Iran’s Retaliation Options, Mapped

Now that the U.S. has struck Iran, how could the Iranians strike back? If you look at a map of Iran and the range of its missile capabilities, you'll see that their missiles can easily reach Israel and wreak havoc into the territory of American allies. These black squares show U.S. bases throughout the Middle East vulnerable to Iranian missiles, and that's a significant threat, including the American base at Incirlik in Turkey,

where the U.S. keeps many of the nuclear weapons that it uses to defend Europe. Another possibility is to retaliate with terror attacks. There's a large presence of proxies sympathetic to Iran throughout the region. Shiite militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and a little further south, the Houthis in Yemen and elsewhere could try to attack American and Israeli assets around the Gulf. And then of course, the Iranians have some economic leverage.

They could try to shut off the Strait of Hormuz. The map of the Gulf shows you that the Strait of Hormuz is an incredibly narrow choke point, and those little dots each represent a different tanker moving in and out of the Persian Gulf. About a quarter of all global oil trade travels through the Strait of Hormuz, so any cutoff

there could result in significant spikes in prices. But that risks losing the support of countries the Iranians really need help from, starting with the Chinese, who move a lot of their own oil imports through that very narrow strait. The fact of the matter is, the Iranians really don't want to fight right now. But think about this. If the Iranians believe that this attack is not a pinprick, but in fact an effort to topple

the regime, then it would be understandable if they decided to throw everything at it the regime, then it would be understandable if they decided to throw everything at it that they could.