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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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'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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Then why is "glass the entire country" not an option? If the Iranians understand that continued attacks will result in a glassed Iran, would that not convince them to stop?
Why is attacking one's enemies suddenly controversial?
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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?
[delayed]
> 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.
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.
[delayed]
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.
[delayed]
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.
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"
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
> 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?
>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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
The same Nixon whom JD Vance praised yesterday and called a victim of a deep state witch hunt?
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.
Then why is "glass the entire country" not an option? If the Iranians understand that continued attacks will result in a glassed Iran, would that not convince them to stop?
Why is attacking one's enemies suddenly controversial?
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.
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> 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
>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.
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.
> unable to achieve
How much of it would you attribute to bad planning? (The full plan of which the Navy will be part.)
US leadership wasn't willing to pay the cost of opening the strait. I dont blame the navy.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
> 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.
At this point you can take any Trump claim as a lie until proven otherwise, it’s by far the best heuristic