Nobody is talking about how big of a failure this has been on the part of the U.S. Navy. Controlling and securing shipping routes has been a fundamental function of a navy since Roman times. The U.S. Navy was unable to achieve that objective in this war. Ill-advised American wars often end up as losses because we fail to achieve our political objectives. But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to achieve a purely military objective.
This is fundamentally a failure of political leadership. You don't try to achieve a goal when you don't have the military means to achieve at a cost you are willing to bear.
There are endless numbers of military objectives that the US military that could have been sent on where they would have had no chance to succeed. That they generally weren't is a function other administrations, however bad, not being so embarrassingly incompetent as this.
You’re making an orthogonal point. His point was that regardless of political decision making, the US Navy has demonstrated an incapacity of controlling the Strait of Hormuz, which is bad
No, his point is that being unable to do that was (or at least should have been) a forgone conclusion. There are many things that we know the US (or UK or Chinese or etc) military can't do and that isn't a bad thing per se.
The US navy was unable to keep hormuz secure for civilian traffic but was able to blockade it themselves. I think that's exactly the outcome you'd expect in this scenario.
> No, his point is that being unable to do that was (or at least should have been) a forgone conclusion.
No, not at all. As I said, controlling straits and keeping them open for shipping is a fundamental function of a navy going back to Roman times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_navy (“By far, the navy's most vital task was to ensure Roman grain imports were shipped and delivered to the capital unimpeded across the Mediterranean.”).
The inability to keep the strait clear shouldn’t have been expected. It’s a purely military objective that’s squarely within what our ridiculously overspecced Navy should be able to do.
It is a fundamental function in the general sense, yes. But I don't think anyone was expecting that the US could do so in hormuz in this instance (at least without committing far more assets of a non-naval variety). I also think there are plenty of examples that take the form (strong navy, narrow body of water) where failure would be expected but that doesn't mean the navy in question isn't capable or that it fails to fulfill its role.
Similarly it is a fundamental function of the infantry to maintain ground control over a region but it is easy to come up with hypotheticals where any given power including the US would fail to do so.
> It’s a purely military objective that’s squarely within what our ridiculously overspecced Navy should be able to do.
I'm sure they could if cost was of no consequence but depending on the size of iran's drone stockpiles the interceptor costs might well bankrupt us. And even then they would only manage because (I assume) iran either can't or won't employ hypersonic missiles against tankers.
> But I don't think anyone was expecting that the US could do so in hormuz in this instance (at least without committing far more assets of a non-naval variety).
I think that’s exactly what they thought. I think this was supposed to be a quick and dirty campaign like Venezuela.
> I'm sure they could if cost was of no consequence but depending on the size of iran's drone stockpiles the interceptor costs might well bankrupt us. And even then they would only manage because (I assume) iran either can't or won't employ hypersonic missiles against tankers.
I think this is the part they overlooked. The military has been planning to attack Iran for 50 years. I can totally believe that they underestimated Iran’s drone capabilities and hypersonic missiles.
Either way, there’s a real military lesson here. Iran has enormous leverage over the world through its control of the strait of hormuz. Even the most powerful navy in the world can’t protect the world’s oil shipments without a land war against Iran (which I expect would be a trillion dollar effort). The Iranians are much more powerful than we thought.
> You don't try to achieve a goal when you don't have the military means to achieve at a cost you are willing to bear.
Did the military advise the administration it would take a lengthy ground war to control the strait? Or was it pitched as something the Navy could do without a ground occupation?
It wouldn’t matter if they had. He’s doesn’t listen to anything he doesn’t want to hear. At this point one can safely assume that he was told exactly how this strategic defeat would play out, and it went in one ear and out the other.
I don’t think we can assume that. Maybe Trump ignored warnings (though if that happened I would have expected it to be leaked). But there’s also a possibility the Navy fucked up. And that’s important to consider, because that’s something that needs to be fixed.
It's pure greed. The IRGC relies heavily on oil money for funding the massive militia (hundreds of thousands of Basij) that allows it to stay in power; if that income collapsed then it would eventually lose control. Trump however not only refused to bomb Iran's oil infrastructure but even stopped the IDF from doing so, just because he thinks he'll somehow be able to take that oil for himself and his cronies in future like he did in Venezuela.
I don't think that's true. The Khomeini clan do rely on IRGC to remain in power somewhat, but it also has strong influence towards the civilian government, and the OPA it ran on the Mullah at the start of the war, getting a non-mullah elected supreme leader at a very cheap price prove they rely on more than their central militia. A lot of the clans who supported the Shah during the original coup also seems to support the regime, which makes the north stable. The western part of the country, despite insurgents/independence groups, seems to have reported their hatred of S.Hussein towards the US (to be fair, the chemical weapons Hussein used to bomb their village were from the US), which means they might choose to fight the US rather than the regime.
Imho the regime was made stronger because of this war. It was really a bad moment to strike. Khomeini had a cancer, and waiting for his death and the succession crisis that would have ensued would have been a better choice. Now the regime is stronger than ever.
Although my real thoughts is that this strength the Khomeini project is temporary, in the sense that the only reason the regime lasted this long before was because the power was shared. If they keep pushing for more control, without sharing, they will end up loosing everything.
I don’t think that’s it. Iran has demonstrated an ability and willingness to strike the equivalent infra in the gulf states, including the very vulnerable gas liquefaction facilities in Qatar. If the US destroyed their oil infrastructure, all that infrastructure goes. Hormuz would be irrelevant, there’d be almost nothing to ship through it. Plus given the long term reductions in the gulf supply already from damage, the world now needs Iranian oil.
That’s why Trump has allowed Iranian oil already outside the gulf to be sold, was willing to drop oil sanctions on further Iranian shipments, and was so panicked when Israel hit an Iranian oil facility.
Bombing Iran's oil infrastructure would give Iran the casus belli to do a like for like strike on the GCC countries. Imagine strikes on Fujairah port, the Aramco, ADNOC and QatarEnergy refineries on the Gulf Coast, as well as the Yanbu and Habshan pipelines.
That means effectively taking out 25℅ of global oil supply -> oil at 150-200 a barrel -> Trump and the Republicans lose the midterms badly -> Trump gets impeached. I'm sure somebody explained it to him that this is exactly what would get happened, which is why he did not overextend or let Israel do so.
Because it's not true. CENTCOM can reopen the strait whenever they want, but doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it. It's still a strategic defeat, but for different reasons than what you are saying.
Recommend studying the public comments of General MacKenzie who was the previous CENTCOM commander, comments from Admiral Cooper before he was appointed to current CENTCOM commander, or previous Joint Chiefs of Staff.
They've all given public interviews about Hormuz during the current war or before it over the last decade saying the same thing about what's required and whether it can be done.
Well sure, but everything short of committing the whole country to total war will always come down to “we could do it, it’s just too politically expensive”. Even in authoritarian countries, there is a limit to what you can get away with.
That “we could do it, we just don’t want to” argument will face its acid test later in the year when the midterms are closer, but certainly if I were in charge of Iran I’d be feeling pretty good about the current situation.
Do you think the military gave a realistic assessment of what time and resources it would take to control the strait? Was this pitched as an operation that would take a huge political commitment of troops and drag on for years?
I don’t know. My prior is that this admin was never willing to put boots on the ground. And for purely self-serving reasons, they wouldn’t have risked a scenario where Iran blocked oil traffic through the strait, causing gas prices to go up.
So, to me, the two possibilities are: the military told the administration it couldn’t control the strait without boots on the ground, and Trump disregarded that advice.
The other possibility is that the military was overconfident. We know it has been developing plans to attack Iran for decades. It’s possible the military thought it could control the strait based on obsolete plans that didn’t account for new developments like Iranian fast boats and drones.
You can call it a failure, it's just not a military one.
Hell there's an argument to be made that the US should downsize its military because there's no universe in which exercising its full capability is not either the end of the world as we know it or absolute political suicide.
> You can call it a failure, it's just not a military one.
Would that work in corporate America? Try telling your boss, "I didn't actually fail because had you given me an unreasonable amount of time and resources I would have succeeded." Every project has an expectation of time and cost, and if you can't meet that expectation then you failed.
If your boss sets patently unreasonable expectations then that's arguably his failure as opposed to yours though obviously he will attempt to shift the blame to you.
First of all it's a failure since they attacked without considering they would be closing the strait, they just did not believe Iran would do that, hence not positioned themselves. https://archive.ph/XkXCf
Second, you are basing your assessment that they could open it whenever on some statements what the US could do - again not taking into consideration what Iran what respond with. It's like with all the other goals of this war, the US telling us what they could be doing (which boils down to "more bombing"). Admiral Cooper that brought us the famous 24h "Project Freedom"? Pardon our skepticism, some of their plans maybe sound nice to them, they just expect the other side to not react appropriately, that has been the biggest mistake with Iran.
I assume you're talking about "slow and expensive" like sending tens of thousand of troops to occupy at _least_ the ~entire shore around the narrow part of the Strait, indefinitely?
Yeah, shocking there's no political will for that.
I would point you to Gen MacKenzie's interviews as the reference on that question, I would just be regurgitating his views.
He says that a sustained coastal invasion is not necessary. Raids would be necessary to destroy any buried weapons, but these troops wouldn't need to stay there.
Other than this you need more of what they were already doing, "shaping operations" as he calls it, which is ISR drones overhead and lots of bombing/strafing runs.
Eventually, because they don't have a remaining industrial base and cannot effectively replenish their stocks (excepting more simple one way attack drones), they will lack the ability to project enough power beyond their borders to keep the strait closed.
Operation Praying Mantis is a somewhat dated case study, but still required reading.
The reason it's so expensive should be more intuitively obvious - interceptors are expensive and are needed to pace China, and a few more months of closure is significant inflation before the midterms.
And yet they are moving ships despite Shahed attacks that occurred yesterday, so by this empirical observation, you must conclude that you are operating under a flawed worldview.
yesterday's attack happened allegedly because Iran didn't allow specific ships to move.
Those which are moving today likely received permission from Iran.
> Because it's not true. CENTCOM can reopen the strait whenever they want
This is not true.
There is too much coastline to guard to protect from coastal drone launches.
There are too many cheap drones and not enough cheap drone counters.
There are still a LOT of working ballistic missile launchers.
There are still a lot of anti-air threats, including medium and short range anti air, and combination infared+electro-optical MANPADS capable of shooting down true 5th gen stealth fighters.
They don't need to hit 999 of their drone or missile launches, they need to hit 1 or 2 to make insurance companies unwilling to take the risk of allowing movement through the straight.
Not to mention the cost of this... military excursion has been extensive in both depletion of competent military officers, depletion of strategic use precision guided weapons, we have lost some very expensive and critical airframes, and politically and around the world, have shown to be somewhat of a very expensive paper tiger in modern large scale operations that is clearly not yet ready for the realities of a modern conflict that isn't being fought by a state in the middle of a civil war.
I could go on and on from both a tactical and strategic angle about why this was awful, but I don't think I'd sway the minds of anyone already set in their perspective.
> There are still a LOT of working ballistic missile launchers.
About half or so have been destroyed if one averages various estimates. The continuation of combat operations was the sensible option: not finishing off a wounded but aggressive animal is always a mistake. Iran will put whatever sanctions relief they get out of a "deal" towards rearming and rebuilding their nuclear facilities, and we will be back to square one in a decade or so, only against a more emboldened enemy.
The Vatican City could develop nuclear weapons whenever they want, but doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it.
Specifically, not overestimating their own abilities and thus biting off more than they can chew. “Stepping on their own dicks” is a superset that includes all sorts of buffoonery like constantly making empty threats and backing off, but the basic assumption that the US Military is flawless and omnipotent and we can act accordingly seems to be our most fundamental error.
It's not only about reputation. Trump has been so obvious in his doing that the western world has started to define a new world order without the US in its center.
And should any "new world order" have the US in its center now?
We've paid for the entire world order outside the Soviet Union/Russia and China for decades. Time to present a bill, close the relationships (e.g., NATO, UN) and put our money and resources to better use for us in the USA.
Andrew Jackson was around 150+ years ago. Nixon was fairly competent diplomatically even if he was horrible domestically. Trump is a whole different breed that seems to switch his actions based on whim and who he spoke with last.
This isn't a failure by the US Navy. It was a political decision to stop short.
The US could open the strait and eliminate all opponents but we don't have the political stomach for it. It would be a longer and more destructive process than people are prepared for right now. Nonetheless, what occurs next will enlighten us as to how to proceed.
> This isn't a failure by the US Navy. It was a political decision to stop short. The US could open the strait and eliminate all opponents but we don't have the political stomach for it.
Stop short of what? A land invasion? I think it’s highly unlikely that was ever on the table. Much more likely, the plan was to attack key Iranian targets with air power while the Navy kept the strait of hormuz clear.
If the US wants to abdicate their position as a global hegemon of every waterway and trade route this seems like a good way to do it. The US is much less dependent on the Strait of Hormuz than its competitors.
Ten years down the line it may be the case that India will sail up and enforce toll-free waterways instead. That will never happen as long as the US puts up the resources for it. The American taxpayer will be better off if the burden of global free trade is borne more equitably.
It's not like the US did massive world wide power projection (capabilities) out of altruism. It's a necessity to project their political and economic demands.
If the US citizen think being a super power is to expensive, that's fine for the world. No empire lasts forever. The US can become an important regional power, having its destiny more influenced by the upcoming super powers that fill the vacuum.
> But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to achieve a purely military objective.
The U.S. has been secretly moving ships for months. And Iran no longer has any significant naval force, it's all been wiped out. What is difficult to completely stop, short of glassing the entire country, is harassment by drones or other forms of "asymmetric warfare."
They can, to some extent, but drone stockpiles and factories can be targeted and destroyed by conventional means. It is difficult to destroy them ALL, but it is certainly a problem that can be addressed to a degree without taking over the country.
I'm pretty sure that the reputational harms of using nuclear weapons on a country of 70M is going to be pretty severe. Surely you understand how starting a war with a country without sufficient cause and then using nuclear weapons on them might result in significant and very long lasting consequences?
Yes, I am Israeli. I had over a dozen friends and coworkers killed by an Iranian proxy army, and several others abducted from their homes. Two women I know had their infants burned to death by that Iranian proxy army. My daughter's 16 year old friend was murdered in his home along with his brother and sister and both parents - none of the family survived. My two other children also lost people in their lives.
I'm the one calling for genocide? These people poured over the border with explicit instructions to kill Jews. That actually, truly, is the literal meaning of the term genocide.
I asked why Iran is being allowed to continue to harass shipping when a military option exists that would end their harassment. I argued that their own self-preservation instinct should be the driving force to prevent that option from actually being exercised. I didn't even realise that nuclear weapons were the context.
If you will remember from a few months ago, many of our actions was apparrently to cause a revolution from within. That didn't happen.
We can't just change our strategy to "nvrmd: kill 'em all" and think we'll have any allies after this. Iran would once again not just attack us, but practically every country near it, causing even more causalities and infrastructure damage.
And this doesn't get into the problem that this would eventually require a land invasion, which would be impossible. We couldn't even get an actual war ship close to Iran.
There is a "Sunk Cost Fallacy" that someone in our Administration should listen to. Times up with this complete disaster.
> Then why is "glass the entire country" not an option?
It is an option, but civilians bear most of the cost of it. That being said, I do think more could have been done militarily. The U.S. should have continued combat operations for at least a few more weeks and taken what is left of ballistic missiles, drones and arms facilities, etc. Striking dual-use infrastructure such as bridges and railroads is also fair game.
It would triggering an apocalyptic conflagration deter a bunch of religious fanatics that are actively trying to bring about a prophesied apocalyptic conflagration?
Because all the american assets in countries around iran will be "glassed" too, like american bases are already. And then special forces deep in US will start "glassing" US infrastructure, power, water, logistics, etc. (It's not terrorism if you're in war, it's just special units behind enemy lines). Looking at eg. texas, it doesn't take a lot to bring the whole power grid down, especially if properly planned. If you bomb water supply facilities in eg. new york, how many people will you have to evacuate? How hard would it be for those special forces to start forest fires in california? Or poison food supply for the army? Or just bomb a random school in retaliation for the one you guys bombed in iran?
> Why is attacking one's enemies suddenly controversial?
Flying half the planet away to attack someone who in no way endangers you is controversial... it took a few years of vietnam war for americans to figure it out and a few decades to forget it all again and now you're repeating it against a stronger adversary. It's no wonder most of the world hates americans.
edit: looking at his comment history, commenter above me seems to be from israel, not US, but same applies to them too, with the exception of having to ask trump (and the brits and others) for help when iran fights back.
Submarines can be hunted (and are) and drones and cruise missiles can be shot down. These things are what navies are supposed to do nowadays. US Navy in particular has not read the memo for about 20 years.
The basic information about surface warship specifications isn't classified. We know how many interceptor missiles they can carry. Standard doctrine is to fire at least two interceptors at each incoming threat in order to increase the probability of a kill. And empirically these defensive systems work very well, but ships in action empty their magazines quickly and then are out of action until they can return to a friendly base to rearm. At some point there just aren't enough hulls and missiles to sustain the effort.
Most powerful navy "failed its mission", as well as Russian navy received heavy casualties, so we have enough public information that modern drones and missiles are highly effective.
Controlling the straight was never one of their objectives. Decapitating the regime and degrading their military capabilities was the primary objective.
As others have said, the US can “reopen” the straight at any time they want. It’s not an issue of capabilities. But it’s very resource intensive and very expensive.
The logistics of escorting ships in and out of the straight isn’t trivial. I forget the name of the operation, but they did implement it for a few days before shutting it down. Politically, I imagine it’s pretty hard to justify the cost /benefit
On the Iranian side it takes a very small amount of resources and logistics. All they have to do is project power, whether they have it or not, and the shipping & insurance industries have to respect it.
Drones are really cheap, and that’s about all it takes for Iran to leverage their influence over the straight. Which is kind of crazy when you think about it. But it’s about the only bargaining chip they have left and they aren’t going let go of it easily.
Yeah that’s a good point. I don’t disagree with that. I just think the US administration’s strategy is something totally different than anyone is talking about.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence US aggression towards Venezuela, Cuba & Iran are all happening at the same time. These things are all connected and nobody’s really talking about it.
I don’t think regime change was the strategy, I think they were happy with just a “reset” of the top leaders, same as in Venezuela.
If they did get full regime change it would have just been a side effect. They were hoping the Iranians would seize the opportunity and rise up, but that didn’t happen. And I don’t blame them, that’s a big ask when they are getting gunned down in the streets or executed for dissent on a daily basis.
They were probably also riding off the “high” of how shockingly easy Venezuela went. But Iran is much more complex obviously
The US navy escorted ships through the strait back in the Iran Iraq war, but the situation has changed. There are naval drones and aerial drones now, the Iranians have access to Russian satellite data, and the US doesn’t have the volume and mix of ship types it had back then. The US navy has been over optimised for deep water peer fleet conflict. Bear in mind, the Red Sea has been functionally closed by the Houthis for years now.
Yeah exactly. Drones have changed everything. What might have used to be routine is now no longer the case. Iran just has to project power in the media, and shoot some drones out at some boats every now and then and they effectively “control“ the straight. The shipping insurance markets skyrocketed as a result, so ships literally couldn’t afford to take the risk and stayed put.
No matter how much military we put into the strait, Iran was just going to blow up UAE and Qatari refineries.
And despite all the madman theory of our current President, there's just too many bribes in those countries who have the attention of the President. So Total War is unacceptable to USA leaders.
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That being said: I'm still amused that the ship we needed in this fight was the long cancelled Littoral Combat Ship
Cancelling the LCS construction program was the right move. There are still a number of hulls in commission and they have some utility as minesweepers, but can really only operate when the air threat has been neutralized. They have only limited defenses against drones and cruise missiles, and none at all against ballistic missiles. They're simply no longer survivable.
I don't think Iran has homing ballistic missiles. Only maybe China has those. As such, the best defense vs ballistic threats is simply moving around, if they can't home then who cares?
I mean, buildings and hardened targets do care. But ships can just move and the missile will miss.
But yes, defenses vs Drones and Cruise missiles is more than sufficient vs Iran. And navigating narrow waters with higher degrees of mobility is better than our other ships.
Wrong on all points. Iran has already used anti-ship ballistic missiles. They might not be as advanced as China's but they appear to work, and in confined areas the targeting can be done using mobile shore-based radars.
Even setting the ballistic missile threat aside, LCS can't defend itself against regular drones and cruise missiles. It's severely limited in terms of sensors, fire control, and magazine depth. In order to operate in that area with reasonable survivability it would have to be escorted by a more capable surface warship with area air defense.
> But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to achieve a purely military objective.
It has long been clear for any analyst that securing the straight without boots on the ground would be materially impossible. Air power isn't enough to stop the very modest force of the Houthis from closing the Bab-el-mandeb straight, it was clear from the beginning that it wouldn't work better against a much more capable Iran.
Trump launched a war without any plan, and absolutely no willingness to launch an full-scale invasion of Iran (rightly so, because it would have been unlikely to work well with regards to the polical goals), so it's not exactly surprising that it didn't work.
Starting a war is always a bad idea, even when you have bipartisan support for it at home, but starting a war you don't want to fight is absolutely dumb.
> But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to achieve a purely military objective.
The military objective can be achieved, it would just require the 'No New Wars' party to implode from having 272 seats to having ~150 seats after the midterms.
It's ironic that Vance and Co were bragging about "no more stupid rules of engagement" but then they effectively do the very same thing by not allowing boots on the ground for political reason.
Since you're kvetching about stupid political reasons I'm assuming you're volunteering to go first as drone cannon fodder?
That 'political reason' is that US is war-weary, and the electorate will flip their shit when their kids get sent into the meatgrinder of a pointless war that none of them wanted, ran by TV stars, where the stated objective changes every 30 minutes.
Now you can use a drone that costs a few thousand dollars to take out a hundred million dollar ship.
It's a pricing issue. Whereas before, you had to use expensive guided missiles or your own naval or air force assets, now you can send a bunch of cheap drones.
Really not sure how to interpret this thread. I could buy a drone for 100 bucks 10 years ago.
Using cheap drones for asymmetric warfare can't be new or surprising for a country with a supposed vast intelligence network. Or for a country that's supposed to have a modern military which means having effective answers to what an enemy throws at you in battle.
My favorite example is how NATO recognized cyberspace as operational domain in 2016 — like no one there watched or heard about a movie from 1983 called „War Games”.
I think you vastly overestimate speed with which people acknowledge new facts.
Second best is only Catholic Church fully acknowledging heliocentric theories in 1992.
Indeed it isn't. The military has been doing cheap drone swarm research since well before ukraine. But I think that for everyone - including the military - whether or not the people in charge update their worldviews is an entirely separate matter.
Drone warfare may be new, but small-boat operations; Surface-to-Sea missiles; aquatic mines; and long-distance cannons - those are not new. And those are probably enough to effectively close down the straights. To do so, Iran does not need to defeat and sink the US Navy force; it needs to occasionally hit some ships running the blockade. We saw this with the Bab Al-Mandab blockade, beginning in 2024; Yemen's military is not nearly as powerful as Iran's, and still, ships started avoiding the Bab Al-Mandab, because a, what, 20%? chance of being hit and taken over or sunk, with some of the crew possibly taken prisoner, is not something one does if one can avoid it, for the price of a longer journey.
I expect this will be a far more consequential loss than Vietnam for the US in the long run. This has been a spectacular defeat and likely means the US will be forced to exit from the region because everybody can see now that American bases cannot be defended and they put countries hosting them at risk. This is a major geopolitical upheaval.
Probably because they turn off transponders while crossing that area.
"Traffic is generally picking up in the strait, with several laden tankers seen exiting into the Gulf of Oman over the weekend, though some of them turned off their transponders. The latest was a Greek-flagged tanker carrying Iraqi crude to Singapore."
I think this is really because ship crews are abused and have no choice. The companies don’t have executives on ships. It’s some maritime crew, often from India, that’s told to just take the risk with their own lives. And if they want to keep their jobs they have to comply.
> And if they want to keep their jobs they have to comply.
Worse still, many mariners are effectively prisoners and can become trapped if corporate decides to cut them loose without also providing passage off the vessel
What would have happened, in that first story, if he had left the ship and swam to a passing boat? Or swam to shore? He was apparently able to leave as later in his imprisonment, the boat drift closer to shore and he swam from there. Why not just leave?
Abandoned crew members often remain on the ship in the hope of eventually getting paid their overdue wages after the legal issues are sorted out. If they leave the vessel then that weakens their negotiating position.
I would think that the shipping executives are less willing to take the risk to run the strait than the crews are. Being stuck for months with very little freedom, uncertain future, uncertain supplies, missiles and drones flying overhead, it sounds like hell.
But who insures the ship and its cargo? And what's the premium? No one cared about sailors before either. But if the ship sinks then you cash out from Lloyds. But if the risk premium increases by a lot, then that adds to the cost of the cargo.
And eventually it's just not worth transiting the strait no matter how "open" it's claimed to be, if there are still unacceptable risks.
All of the major maritime insurers will issue war risk policies at a small premium over the usual rates. This isn't anything new. Back during the Iran-Iraq war both sides were hitting tankers occasionally but insurers wrote policies and the oil continued to flow.
This big question now is how many of them will travel back in there and potentially being stuck for months, or just swap ship if their current ship is headed there.
Captain Blood surely couldn't imagine that corsairs of the future will use rocket-propelled, remotely controlled cannonballs that can fly from a location beyond the horizon.
It's about time to have a serious talk with the Saudis and redirect all that money that is being stupidly spent on all those vanity projects such as NEOM and The Line towards pipelines running through the Desert , end point the port of Yunbu & Jeddah and make the Strait of Hormuz irrelevant .
This is the quintessential American project, the U.S. has invented and developed the oil industry in Saudi. Saudi Aramco was originally the "California-Arabian Standard Oil Company".
I don't know why this hasn't happened during the last 40 years where Iran has always been an enemy, Saudi Arabia has always been an ally and the U.S. has always had enormous amount of access to the Kingdom for the purpose of building oil infrastructure.
Doesn't matter how many pipelines Saudi has when Iran could just bomb them and the refineries again. The best strategy would be for Saudi and the UAE to invest in mass drone production; drones are becoming like WMDs, and MAD will similarly apply. The IRGC is more dependent on oil revenue than Saudi and UAE, and relies on that money for funding the massive militia that allows them to stay in power, so they've got more to lose in an extended war of oil infrastructure destruction.
Ok let's say buried pipelines under the sand , it's the ideal insulant against the relatively low power of suicide drones.
Haven't you seen the amount of sand they displaced for the foundations of "the Line" project?
Let's say dig a hole in the desert build the pipeline and then cover it with 15ft of sand that you previously excavated , can't be that hard for a country that is boasting about building a 1mi tall skyscraper and a 100mi long 1000ft tall Line , or a floating NEOM city
The exception is that this project would actually have positive ROI .
I agree that the point of arrival of the pipelines would present a vulnerabily but look at the map , Jeddah is about 1000mi from Iran coast.
That buys you a lot of time and a lot of opportunities to intercept the drones
> > extended war of oil infrastructure destruction.
My point was that ingenuity could be used to avoid oil infrastructure destruction , which is not desirable anyways.
Your point is to get there via drone MAD. I don't think Saudi and Iran can be trusted with MAD
So, Trump claimed the closure and the attack "was a “foolish violation” of the ceasefire". However - that is not the case. The first and foremost item of the Iran-US MOU is the following:
1 — The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war are signing this MOU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.
But Israel has continued to attack intensively in Lebanon, killing dozens (if not over 100 since the MOU was signed, not sure), and continues to have a sizeable invasion force in Lebanese territory. Lebanon was explicitly and specifically mentioned to stress its significance - it is the country suffering the most right now, with hundreds of thousands of internally displaced due to threats from the Israeli forces against the civilian population of the south.
With that being the case since day 1, the MOU cannot be said to have even gone into effect. Certainly, the closure of the straights should be seen in this light, rather than a violation.
Iran never had the right to close the strait or attack neutral merchant ships exercising their right of innocent passage in the first place, regardless of anything that Israel or Lebanon does. The MOU doesn't change that.
It's not at all. Who is dictating who has what rights? Each side took action against the other's interests. Each claims the other is in the wrong.
Claiming that a country can't exercise military control over its territorial waters seems like a legal or political fiction to me. Granted they share part of the waterway with their neighbors but expecting a country at war to honor such things also seems like wild fantasy to me. They've been bombing those same neighbors.
You appear to be confused about maritime law. Iran hasn't ratified the UNCLOS or agreed to follow its terms so their territorial waters extend only 3 NM from their shores. Iran has been attacking neutral vessels well outside that limit.
Of course in the real world law takes a back seat to force.
Was the swipe suggesting that I'm confused (I'm not) really necessary?
> their territorial waters extend only 3 NM from their shores
Do you suppose their current government would agree with that statement? Personally I rather doubt they would.
But even if they did, as you say law often takes a back seat to force in these matters meaning that they could just as well say "yeah you're right but we're at war so get bent".
The terms of the recent US-Lebanon-Israel agreement guarantees a future civil war in Lebanon that will further destabilise it for the benefit of Israel. Apparently, Israel has to vacate the Lebanese territories it recently captured and occupies only when the Lebanese army manages to fully "disarm" and "demilitarise" Hezbollah (with some support from the Israel military).
As I understand it, this has nothing to do with Lebanon.
It has to do with ships moving through the Oman side of the strait. Iran is unhappy with that, because the want to control all the movement through it.
Nobody is talking about how big of a failure this has been on the part of the U.S. Navy. Controlling and securing shipping routes has been a fundamental function of a navy since Roman times. The U.S. Navy was unable to achieve that objective in this war. Ill-advised American wars often end up as losses because we fail to achieve our political objectives. But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to achieve a purely military objective.
This is fundamentally a failure of political leadership. You don't try to achieve a goal when you don't have the military means to achieve at a cost you are willing to bear.
There are endless numbers of military objectives that the US military that could have been sent on where they would have had no chance to succeed. That they generally weren't is a function other administrations, however bad, not being so embarrassingly incompetent as this.
You’re making an orthogonal point. His point was that regardless of political decision making, the US Navy has demonstrated an incapacity of controlling the Strait of Hormuz, which is bad
No, his point is that being unable to do that was (or at least should have been) a forgone conclusion. There are many things that we know the US (or UK or Chinese or etc) military can't do and that isn't a bad thing per se.
The US navy was unable to keep hormuz secure for civilian traffic but was able to blockade it themselves. I think that's exactly the outcome you'd expect in this scenario.
> No, his point is that being unable to do that was (or at least should have been) a forgone conclusion.
No, not at all. As I said, controlling straits and keeping them open for shipping is a fundamental function of a navy going back to Roman times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_navy (“By far, the navy's most vital task was to ensure Roman grain imports were shipped and delivered to the capital unimpeded across the Mediterranean.”).
The inability to keep the strait clear shouldn’t have been expected. It’s a purely military objective that’s squarely within what our ridiculously overspecced Navy should be able to do.
It is a fundamental function in the general sense, yes. But I don't think anyone was expecting that the US could do so in hormuz in this instance (at least without committing far more assets of a non-naval variety). I also think there are plenty of examples that take the form (strong navy, narrow body of water) where failure would be expected but that doesn't mean the navy in question isn't capable or that it fails to fulfill its role.
Similarly it is a fundamental function of the infantry to maintain ground control over a region but it is easy to come up with hypotheticals where any given power including the US would fail to do so.
> It’s a purely military objective that’s squarely within what our ridiculously overspecced Navy should be able to do.
I'm sure they could if cost was of no consequence but depending on the size of iran's drone stockpiles the interceptor costs might well bankrupt us. And even then they would only manage because (I assume) iran either can't or won't employ hypersonic missiles against tankers.
> But I don't think anyone was expecting that the US could do so in hormuz in this instance (at least without committing far more assets of a non-naval variety).
I think that’s exactly what they thought. I think this was supposed to be a quick and dirty campaign like Venezuela.
> I'm sure they could if cost was of no consequence but depending on the size of iran's drone stockpiles the interceptor costs might well bankrupt us. And even then they would only manage because (I assume) iran either can't or won't employ hypersonic missiles against tankers.
I think this is the part they overlooked. The military has been planning to attack Iran for 50 years. I can totally believe that they underestimated Iran’s drone capabilities and hypersonic missiles.
Either way, there’s a real military lesson here. Iran has enormous leverage over the world through its control of the strait of hormuz. Even the most powerful navy in the world can’t protect the world’s oil shipments without a land war against Iran (which I expect would be a trillion dollar effort). The Iranians are much more powerful than we thought.
> You don't try to achieve a goal when you don't have the military means to achieve at a cost you are willing to bear.
Did the military advise the administration it would take a lengthy ground war to control the strait? Or was it pitched as something the Navy could do without a ground occupation?
It wouldn’t matter if they had. He’s doesn’t listen to anything he doesn’t want to hear. At this point one can safely assume that he was told exactly how this strategic defeat would play out, and it went in one ear and out the other.
I don’t think we can assume that. Maybe Trump ignored warnings (though if that happened I would have expected it to be leaked). But there’s also a possibility the Navy fucked up. And that’s important to consider, because that’s something that needs to be fixed.
>at a cost you are willing to bear.
It's pure greed. The IRGC relies heavily on oil money for funding the massive militia (hundreds of thousands of Basij) that allows it to stay in power; if that income collapsed then it would eventually lose control. Trump however not only refused to bomb Iran's oil infrastructure but even stopped the IDF from doing so, just because he thinks he'll somehow be able to take that oil for himself and his cronies in future like he did in Venezuela.
I don't think that's true. The Khomeini clan do rely on IRGC to remain in power somewhat, but it also has strong influence towards the civilian government, and the OPA it ran on the Mullah at the start of the war, getting a non-mullah elected supreme leader at a very cheap price prove they rely on more than their central militia. A lot of the clans who supported the Shah during the original coup also seems to support the regime, which makes the north stable. The western part of the country, despite insurgents/independence groups, seems to have reported their hatred of S.Hussein towards the US (to be fair, the chemical weapons Hussein used to bomb their village were from the US), which means they might choose to fight the US rather than the regime.
Imho the regime was made stronger because of this war. It was really a bad moment to strike. Khomeini had a cancer, and waiting for his death and the succession crisis that would have ensued would have been a better choice. Now the regime is stronger than ever.
Although my real thoughts is that this strength the Khomeini project is temporary, in the sense that the only reason the regime lasted this long before was because the power was shared. If they keep pushing for more control, without sharing, they will end up loosing everything.
I don’t think that’s it. Iran has demonstrated an ability and willingness to strike the equivalent infra in the gulf states, including the very vulnerable gas liquefaction facilities in Qatar. If the US destroyed their oil infrastructure, all that infrastructure goes. Hormuz would be irrelevant, there’d be almost nothing to ship through it. Plus given the long term reductions in the gulf supply already from damage, the world now needs Iranian oil.
That’s why Trump has allowed Iranian oil already outside the gulf to be sold, was willing to drop oil sanctions on further Iranian shipments, and was so panicked when Israel hit an Iranian oil facility.
Bombing Iran's oil infrastructure would give Iran the casus belli to do a like for like strike on the GCC countries. Imagine strikes on Fujairah port, the Aramco, ADNOC and QatarEnergy refineries on the Gulf Coast, as well as the Yanbu and Habshan pipelines.
That means effectively taking out 25℅ of global oil supply -> oil at 150-200 a barrel -> Trump and the Republicans lose the midterms badly -> Trump gets impeached. I'm sure somebody explained it to him that this is exactly what would get happened, which is why he did not overextend or let Israel do so.
Because it's not true. CENTCOM can reopen the strait whenever they want, but doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it. It's still a strategic defeat, but for different reasons than what you are saying.
Recommend studying the public comments of General MacKenzie who was the previous CENTCOM commander, comments from Admiral Cooper before he was appointed to current CENTCOM commander, or previous Joint Chiefs of Staff.
They've all given public interviews about Hormuz during the current war or before it over the last decade saying the same thing about what's required and whether it can be done.
Well sure, but everything short of committing the whole country to total war will always come down to “we could do it, it’s just too politically expensive”. Even in authoritarian countries, there is a limit to what you can get away with.
That “we could do it, we just don’t want to” argument will face its acid test later in the year when the midterms are closer, but certainly if I were in charge of Iran I’d be feeling pretty good about the current situation.
Do you think the military gave a realistic assessment of what time and resources it would take to control the strait? Was this pitched as an operation that would take a huge political commitment of troops and drag on for years?
No idea. Do you think it was pitched like that before the conflict began?
I don’t know. My prior is that this admin was never willing to put boots on the ground. And for purely self-serving reasons, they wouldn’t have risked a scenario where Iran blocked oil traffic through the strait, causing gas prices to go up.
So, to me, the two possibilities are: the military told the administration it couldn’t control the strait without boots on the ground, and Trump disregarded that advice.
The other possibility is that the military was overconfident. We know it has been developing plans to attack Iran for decades. It’s possible the military thought it could control the strait based on obsolete plans that didn’t account for new developments like Iranian fast boats and drones.
> Was this pitched as an operation that would take a huge political commitment of troops and drag on for years?
That has been the military assessment in leaks, yes.
> doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it
So the US Navy is unable to achieve the objective in a reasonable timeframe and cost. That's the same as failure.
You can call it a failure, it's just not a military one.
Hell there's an argument to be made that the US should downsize its military because there's no universe in which exercising its full capability is not either the end of the world as we know it or absolute political suicide.
> You can call it a failure, it's just not a military one.
Would that work in corporate America? Try telling your boss, "I didn't actually fail because had you given me an unreasonable amount of time and resources I would have succeeded." Every project has an expectation of time and cost, and if you can't meet that expectation then you failed.
If your boss sets patently unreasonable expectations then that's arguably his failure as opposed to yours though obviously he will attempt to shift the blame to you.
First of all it's a failure since they attacked without considering they would be closing the strait, they just did not believe Iran would do that, hence not positioned themselves. https://archive.ph/XkXCf
Second, you are basing your assessment that they could open it whenever on some statements what the US could do - again not taking into consideration what Iran what respond with. It's like with all the other goals of this war, the US telling us what they could be doing (which boils down to "more bombing"). Admiral Cooper that brought us the famous 24h "Project Freedom"? Pardon our skepticism, some of their plans maybe sound nice to them, they just expect the other side to not react appropriately, that has been the biggest mistake with Iran.
> Admiral Cooper that brought us the famous 24h "Project Freedom"? Pardon our skepticism, some of their plans maybe sound nice to them
At least some form of it secretly continued until now.
I assume you're talking about "slow and expensive" like sending tens of thousand of troops to occupy at _least_ the ~entire shore around the narrow part of the Strait, indefinitely?
Yeah, shocking there's no political will for that.
That would not be sufficient because Iran can send drones from deeper within its territory.
There is no way to keep the straight open without cooperation from Iran, or a near destruction of all their military assets.
You assumed wrong. Maybe listen to the interviews before responding with aggressive sarcasm.
It was an honest question.
I would point you to Gen MacKenzie's interviews as the reference on that question, I would just be regurgitating his views.
He says that a sustained coastal invasion is not necessary. Raids would be necessary to destroy any buried weapons, but these troops wouldn't need to stay there.
Other than this you need more of what they were already doing, "shaping operations" as he calls it, which is ISR drones overhead and lots of bombing/strafing runs.
Eventually, because they don't have a remaining industrial base and cannot effectively replenish their stocks (excepting more simple one way attack drones), they will lack the ability to project enough power beyond their borders to keep the strait closed.
Operation Praying Mantis is a somewhat dated case study, but still required reading.
The reason it's so expensive should be more intuitively obvious - interceptors are expensive and are needed to pace China, and a few more months of closure is significant inflation before the midterms.
Thanks for the info, I'll track down that interview. That is an interesting strategy that I didn't consider.
> Raids would be necessary to destroy any buried weapons, but these troops wouldn't need to stay there.
Shaheds can be launched from trucks from inside densely populated cities. Good luck with those raids.
> Eventually, because they don't have an industrial base and cannot effectively replenish their stocks
Modern drones are cheap and easy to assemble, Iran's allies (Russia, China) can easily smuggle them inside country.
The win condition is not zero Shahed attacks, the win condition is to open the strait.
Its the same thing. Businesses won't move ships if there are shahed attacks.
And yet they are moving ships despite Shahed attacks that occurred yesterday, so by this empirical observation, you must conclude that you are operating under a flawed worldview.
yesterday's attack happened allegedly because Iran didn't allow specific ships to move. Those which are moving today likely received permission from Iran.
If the truth is that our extremely expensive military is relatively useless in this situation, do you really think he'd admit that?
Hundreds of thousands
> Because it's not true. CENTCOM can reopen the strait whenever they want
This is not true.
There is too much coastline to guard to protect from coastal drone launches.
There are too many cheap drones and not enough cheap drone counters.
There are still a LOT of working ballistic missile launchers.
There are still a lot of anti-air threats, including medium and short range anti air, and combination infared+electro-optical MANPADS capable of shooting down true 5th gen stealth fighters.
They don't need to hit 999 of their drone or missile launches, they need to hit 1 or 2 to make insurance companies unwilling to take the risk of allowing movement through the straight.
Not to mention the cost of this... military excursion has been extensive in both depletion of competent military officers, depletion of strategic use precision guided weapons, we have lost some very expensive and critical airframes, and politically and around the world, have shown to be somewhat of a very expensive paper tiger in modern large scale operations that is clearly not yet ready for the realities of a modern conflict that isn't being fought by a state in the middle of a civil war.
I could go on and on from both a tactical and strategic angle about why this was awful, but I don't think I'd sway the minds of anyone already set in their perspective.
> There are still a LOT of working ballistic missile launchers.
About half or so have been destroyed if one averages various estimates. The continuation of combat operations was the sensible option: not finishing off a wounded but aggressive animal is always a mistake. Iran will put whatever sanctions relief they get out of a "deal" towards rearming and rebuilding their nuclear facilities, and we will be back to square one in a decade or so, only against a more emboldened enemy.
> About half or so have been destroyed if one averages various estimates
This is a pretty bold claim. What's your source for this?
This sounds a lot like what some lazy people will say "I could be a doctor/astronaut/millionaire/movie star. I just don't want to"
The Vatican City could develop nuclear weapons whenever they want, but doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it.
Part of that traditional naval success has come from having presidents not stepping on their own dicks.
Specifically, not overestimating their own abilities and thus biting off more than they can chew. “Stepping on their own dicks” is a superset that includes all sorts of buffoonery like constantly making empty threats and backing off, but the basic assumption that the US Military is flawless and omnipotent and we can act accordingly seems to be our most fundamental error.
The US will never recover from the reputation damage they sustained by voting in a mindbogglingly stupid buffoon. Twice.
That's just not true. Most people forgot Bush by Obama's second year.
They might have forgotten Bush but they never forgot Iraq.
USA's reputation has taken a severe beating, because of Trump.
Bush was a paragon of informed, shrewd judgement compared to this clown show.
Memories are short. Neither Andrew Jackson nor Nixon improved the reputation of the US.
In fact, their positive legacies are improving with time
It's not only about reputation. Trump has been so obvious in his doing that the western world has started to define a new world order without the US in its center.
And should any "new world order" have the US in its center now?
We've paid for the entire world order outside the Soviet Union/Russia and China for decades. Time to present a bill, close the relationships (e.g., NATO, UN) and put our money and resources to better use for us in the USA.
Andrew Jackson was around 150+ years ago. Nixon was fairly competent diplomatically even if he was horrible domestically. Trump is a whole different breed that seems to switch his actions based on whim and who he spoke with last.
I remember having to listen to a lot of shit about Dubya and Co. during my backpacking trips overseas not too long ago.
The same Nixon whom JD Vance praised yesterday and called a victim of a deep state witch hunt?
This isn't a failure by the US Navy. It was a political decision to stop short.
The US could open the strait and eliminate all opponents but we don't have the political stomach for it. It would be a longer and more destructive process than people are prepared for right now. Nonetheless, what occurs next will enlighten us as to how to proceed.
Time will tell.
> This isn't a failure by the US Navy. It was a political decision to stop short. The US could open the strait and eliminate all opponents but we don't have the political stomach for it.
Stop short of what? A land invasion? I think it’s highly unlikely that was ever on the table. Much more likely, the plan was to attack key Iranian targets with air power while the Navy kept the strait of hormuz clear.
If the US wants to abdicate their position as a global hegemon of every waterway and trade route this seems like a good way to do it. The US is much less dependent on the Strait of Hormuz than its competitors.
Ten years down the line it may be the case that India will sail up and enforce toll-free waterways instead. That will never happen as long as the US puts up the resources for it. The American taxpayer will be better off if the burden of global free trade is borne more equitably.
It's not like the US did massive world wide power projection (capabilities) out of altruism. It's a necessity to project their political and economic demands.
If the US citizen think being a super power is to expensive, that's fine for the world. No empire lasts forever. The US can become an important regional power, having its destiny more influenced by the upcoming super powers that fill the vacuum.
> But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to achieve a purely military objective.
The U.S. has been secretly moving ships for months. And Iran no longer has any significant naval force, it's all been wiped out. What is difficult to completely stop, short of glassing the entire country, is harassment by drones or other forms of "asymmetric warfare."
> And Iran no longer has any significant naval force, it's all been wiped out.
A naval force isn't required to control the Strait. Artillery, drones and missiles fired from inland can do that quite easily.
They can, to some extent, but drone stockpiles and factories can be targeted and destroyed by conventional means. It is difficult to destroy them ALL, but it is certainly a problem that can be addressed to a degree without taking over the country.
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I'm pretty sure that the reputational harms of using nuclear weapons on a country of 70M is going to be pretty severe. Surely you understand how starting a war with a country without sufficient cause and then using nuclear weapons on them might result in significant and very long lasting consequences?
Yeah, why _is_ killing a ~hundred million people to satisfy the ego of a buffoon controversial?
HN sometimes poses really difficult questions.
> HN sometimes poses really difficult questions.
The person who posted that question is Israeli.
Yes, I am Israeli. I had over a dozen friends and coworkers killed by an Iranian proxy army, and several others abducted from their homes. Two women I know had their infants burned to death by that Iranian proxy army. My daughter's 16 year old friend was murdered in his home along with his brother and sister and both parents - none of the family survived. My two other children also lost people in their lives.
I'm the one calling for genocide? These people poured over the border with explicit instructions to kill Jews. That actually, truly, is the literal meaning of the term genocide.
I asked why Iran is being allowed to continue to harass shipping when a military option exists that would end their harassment. I argued that their own self-preservation instinct should be the driving force to prevent that option from actually being exercised. I didn't even realise that nuclear weapons were the context.
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If you will remember from a few months ago, many of our actions was apparrently to cause a revolution from within. That didn't happen.
We can't just change our strategy to "nvrmd: kill 'em all" and think we'll have any allies after this. Iran would once again not just attack us, but practically every country near it, causing even more causalities and infrastructure damage.
And this doesn't get into the problem that this would eventually require a land invasion, which would be impossible. We couldn't even get an actual war ship close to Iran.
There is a "Sunk Cost Fallacy" that someone in our Administration should listen to. Times up with this complete disaster.
> Then why is "glass the entire country" not an option?
It is an option, but civilians bear most of the cost of it. That being said, I do think more could have been done militarily. The U.S. should have continued combat operations for at least a few more weeks and taken what is left of ballistic missiles, drones and arms facilities, etc. Striking dual-use infrastructure such as bridges and railroads is also fair game.
The US kept hitting civilian targets and blasting about it, so they already did that.
When Arab hit civilian targets, it's terrorism, when the US does, it's freedom. I personally fail to understand the difference, but I'm an europoor
Attacking civilians has always been "controversial". As a civilian myself, I would be pretty worried if this changed.
It would triggering an apocalyptic conflagration deter a bunch of religious fanatics that are actively trying to bring about a prophesied apocalyptic conflagration?
I feel like they made a movie with Matthew Broderick explaining why this policy was bad...
It's attacking civilians that's controversial.
Donald, is that you?
Because all the american assets in countries around iran will be "glassed" too, like american bases are already. And then special forces deep in US will start "glassing" US infrastructure, power, water, logistics, etc. (It's not terrorism if you're in war, it's just special units behind enemy lines). Looking at eg. texas, it doesn't take a lot to bring the whole power grid down, especially if properly planned. If you bomb water supply facilities in eg. new york, how many people will you have to evacuate? How hard would it be for those special forces to start forest fires in california? Or poison food supply for the army? Or just bomb a random school in retaliation for the one you guys bombed in iran?
> Why is attacking one's enemies suddenly controversial?
Flying half the planet away to attack someone who in no way endangers you is controversial... it took a few years of vietnam war for americans to figure it out and a few decades to forget it all again and now you're repeating it against a stronger adversary. It's no wonder most of the world hates americans.
edit: looking at his comment history, commenter above me seems to be from israel, not US, but same applies to them too, with the exception of having to ask trump (and the brits and others) for help when iran fights back.
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> Controlling and securing shipping routes has been a fundamental function of a navy
this function is outdated since u-boat appearance, and now cruise missiles and drones. More important modern function of navy is projecting power.
Submarines can be hunted (and are) and drones and cruise missiles can be shot down. These things are what navies are supposed to do nowadays. US Navy in particular has not read the memo for about 20 years.
the question how efficiently they can be hunted, if ROI is that high.
my best guess is any information on the topic is... classified
The basic information about surface warship specifications isn't classified. We know how many interceptor missiles they can carry. Standard doctrine is to fire at least two interceptors at each incoming threat in order to increase the probability of a kill. And empirically these defensive systems work very well, but ships in action empty their magazines quickly and then are out of action until they can return to a friendly base to rearm. At some point there just aren't enough hulls and missiles to sustain the effort.
They've actually been pretty open about the expense and difficulty for a long time. At least since the Iraq war if not earlier.
Japan made public that one of the motivations for continuing rail gun research is defending naval vessels against saturation attacks.
Most powerful navy "failed its mission", as well as Russian navy received heavy casualties, so we have enough public information that modern drones and missiles are highly effective.
It's pretty much impossible for a navy to secure a narrow strait like this. You need to control the land as well.
Sorry, it's a video but it does a fabulous job explaining this: https://youtu.be/khtWPycU-PA
It was never gonna work, but not because of the navy being weak.
Controlling the straight was never one of their objectives. Decapitating the regime and degrading their military capabilities was the primary objective.
As others have said, the US can “reopen” the straight at any time they want. It’s not an issue of capabilities. But it’s very resource intensive and very expensive.
The logistics of escorting ships in and out of the straight isn’t trivial. I forget the name of the operation, but they did implement it for a few days before shutting it down. Politically, I imagine it’s pretty hard to justify the cost /benefit
On the Iranian side it takes a very small amount of resources and logistics. All they have to do is project power, whether they have it or not, and the shipping & insurance industries have to respect it.
Drones are really cheap, and that’s about all it takes for Iran to leverage their influence over the straight. Which is kind of crazy when you think about it. But it’s about the only bargaining chip they have left and they aren’t going let go of it easily.
>Decapitating the regime and degrading their military capabilities was the primary objective.
Those are tactical objectives, not strategic aims. The US is very good at winning tactically, but losing strategically. This is yet another example.
Yeah that’s a good point. I don’t disagree with that. I just think the US administration’s strategy is something totally different than anyone is talking about.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence US aggression towards Venezuela, Cuba & Iran are all happening at the same time. These things are all connected and nobody’s really talking about it.
I don’t think regime change was the strategy, I think they were happy with just a “reset” of the top leaders, same as in Venezuela.
If they did get full regime change it would have just been a side effect. They were hoping the Iranians would seize the opportunity and rise up, but that didn’t happen. And I don’t blame them, that’s a big ask when they are getting gunned down in the streets or executed for dissent on a daily basis.
They were probably also riding off the “high” of how shockingly easy Venezuela went. But Iran is much more complex obviously
The US navy escorted ships through the strait back in the Iran Iraq war, but the situation has changed. There are naval drones and aerial drones now, the Iranians have access to Russian satellite data, and the US doesn’t have the volume and mix of ship types it had back then. The US navy has been over optimised for deep water peer fleet conflict. Bear in mind, the Red Sea has been functionally closed by the Houthis for years now.
Yeah exactly. Drones have changed everything. What might have used to be routine is now no longer the case. Iran just has to project power in the media, and shoot some drones out at some boats every now and then and they effectively “control“ the straight. The shipping insurance markets skyrocketed as a result, so ships literally couldn’t afford to take the risk and stayed put.
> unable to achieve
How much of it would you attribute to bad planning? (The full plan of which the Navy will be part.)
Ehhhhh, not quite.
No matter how much military we put into the strait, Iran was just going to blow up UAE and Qatari refineries.
And despite all the madman theory of our current President, there's just too many bribes in those countries who have the attention of the President. So Total War is unacceptable to USA leaders.
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That being said: I'm still amused that the ship we needed in this fight was the long cancelled Littoral Combat Ship
Cancelling the LCS construction program was the right move. There are still a number of hulls in commission and they have some utility as minesweepers, but can really only operate when the air threat has been neutralized. They have only limited defenses against drones and cruise missiles, and none at all against ballistic missiles. They're simply no longer survivable.
I don't think Iran has homing ballistic missiles. Only maybe China has those. As such, the best defense vs ballistic threats is simply moving around, if they can't home then who cares?
I mean, buildings and hardened targets do care. But ships can just move and the missile will miss.
But yes, defenses vs Drones and Cruise missiles is more than sufficient vs Iran. And navigating narrow waters with higher degrees of mobility is better than our other ships.
Wrong on all points. Iran has already used anti-ship ballistic missiles. They might not be as advanced as China's but they appear to work, and in confined areas the targeting can be done using mobile shore-based radars.
https://warontherocks.com/irans-anti-access-and-area-denial-...
Even setting the ballistic missile threat aside, LCS can't defend itself against regular drones and cruise missiles. It's severely limited in terms of sensors, fire control, and magazine depth. In order to operate in that area with reasonable survivability it would have to be escorted by a more capable surface warship with area air defense.
> But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to achieve a purely military objective.
It has long been clear for any analyst that securing the straight without boots on the ground would be materially impossible. Air power isn't enough to stop the very modest force of the Houthis from closing the Bab-el-mandeb straight, it was clear from the beginning that it wouldn't work better against a much more capable Iran.
Trump launched a war without any plan, and absolutely no willingness to launch an full-scale invasion of Iran (rightly so, because it would have been unlikely to work well with regards to the polical goals), so it's not exactly surprising that it didn't work.
Starting a war is always a bad idea, even when you have bipartisan support for it at home, but starting a war you don't want to fight is absolutely dumb.
If the goal was to extract more tax dollars and drop them into the laps of rich socialites and their bourgeoise friends, then it succeeded.
> But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to achieve a purely military objective.
The military objective can be achieved, it would just require the 'No New Wars' party to implode from having 272 seats to having ~150 seats after the midterms.
It's ironic that Vance and Co were bragging about "no more stupid rules of engagement" but then they effectively do the very same thing by not allowing boots on the ground for political reason.
Since you're kvetching about stupid political reasons I'm assuming you're volunteering to go first as drone cannon fodder?
That 'political reason' is that US is war-weary, and the electorate will flip their shit when their kids get sent into the meatgrinder of a pointless war that none of them wanted, ran by TV stars, where the stated objective changes every 30 minutes.
Drone warfare is new.
Now you can use a drone that costs a few thousand dollars to take out a hundred million dollar ship.
It's a pricing issue. Whereas before, you had to use expensive guided missiles or your own naval or air force assets, now you can send a bunch of cheap drones.
Everything we know about war is going to change.
Not new. These drones were in production in Iran since 2016 after the capture of the downed Reaper Drone in 2011.
What is new is Irans willingness to use them. Which skyrocketed after a few missiles assassinated their supreme leader.
The part where you are wrong is not that reaper or other highly sophisticated drones were available in 2011.
In 2026 we have swarms of cheap drones that are fire and forget and they are cheap for mass production.
That’s totally different game.
So you are saying the US just showed to the world that it is not prepared for modern warfare?
Huh me?
Nope I think that's nothing new and that was already in the news like months ago when countries started asking Ukraine to buy drone warfare know-how.
Really not sure how to interpret this thread. I could buy a drone for 100 bucks 10 years ago.
Using cheap drones for asymmetric warfare can't be new or surprising for a country with a supposed vast intelligence network. Or for a country that's supposed to have a modern military which means having effective answers to what an enemy throws at you in battle.
My favorite example is how NATO recognized cyberspace as operational domain in 2016 — like no one there watched or heard about a movie from 1983 called „War Games”.
I think you vastly overestimate speed with which people acknowledge new facts.
Second best is only Catholic Church fully acknowledging heliocentric theories in 1992.
> can't be new or surprising
Indeed it isn't. The military has been doing cheap drone swarm research since well before ukraine. But I think that for everyone - including the military - whether or not the people in charge update their worldviews is an entirely separate matter.
Drone warfare may be new, but small-boat operations; Surface-to-Sea missiles; aquatic mines; and long-distance cannons - those are not new. And those are probably enough to effectively close down the straights. To do so, Iran does not need to defeat and sink the US Navy force; it needs to occasionally hit some ships running the blockade. We saw this with the Bab Al-Mandab blockade, beginning in 2024; Yemen's military is not nearly as powerful as Iran's, and still, ships started avoiding the Bab Al-Mandab, because a, what, 20%? chance of being hit and taken over or sunk, with some of the crew possibly taken prisoner, is not something one does if one can avoid it, for the price of a longer journey.
> Everything we know about war ~~is going to~~ has changed.
FTFY
US leadership wasn't willing to pay the cost of opening the strait. I dont blame the navy.
I expect this will be a far more consequential loss than Vietnam for the US in the long run. This has been a spectacular defeat and likely means the US will be forced to exit from the region because everybody can see now that American bases cannot be defended and they put countries hosting them at risk. This is a major geopolitical upheaval.
Interesting https://hormuzstraitmonitor.com/ says we're at 8% of normal traffic. Curious as to the discrepancy.
Probably because they turn off transponders while crossing that area.
"Traffic is generally picking up in the strait, with several laden tankers seen exiting into the Gulf of Oman over the weekend, though some of them turned off their transponders. The latest was a Greek-flagged tanker carrying Iraqi crude to Singapore."
https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/iranian-crude-oil...
"Maintained by an individual developer." They state,
Maritime Intelligence — AI-powered analysis of current strait conditions, insurance markets, and diplomatic developments using real-time web data.
Energy Market Feeds — Live Brent crude oil pricing from financial data providers.
AIS Vessel Tracking — Automatic Identification System data for real-time vessel positions.
TradingView — Interactive historical oil price charts with full technical analysis capabilities.
News Aggregation — Curated news from major international outlets covering the Hormuz crisis.
though they do not say what the actual data sources are.
Try this WTO site instead. It breaks out oil, natural gas, fertilizer, and agricultural products with 7-day average and prior-year 7-day average.
https://datalab.wto.org/Strait-of-Hormuz-Trade-Tracker
Not sure I would put much faith in the stats of this clearly vibecoded slopsite
I think this is really because ship crews are abused and have no choice. The companies don’t have executives on ships. It’s some maritime crew, often from India, that’s told to just take the risk with their own lives. And if they want to keep their jobs they have to comply.
> And if they want to keep their jobs they have to comply.
Worse still, many mariners are effectively prisoners and can become trapped if corporate decides to cut them loose without also providing passage off the vessel
Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56842506
Stuck at sea for years, a sailor’s plight highlights a surge in shipowner abandonment https://apnews.com/article/abandoned-seafarers-labor-unpaid-...
What would have happened, in that first story, if he had left the ship and swam to a passing boat? Or swam to shore? He was apparently able to leave as later in his imprisonment, the boat drift closer to shore and he swam from there. Why not just leave?
Abandoned crew members often remain on the ship in the hope of eventually getting paid their overdue wages after the legal issues are sorted out. If they leave the vessel then that weakens their negotiating position.
I would think that the shipping executives are less willing to take the risk to run the strait than the crews are. Being stuck for months with very little freedom, uncertain future, uncertain supplies, missiles and drones flying overhead, it sounds like hell.
Not to say you're wrong, but I got a different impression from this report:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/podcasts/the-daily/iran-s...
From this report, I'm getting the feeling that they're running out of time to just float around and it's now or never.
But who insures the ship and its cargo? And what's the premium? No one cared about sailors before either. But if the ship sinks then you cash out from Lloyds. But if the risk premium increases by a lot, then that adds to the cost of the cargo.
And eventually it's just not worth transiting the strait no matter how "open" it's claimed to be, if there are still unacceptable risks.
All of the major maritime insurers will issue war risk policies at a small premium over the usual rates. This isn't anything new. Back during the Iran-Iraq war both sides were hitting tankers occasionally but insurers wrote policies and the oil continued to flow.
This big question now is how many of them will travel back in there and potentially being stuck for months, or just swap ship if their current ship is headed there.
It kinda makes sense, given the sheer magnitude of money on the line.
Captain Blood surely couldn't imagine that corsairs of the future will use rocket-propelled, remotely controlled cannonballs that can fly from a location beyond the horizon.
It's about time to have a serious talk with the Saudis and redirect all that money that is being stupidly spent on all those vanity projects such as NEOM and The Line towards pipelines running through the Desert , end point the port of Yunbu & Jeddah and make the Strait of Hormuz irrelevant .
This is the quintessential American project, the U.S. has invented and developed the oil industry in Saudi. Saudi Aramco was originally the "California-Arabian Standard Oil Company".
I don't know why this hasn't happened during the last 40 years where Iran has always been an enemy, Saudi Arabia has always been an ally and the U.S. has always had enormous amount of access to the Kingdom for the purpose of building oil infrastructure.
Doesn't matter how many pipelines Saudi has when Iran could just bomb them and the refineries again. The best strategy would be for Saudi and the UAE to invest in mass drone production; drones are becoming like WMDs, and MAD will similarly apply. The IRGC is more dependent on oil revenue than Saudi and UAE, and relies on that money for funding the massive militia that allows them to stay in power, so they've got more to lose in an extended war of oil infrastructure destruction.
Ok let's say buried pipelines under the sand , it's the ideal insulant against the relatively low power of suicide drones.
Haven't you seen the amount of sand they displaced for the foundations of "the Line" project?
Let's say dig a hole in the desert build the pipeline and then cover it with 15ft of sand that you previously excavated , can't be that hard for a country that is boasting about building a 1mi tall skyscraper and a 100mi long 1000ft tall Line , or a floating NEOM city
The exception is that this project would actually have positive ROI .
I agree that the point of arrival of the pipelines would present a vulnerabily but look at the map , Jeddah is about 1000mi from Iran coast.
That buys you a lot of time and a lot of opportunities to intercept the drones
> > extended war of oil infrastructure destruction.
My point was that ingenuity could be used to avoid oil infrastructure destruction , which is not desirable anyways.
Your point is to get there via drone MAD. I don't think Saudi and Iran can be trusted with MAD
So, Trump claimed the closure and the attack "was a “foolish violation” of the ceasefire". However - that is not the case. The first and foremost item of the Iran-US MOU is the following:
1 — The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war are signing this MOU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.
But Israel has continued to attack intensively in Lebanon, killing dozens (if not over 100 since the MOU was signed, not sure), and continues to have a sizeable invasion force in Lebanese territory. Lebanon was explicitly and specifically mentioned to stress its significance - it is the country suffering the most right now, with hundreds of thousands of internally displaced due to threats from the Israeli forces against the civilian population of the south.
With that being the case since day 1, the MOU cannot be said to have even gone into effect. Certainly, the closure of the straights should be seen in this light, rather than a violation.
Iran never had the right to close the strait or attack neutral merchant ships exercising their right of innocent passage in the first place, regardless of anything that Israel or Lebanon does. The MOU doesn't change that.
The US and Israel never had the right to attack Iran in the first place
That's a non sequitur. What's your point?
It's not at all. Who is dictating who has what rights? Each side took action against the other's interests. Each claims the other is in the wrong.
Claiming that a country can't exercise military control over its territorial waters seems like a legal or political fiction to me. Granted they share part of the waterway with their neighbors but expecting a country at war to honor such things also seems like wild fantasy to me. They've been bombing those same neighbors.
You appear to be confused about maritime law. Iran hasn't ratified the UNCLOS or agreed to follow its terms so their territorial waters extend only 3 NM from their shores. Iran has been attacking neutral vessels well outside that limit.
Of course in the real world law takes a back seat to force.
Was the swipe suggesting that I'm confused (I'm not) really necessary?
> their territorial waters extend only 3 NM from their shores
Do you suppose their current government would agree with that statement? Personally I rather doubt they would.
But even if they did, as you say law often takes a back seat to force in these matters meaning that they could just as well say "yeah you're right but we're at war so get bent".
> But Israel has continued to attack intensively in Lebanon
Israel is not part of the deal, wasn't directly involved in discussions, and did not sign anything.
The terms of the recent US-Lebanon-Israel agreement guarantees a future civil war in Lebanon that will further destabilise it for the benefit of Israel. Apparently, Israel has to vacate the Lebanese territories it recently captured and occupies only when the Lebanese army manages to fully "disarm" and "demilitarise" Hezbollah (with some support from the Israel military).
As I understand it, this has nothing to do with Lebanon.
It has to do with ships moving through the Oman side of the strait. Iran is unhappy with that, because the want to control all the movement through it.
At this point you can take any Trump claim as a lie until proven otherwise, it’s by far the best heuristic