Maximum pressure a recipe for disaster

If the United States is seeking to safeguard the security of commercial shipping and freedom of navigation in the strategic Strait of Hormuz with its plans to put together a coalition to provide naval escorts for oil tankers, it would do well to consider why it thinks that is necessary.

A series of attacks on shipping in the world's most important oil artery may seem to have provided the US with the excuse of putting together such a coalition. That three Iranian vessels tried to impede an oil tanker passing through the strait in recent days has added to the tension in the region.

Yet it is the withdrawal of the US from the 2005 multinational agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program that is the fundamental source of the trouble.