Consider one of the antinomies, of self-contradictions, of international relations.

For decades now, the conventional wisdom in international relations has held that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz was a low probability event, and that if it happened, it could very likely be dealt with by the U.S. Navy. For documentation and a literature review, see Caitlin Talmadge’s paper, “Closing Time: Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz,” International Security, vol. 33:1 (Summer 2008), pp. 82-117.

Across the same period of time, the conventional wisdom has held that Iran constituted a mortal threat to Israel, and would, if given the slightest chance, attack or even annihilate Israel.  In other words, Iran’s attacking Israel was a high probability event. For a version of this view, repeated ad nauseam since then, see Norman Podhoretz, “The Case for Bombing Iran,” Commentary (June 2007).

If Iran’s attacking Israel was a high probability event, then Israel’s responding to an attack with U.S. assistance was also a high probability event. If attacked by Israel and/or the U.S., Iran’s closing the Strait of Hormuz was likewise a high probability event. So ultimately, if we assume that Iran was the threat we were told it was, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz was a high probability event all along.

Putting this together, we reach the paradoxical conclusion that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz was both a low and high probability event at the same time.

How did no one catch this contradiction?  Perhaps because international relations is, despite its pretensions, an insular field that prizes narrow disciplinary expertise over any desire for cross-contextual integration or cross-disciplinary examination. While one set of specialists assumed that the closure was a low probability event, one set of polemicists implied that it was a high probability event. No one had an incentive to connect the dots, and no one did.

So here we are, in the middle of the low probability event that became a high probability one. No one planned for it because it wasn’t the kind of thing you had to, or even could, plan for. And I hate to break the news, but it still isn’t.