On April 20, the United States fired at and then seized an Iranian-flagged container ship close to the Strait of Hormuz in the northern Arabian Sea, amid its blockade of Iranian ports.It was similar to a scene which played out in the 1980s during the so-called Tanker War between Iran and Iraq, during which both countries fired on each other’s tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, seeking to cripple each other’s economies.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listAs naval tensions rise again in the Strait of Hormuz – this time between Iran and the US – we break down what happened in the 1980s and examine the parallels and differences between the situations then and now: The ‘Pivot’ tanker in flames in the Strait of Hormuz in 1987 during the Iran-Iraq war [File: Francoise De Mulder/Roger Viollet via Getty Images]How the 1980s Tanker War played out – a timelineThe war between Iran and Iraq began in 1980 when then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein launched a full-scale invasion of Iran following Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.In 1984, this war reached the Gulf when Iraq attacked Iranian oil tankers, seeking to cripple its oil-revenue-dependent economy. Iran retaliated by firing at oil tankers belonging to Iraq and its allies in the Gulf.According to a report by the University of Texas’s Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law, Iran also threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz then, but did not do so since its own economy, already crippled by the war, was dependent on exporting oil to the rest of the world through it. Advertisement I …
