kootchman
Right … Suezmax is a small tanker. There ya go NF… good start. One sunk ship in the transit before the Bitters Lake que closes the canal for over a year. Too small, too insecure. Suexmax is a transfer tanker… taking cargo from a super tanker in increments. AND… the angle of repose on either bank, has an engineering relationship to the depth. To deepen the canal, to allow super tanker passage means… yes you will have to widen the canal.
The current channel depth of the canal allows for a maximum of 20.1 m (66 ft) of draft,[1] meaning a few fully laden supertankers are too deep to fit through, and either have to unload part of their cargo to other ships (“transhipment”) or to a pipeline terminal before passing through, or alternatively avoid the Suez Canal and travel around Cape Agulhas instead.
Almost 35,000 ships transited the Suez Canal in 2009, of which about 10 percent were petroleum tankers. With only 1,000 feet at its narrowest point, the Canal is unable to handle the VLCC (Very Large Crude Carriers) and ULCC (Ultra Large Crude Carriers) class crude oil tankers.
But to the point…. strategically, Iran is better served with a seaport and a tank farm on the Med coast. Supplied by a trans Syria pipeline.