and Cheney makes regular appearances — is having a hard time promoting it. “That might be a tough sell by Liz Cheney and her group, because the polls show that most Americans want out of there,” Bill O’Reilly said last night. And while talking with O’Reilly about the ad, Fox Business’s Dagen McDowell challenged its substance:

MCDOWELL: And it’s worth noting in that very testimony used in the ad, they did say the president didn’t follow. Mike Mullen said it. [...] But they did say they’ve gotten on board with the plan and they will make due with what they have.

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This isn’t the first time conservatives have had doubts about a Keep America Safe ad. Former Bush administration officials last year spoke out against an ad the group did, which questioned the loyalties of Justice Department lawyers. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called the same ad “shameful.”