Comment by virtualritz
14 hours ago
The US blockade of the strait does not affect Iran's ability to blockade the strait.
And the latter hurts the US (and the rest of the world) way more that the blockade by the US hurts Iran.
No amount of F35s will change that. Iran has no reason to try to attack US military vessels or aircraft.
Surprisingly (actually unsurprisingly) relevant: https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran/
Especially the part about who blinks first ...
You are missing the point above - the F35 has enabled complete air dominance over Iran, and ability to perform any operation with impunity over Iran's land.
Iran is leveraging its geography and asymmetrical warfare against civilian ship (as done by its proxies), but if the US has build tons of cheap attack drones, that wouldn't have changed anything about this equation. The US already has the ability to strike anywhere in Iran.
Eventually, defense capabilities against drones may catch up and change the equation, but this is all research at this point.
Your definition of "complete dominance" is different from most people's.
If you completely dominate your enemy, you prevent them from being able to affect the situation. Iran is maintaining a blockade over a major shipping lane that the USA does not want them to. The USA's inability to prevent this shows that they are not "completely dominating" Iran.
No, "air dominance" is a well recognized term, it means you can fly your planes basically anywhere you want, to take out whatever target you want, without risk from AA. They are using it exactly how anyone familiar with warfare terminology would understand it.
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Maybe re-read the last sentence of parent which my reply was to?
Your presumably Ai-generated reply missed that, unsurprisingly, because you probably just copypasta'd parent and my reply in there?
P.S. air dominance in Iran is meaningless in this conflict. Read e.g. the blog post I linked to for context.
> P.S. air dominance in Iran is meaningless in this conflict. Read e.g. the blog post I linked to for context.
It's meaningless now.
If the US, for some reason, decided to say, "For each drone or missile that you fire at one of your Arab neighbors or Israel, we launch an old-fashioned B52 raid on your industry or infrastructure. Come to the negotiating table." and actually carried out that threat, well, there would be nothing the Iranians would be able to do about it.
That's not the case because of the currently scattered nature of US leadership, but it is a possible contingency that the Iranian government has to take into account. There's a reason they're not actively targeting US warships in the region.
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If US destroys Iran it will be the dominate energy supplier for the next 100 years. Iran will be in shambles for 50 years.
If Iran surrenders US will be the dominate energy supplier for the next 30 years. Iran will be in shambles for 10 years.
The former would cause a worldwide depression but the clear winner of that is the US by a very large margin. If Iran wants to destroy itself and its neighbors US would be happy with the untold billions that would flow into the country and its energy infra investments in venezuela. All the wealth of middle east would leave and not be reinvested as now it's risky to invest in the ME.
Iran has the choice of a deal US likes or to make the middle east a wasteland for Israel to dominate for generations while US grows to a power that is hard to comprehend.
The only thing that has to happen for US to win is not surrender to a country with no military whose only threat they can make is to harm everyone else in the world but the US.
It is almost like you think it is 1965.
Orange man seems to think so.