Comment by everdrive
5 hours ago
Much of the post-WW2 American-led world order was founded partially on the United States using its military to keep international waters open. It would be quite stunning Iran defeated the united states in this sense. The military might is there, but this administration clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into and did not plan accordingly. (and does not have the will or public support to do so)
The baffling part of this is that nearly everyone was aware that Iran could close the straight if pressed hard enough. The fact that this outcome is surprising represents a very loud and public failure on the administration's part.
I don't know enough about the current state of naval warfare but I've assumed this is related to the asymmetry that's emerged around protecting capital warships, especially in the scenario of a very narrow strait and a long enemy-controlled coastline. They can shoot relatively low-cost, short-range guided missiles from anywhere along the coast. Even if a warship stops the vast majority of them, only one has to get through to sink a multi-billion dollar ship that takes a decade to replace.
There are now similar asymmetries emerging across war-fighting and even though warships can still be effective (and less vulnerable) in other scenarios, this specific one seems especially bad. The other factor is that most of what ships carry through the straight isn't going directly to the U.S. so the impact on the U.S. is mostly secondary, reducing the risk the U.S. is willing to take. Of course, all this was known beforehand by military strategists which makes this all look even worse for the U.S. administration.
The bigger issue is the tankers. The US Navy isn't going to be happy patrolling the strait sure, but even if they did they wouldn't be able to protect the tankers enough for it to make sense for tankers to take the risk.
The last time this happened the US opened the strait by accidentally shooting down an Iranian passenger plane after sinking a large chunk of Iranian navy. The Iranians assumed the US shoot the passenger plane down on intentionally as a war crime and assumed the US would was planning to escalate the conflict. This fear deterred further Iranian attacks on tankers.
This isn't going to work this time because the US started the war by performing of the most serious escalations possible, a decapitation strike against top Iranian leadership in a surprise attack using a diplomatic negotiation as cover. The US did this while the strait was open and Iran was considering a peace deal.
Threats of escalation are no longer effective at deterring Iran because Iran now believes the US will take such actions regardless of what Iran does. What does Iranian leadership have to lose by staying the course? Very little. On the other hand if Iranian leadership back down, they loose all their leverage, they look weak internally, they look weak externally and the US might decide to attack them out of the blue again.
This is why decapitation strikes are generally not done. They remove options and they undermine deterrence and paint belligerents into a corner.
On a much smaller scale, this is advice I give to just about everyone: If your decisions won't affect how they treat you, then just do what you want. The fact that they won't like it doesn't matter, they didn't like you before.
Modern US surface warships such as the DDG-52 Arleigh Burke class are pretty survivable. The Iranians (and their Houthi proxies) have made sustained attacks on them and don't seem to have hit anything. And a single hit would be highly unlikely to sink such as vessel: we're not talking about something like the Russian Moskva cruiser that was crewed by drunks and had inoperative defensive systems.
The real problem is that there are too few such vessels to sustain convoy escort operations. Each destroyer can only provide area air defense for a handful of merchant vessels, and they can only stay on station for a few days at a time before they have to cycle out to refuel, rearm, and conduct critical maintenance. Some of the key munitions also appear to running low. And it appears that the other Gulf states are refusing to allow use of their facilities over fears of Iranian retaliation.
Other countries generally aren't really in a position to assist as part of a coalition either. They either don't have sufficiently capable warships at all, or lack the logistics train to sustain them in the Persian Gulf / Gulf of Oman region. After the Cold War a lot of countries like the UK and Germany essentially dismantled their navies so that they now exist only as government jobs programs.
Assisting the US with regard to Iran is phenomenally unpopular. The increase in energy prices isn't outweighing people's desire not to have their country assist.
5 replies →
Is it even worth to escort tankers? The money you spend on countering cheap drones would be massive, and this administration would likely ask the escorted ships to pay for protection. At that point, they might as well just pay Iran.
2 replies →
I don't know anything about this but I am a software engineer.
Stop laughing for a minute because I do have a point.
As a software engineer, I typically build something and engineer it so I can iterate quickly and improve it. I know that the first version won't work.
Isn't this a perfect opportunity for Iran to iterate on sinking cargo ships? I'm struggling to believe that a regime that is (allegedly) weeks away from a nuclear bomb wouldn't be able to keep launching missiles at ships until they notice the right type of hole.
And, think of the apprenticeship opportunities.
6 replies →
The Iranians (and their Houthi proxies) have made sustained attacks on them and don't seem to have hit anything.
That's because the US has kept the surface combatants far back from the Persian Gulf for the duration of the war.
As far as we know, they have attempted to run the strait twice and had to turn back because they were under sustained attack.
I assume these ships can defend themselves for some period of time, but eventually the munitions run out, and they become sitting ducks. There is a reason the US Navy fled the Persian Gulf on Feb 26 and has not returned since.
4 replies →
> I don't know enough about the current state of naval warfare but I've assumed this is related to the asymmetry that's emerged around protecting capital warships, especially in the scenario of a very narrow strait and a long enemy-controlled coastline.
It's not the billion-dollar warships that transport oil, it's the much more fragile and unarmed tankers.
Even if the US Navy begins full escort duty, it can't remain on-station forever. What are shippers to do afterwards? One drone strike might cause a tanker to have a very bad day, yet it's extremely difficult to so permanently degrade an entire country that they become incapable of launching sporadic attacks.
Ultimately, the status of the Strait must be settled diplomatically, and the US and Iran are each betting that the other side will blink first.
It's not even the strait that's the important geopolitical entity here. It's all the oil pumps and refineries in Saudi Arabia, Qatar or UAE.
The US began to patrol the strait with Destroyers and immediately stopped when the scared Saudis immediately realized that Iran was about to attack Saudi oil rigs.
--------
Iran has too many targets and the only thing that can stop them is the equivalent to an Israeli Iron Dome across the entirety of the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE, maybe more.
2 replies →
All of this was well known before the war though. The idea that navy is incredibly vulnerable modern anti-ship defenses has been a major consideration in the Taiwan situation for at least a decade (mostly in relation to the ability of the US navy to even operate in the area in a war). More recently, Ukraine has made a great show of sinking navy ships with cheap unmanned surface vehicles
Back in WWII you could sail your navy up a river and expect positive results. In the 21st century, the idea of attacking an enemy-held strait with navy doesn't work
Cheap drones taking out an AWACS is a great example of this. The US has only 16 of these and it will cost $700 million to replace, and was taken out by a drone that probably cost less than your car.
The very definition of asymmetric.
The US military is also just less powerful than it was at its peak at the end of the Cold War as well.
Still the most powerful navy in the world, but spread increasingly thin (turns out "the whole world" is quite a big place).
This is no longer Reagan's (almost) 600 ship navy, and projecting power halfway round the world is no mean feat when your opponent can lob missiles and drones at you from their back garden
suppose one has N independently developed interception systems (from detection till physical interception attempt), each with an intercept success rate of 90%.
a rudimentary calculation then gives the probability of hitting (not sinking) the ship as 0.1^N per launched missile; so it seems that given enough budget to spend on independently developed missile interception systems allows to drive down the penetration success rate arbitrarily.
Multi-billion sounds like $ 10^10; so assuming an attacker can launch say a million missile attempts then the statistical loss would be 0.1^N * 10^10 * 10^6; so the statistical loss can be driven down arbitrarily say to $ 1 by developing ~ 16 independent interception systems.
16 independently developed intercept systems doesn't sound like unobtainium for a vested nuclear power.
furthermore, the development cost of 16 independent intercept systems can be amortized over many more installations than a single ship, it can be amortized over multiple ships, multiple bases, multiple strategic assets across the globe.
You have abstracted things a bit too far.
Unless your interceptor system is unobtainium laser system with unobtainium cooling system, backed-up by unobtainium power source, you are going to run out of interceptor missiles (or even Phalanx bullets) way sooner than 'million missile attempts'.
Quite possibly 100-200 Shaheds + half a dozen proper anti-ship missiles will cause you to turn tail.
> Even if a warship stops the vast majority of them, only one has to get through to sink a multi-billion dollar ship that takes a decade to replace.
Even worse. They don't need to attack _warships_. They can just attack civilian vessels, especially tanker ships, that don't have any defenses.
A hit on a tanker and the subsequent oil spill would be catastrophic.
American navy has blockaded countries all over the world, so it's more true that they closed international waters. Waters were open before America existed. If Americans would actually learn their history they would see that the USA blockade was the reason Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, as the Japanese needed the water to open and thought taking out Pearl Harbour would prevent the US Navy controlling the Pacific. Japan attacked the American base, USA attacked Japanese civilians with nukes.
> Waters were open before America existed.
A huge part of the reason sovereign nations built navies was to fight piracy. It’s not really true that waters were open historically.
Are you saying there are no pirates now? US navy has solved all the world's problems? The blockades have killed millions of people, even in the last 30 years. When US sanctioned Iraq after the first war, they killed 500k people every year, and then US invaded Iraq on lies. The world would be safer without the US Navy.
1 reply →
Nukes were not a response to Pearl Harbor.
The framing in general of “Japan only took military action and the US sank to attacking civilians” is wrong too. Take a look at what Japan did to the Chinese during that time period if you think they were only attacking military targets.
Japan also invaded an Alaskan island. https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/06/07/the-japanese-...
Are you saying USA cared about the Chinese? Japan had already surrendered before US nuked them
Why would you post such nonsense given how easy it is these days to determine bullshit? By the time of Pearl Harbor, Japan was formally aligned with Nazi Germany. Japan, Germany, and Italy signed the Tripartite Pact in Sept 1940 creating the Axis alliance. Pearl Harbor happened in Dec 1941, so Japan had been formally tied to Germany for more than a year.
“The American navy closed international waters.” Not in the Pearl Harbor context. Before Pearl Harbor the U.S. was not conducting a naval blockade of Japan that closed international waters. The U.S. cut off Japan from US oil in July 1941. That is not the same thing as the U.S. Navy closing the Pacific.
“The USA blockade was the reason Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.” False. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because it wanted to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Fleet while Japan seized the "Southern Resource Area”, especially oil-rich East Indies, Malaya and other regions in the pacific. The U.S. oil embargo might have played a small factor, but that wasn't a US-only thing; various countries were increasingly unwilling to sell oil and other resources to Nazi-aligned Japan while they were attempting to conquer China and most of the Southeast Pacific.
Japan didn't have any problems with USA because USA was not part of allied forces. In fact USA sold weapons to both UK and Germans. USA only joined after Pearl Harbour. Japan attacked because US Navy prevented oil being shipped to Japan, Japan had no other source.
> United States using its military to keep international waters open
Being a little pedantic, as per my knowledge, the Strait of Hormuz is not “international waters”. It’s territorial waters belonging to Iran and Oman. AFAIK, Iran hasn’t ratified UNCLOS either, and claims it is not subject to it.
> It’s territorial waters belonging to Iran and Oman.
The trick is that it's still an 'international strait', or a segment of water that forms the only connection between two areas of high seas -- in this case the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The principle of freedom of navigation establishes that innocent traffic (civilian traffic, and even warships in peacetime) have a right to use the strait to go from one body of international water to the other.
Iran may claim that it doesn't have to abide by that right, but international law is never self-executing. One question to be resolved by this war is whether Iran will ultimately recognize the right to navigation in any settlement (and then choose to abide by said settlement).
As the nation that was attacked first, They have an unimpeachable argument for wanting to defend the rest of their territorial waters. The ludicrously escalatory rhetoric from the US President has turned this into an existential conflict. I can't take finger-wagging against Iran seriously to be honest, the idea that western powers would scrupulously adhere to international mores if subjected to a full-on kinetic attack by another nation state is absurd on its face.
> The principle of freedom of navigation establishes that innocent traffic
"freedom of navigation" seems to be from UNCLUS no? So why should a country (Iran) that didn't ratify UNCLUS care about the terms it binds it's signatories to?
International Law now has no value when the America-Israel alliance has been skirting said laws to commit mass atrocities in recent history.
International law isn’t worth the time someone spent to write the words. It means approximately nothing. OPEC is a cartel, for example.
If Iran doesn't want to observe the terms of the UNCLOS (regardless of whether they have ratified it or not) then their territorial waters claims revert to the older 3NM limit. They can't have it both ways. Of course, in practice those legalisms don't matter without a means of enforcement.
> Iran hasn’t ratified UNCLOS either, and claims it is not subject to it.
Which isn't unique. Bunch of countries haven't ratified it and aren't legally bound by it but do follow it in spirit. US, Turkey, UAE, Israel etc.
Do you really think the US wouldn't abandon it in a heartbeat if it became a matter of strategic necessity?
1 reply →
It's prohibited under international law to attack a sovereign nation, like the US has done to Iran, so the point of Iran closing the Strait in response to this is very much moot.
All straits other than the Bosporus (which has some additional rights to Turkey given the proximity to a major city) are international waters for the purposes of free transit, under the Montreux Convention.
The Montreux Convention only covers the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. Not all straits in the world.
Why is US blocking hormuz straits then?
1 reply →
No, the Strait is international waters and always have been.
Wikipedia says it's been Iranian/Omani territorial waters for quite a while:
> In 1959, Iran altered the legal status of the strait by expanding its territorial sea to 12 nmi (22 km) and declaring it would recognize only transit by innocent passage through the newly expanded area. In 1972, Oman also expanded its territorial sea to 12 nmi (22 km) by decree. Thus, by 1972, the Strait of Hormuz was completely "closed" by the combined territorial waters of Iran and Oman.
The Strait may well have some, but the traffic separation scheme for shipping is absolutely in Omani territorial waters, and another part of traversing the Strait includes passing through Iranian territorial waters.
1 reply →
You're not wrong, except that USA is/was not always literally "keeping waters open" for everyone. The Cuba blockade, which is another form of war and has dire consequences for the population, has been going on for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_...
This is factually incorrect. Blockade is not a synonym of embargo. Blockade is generally an act of war, and embargo is not. Dealing with Cuba is certainly a huge PITA for the majority of trading actors because of potential blacklisting in the US, but waters around Cuba are as open as they can be, and you can check marine traffic to make sure that ships arrive to Cuban ports. Even from the US itself (cause there are there exceptions from embargo such as food, and medicines).
The power wasn't there in the first place if the administration couldn't defend Hormuz. It's all the same capital and resources that prior administrations had. The actual blunder was exposing that weakness to the world. We could have done nothing and reputation would've carried the idea that we could.
> The actual blunder was exposing that weakness to the world.
The world already knew.
The real strength of the prior admins was in simply not needing the military force. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal is a relevant example here. It didn't cost the US anything.
It did, however, allow the Khomeini regime to murder its own citizens with impunity. So someone paid.
Not necessarily. It's a matter of risk. How many resources do we want to commit? Are we comfortable putting a large number of troops in Iran? Are we comfortable with major losses as we try to enforce against drones and mines?
It's not that I think any of these things are wise, but this is part of the risk calculus you make when you decide to wage war. It's more like a debate: if you don't have a plan for uncomfortable questions you're a poor debater. The US has the physical means to prevent the closure, but I think it's quite clear that this administration ignored known risks and acted recklessly. And more importantly, apparently had very little contingency planning if things didn't go their way.
> It's all the same capital and resources that prior administrations had.
Is it? Depending on how far back into "prior administrations" you go, the modern US Navy is a shadow of itself.
This leads to an interesting thought experiment.
Using conventional weapons only, what prior year's US Navy could beat the 2026 US Navy in combat?
5 replies →
The power is there, they just don't want to pay the cost in terms of money, lives, and polling popularity. This was done on the whim of a man-child throwing a tantrum, backed by his deeply racist hatred towards Obama. There was no plan other than his usual bullying tactics. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we are not investing insane amounts of money and large lives into this, but we absolutely could win this if we wanted to pay the cost.
> It would be quite stunning Iran defeated the united states in this sense.
> The fact that this outcome is surprising represents a very loud and public failure on the administration's part.
You can't teach stupid!! The coward, sleepy, dementia ridden, pretentious commander-in-chief declared victory over Iran the next day after starting the war.
I would amend that to be that everyone thought Iran could close the straight, but now they _know_ they can close the straight.
It would not be that stunning, given that a much poorer Iranic country decisively defeated the U.S. in a ~20 year war ending only a few years ago.
Seems like piracy is more about the land than the sea. I can't think of any major american military action against piracy aside from actions against somali terrorists. Seems piracy as it was known historically died out as the old historic pirate havens of say Tortuga or Outer Banks went from places of anarchy to places that were controlled by some government in some capacity. And that is exactly where we see the somali piracy today: here is a state that is unable to govern its land mass and thus there is piracy, even with the american navy directly taking action against this piracy. Seemingly this has nothing to do with the american navy at all, even though that is supposedly one of its mandates and it takes actions in the spirit of advancing these anti piracy goals. The fundamentals of why piracy does and doesn't occur don't really change. It seems it comes down to government capacity on land, not from projecting naval power.
> somali terrorists
Pirates are many things, maybe even criminals under international law, but terrorists they are certainly not.
> maybe even criminals under international law
Piracy has to be the canonical example of criminals under international law...
Are they not commingled with Al Shabaab, Daesh, and the Houthis?
12 replies →
I mean that is ignoring the American military experience with Islamic pirates and Islamic slavers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_corsairs
That also supports the government capacity argument. The US was able to make peace with the barbary states and extract a right of safe passage assurance from them. Why? Because the leadership of these states had enough government capacity to compel their domestic pirates into agreeing to the terms their government dictated. Today, in Somalia, we see what the lack of government capacity manifests as. I'm sure the government of Somalia does in fact have laws against piracy. The fact they aren't being enforced, and the pirate industry there exists, shows what happens when law and agreements meet the hard realities that there needs to be government capacity to see them enforced and heeded.
2 replies →
Let us not confuse north africa with the horn of africa. Two wholly different people with different cultures, motivations, and practices.
no idea what they were getting themselves into and did not plan accordingly
That is the modus operandi of this administration.
All tactics, no strategy.
> but this administration clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into and did not plan accordingly.
You can reuse this line for most of things this administration has been doing.
Ironically the US has never ratified UNCLOS. The American professed interest in maintaining right of passage does not appear to require them to be held to the same standards.
Also the Strait of Hormuz is an international strait not international waters. The entire strait lies within Iranian and Omani waters. Frankly it's a bit absurd to complain that your ships can't transit a country's waters while you bomb them.
No one owns anything or has the right to anything.
Everything is either what you hold by force, or have a friend who holds it by force for you.
The original ship channel was in Omani waters, not Iranian. It is entirely unreasonable to consider it reasonable for Iran to mine Omani waters.
It is reasonable for Iran to do things that hurt the US (and the world) when the US hurts them.
2 replies →
[dead]
> Frankly it's a bit absurd to complain that your ships can't transit a country's waters while you bomb them.
The issue is they block all non-Iranian ships, not just American ships. Basically nobody would have complained if they only blocked American ships.
Incorrect, plenty of countries have had their ships transit the Strait including China, Philippines and Pakistan
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79jqx1xdy9o
The plan was for it to stay closed and have the US sell oil.
The US is now exporting more oil than it has in a decade.
Why can none of these supposedly smart people see this plan?
There's no 4d chess plan here.
Trump thought it would go exactly as Venezuela and has no idea how to fix it. They tried to kill enough of Iran's leadership to get to somebody that would be subservient but it turns out nobody is left alive in Iran that is.
Side note that the US offered the same plan as Iran. Selling insurance (in USD) to shippers to transit the Strait. They have done $0 in business.
https://www.ft.com/content/eabadd1a-a712-4b44-99bf-bb50eb753...
The plan was ostensibly to distract and insider trade. Winning would be counter productive anyway.
The Department of Defense is run by a weekend morning show host and the President is a reality TV star. It would be baffling if things were going well.
This spin is such a weird way of thinking about this. Hormuz was open! Hormuz had been open for decades! Iran "closed" it as part of a war that the United States started.
We weren't defeated in a attempt to "keep Hormuz open". Hormuz closed because we we started an entirely unrelated war. And lost. There's a difference!
Say what you want but it seems like Iran are the ones playing 4D chess here.
The gamble, which was certainly egged on by Israel, was that two stars aligned and it was high time to strike Iran.
The first star was intense civilian unrest, the months leading up to the strikes was marked by riots and protests.
The second star was the meeting of Iran's top brass in one spot at one time, both of which Israel knew about.
It was almost certainly sold to Trump as a domino event, where the US would blow the head off and the people of Iran would ravage the body. On paper it looks clean, and certainly he was riding on a high after the swift coup in Venezuela.
Of course though, that did not happen, and now he had to go to China to beg under a thin veil for them to pressure Iran to back off. Trump rolled a critical failure on what appeared to be a moderate-low risk attempt.
> what appeared to be a moderate-low risk attempt.
It looks like it appeared that way to Trump. But you make it sound like it appeared that way to most people. As one of those "most people", I can say that's wrong. The reaction of most people was "WTF is Trump thinking?".
It's been clear he's not the sharpest tool in the shed for a while. But he should be surrounded by very bright people for are able to provide frank and fearless advice. Looks like he fired most of those people, and whats left have been cowered into sycophants.
He is surrounded by very sharp people. They just happen to have undeclared dual allegiances to Israel. Who this war is helping achieving their regional objectives.
The chaos and stupidity narrative only mask and sustain the far grimmer reality of this operation.
Iran defeated the US the minute trump was sworn in.
In a sense, this is the defeat of the US by bin Laden - it's been a steady slide until the trump cliff since then.
> Much of the post-WW2 American-led world order was founded partially on the United States using its military to keep international waters open.
This completely ignores the MAD era and the Soviets taking over Eastern Europe by force. It also ignores the Korean war stalemate, the Vietnam war loss, as well the most recent Afghan loss.
Post-Soviet disintegration management, the successful integration of Eastern Europe, China, and India into the Western Bloc ways were genuine wins. That's post-1989, not post-ww2 (yes, I realize technically that's post-ww2). So there was not really a world-wide dependency between WW2 and 1989 on the American military. Western Bloc, yes, world-wide no.
The current stalemate is only a surprise to the unaware and folks listening only to American news channels. Before the beginning of the current conflict, even $20 chatgpt provided enough insight to accurately chart the course of the conflict in probabilities. Even without chatgpt, folks keeping track and keeping an eye on real news and past policy decisions and progress were able to predict that Ukraine had a very good chance of stopping Russia in its tracks.
The trouble isn't with the availability of this data, it's hubris. Time and time again. Caesar. Napoleon. Hitler. Korea. Johnson in Vietnam. Soviets in Afghanistan. US in Afghanistan. Ukraine. Iran.
But hubris exists because sometimes it works, and for quite some time. Genghis Khan. Pax Romana. Soviets in Eastern Europe. US in Western Europe. Europeans in the Americas. Russians in Eastern Asia. Europeans in Asia and Africa. Palestine. Tibet.
Why it works, and why it doesn't, is an active research topic. [1]
Analysts paid to predict the future will of course argue this vehemently from their pet PoV. And the decision-makers are too domain-challenged to know whom to believe*. They didn't have chatgpt :-)
[1] https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/phillips-payson-obr...
* Or they just don't care
The US didn't win the Vietnam War and didn't even unambiguously win the Korean War.
What the US did was show it would make life uncomfortable for those who challenged the liberal trade order and politically-and-economically offer benefits for those who embraced this order.
What Trump has done is just attack Iran (during negotiations) with no real counter-offer. Iran has responded by attacking everything in sight because nothing was being offered by the US.
Clearly the result is indeed a serious failure on the part of the Trump administration but it's a failure that seems to come from not even understanding that "Pax Americana" has depended on the carrot and the stick.
The administration knew this very well. They've been swinging the markets wildly and intentionally several times and they and their buddies have made billions from it.
This outcome is still favorable for nethyanandu and he used trump and USA as tool.
there is only one man who is surprised and he is Orange and Extremely Ignorant
The post-WW2 American-led world order was, at times, a shared world order between the United States and Soviet Union. Free trade, perhaps, was "enforced" by the United States Navy but that was for the benefit of all nations and it seems to me to have been something pretty widely understood.
If the US military fails to keep international waters open, that harms everyone, and everyone more so than the United States. There's this continued misunderstanding that America did this or that, or securing global shipping is for America to do, or what have you. But you can't have your cake and eat it too here. If you accept American hegemony of the seas and the associated benefits, you have to also accept American action in places like Iran. It's a package deal - you get both or neither. There seems to be a misunderstanding about that, I hope it's a little more clear now.
> It would be quite stunning Iran defeated the united states in this sense.
To this second point, the US can just keep the Strait closed. No big deal. It isn't really possible for Iran to forcibly win here because while the US has higher gas prices, we're the #1 oil and gas market and we can stomach the pain much longer less you get complaints from MAGA/far-left anti-American types. Iran would simply watch their entire economy collapse, while Americans are paying a couple bucks more for cheeseburgers and milkshakes.
But the perspective that the US would be defeated is the incorrect one. In fact, what would be defeated here is that very American-led world order. For the US to be defeated here, as so many seem to rejoice at the prospect of, you would also lose American naval power and security, and instead each and every country would have to spend a lot more human capital and treasure to secure their own shipping and trade arrangements, because there would be no America to come help and save the day. No more NATO. No more caring about Taiwan or Ukraine (remember Iran helps Russians kill Ukrainians?) or getting involved in expeditionary affairs. You can not separate these things. Iran happens for the same reason NATO happens. The world will be much more transactional - pay to play and a global American security tax. A scenario like the one in Iran, in which a genocidal dictatorship that is all to happy to steal tribute from weaker nations simply becomes the norm, if not simply more common, and the EU or China or whoever can deal with it.
So I'd say, be careful to join other isolationists and smugly cheer for the US to "lose" to Iran, and in which case you can expect much worse as the US says "forget it" and only seeks to protect its own vital interests without regard to the rest of the world - the Trumpian and far left view which is a marriage of convenience.
Is it truly 'US Navy securing safe shipping for everyone'? From whom? Where?
When was the last time they actually did that?
> 'because there would be no America to come help and save the day'
No more American meddling would result in much saner and safer world. Wherever they stick their fingers, the instability and wars ensue.
> pay to play and a global American security tax That's the current world.
> this administration clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into
All of the advisors in the room with Trump (Cheung, Caine, etc.) told him explicitly after the meeting with Netanyahu that attacking Iran was a horrible idea. His military advisors told him that Strait closure was the most obvious consequence.
The root cause here, is that all decisions are being made by a single biological neural network with a really high error rate, which is increasing.
[flagged]
>left the problem for our children to work out
What problem? Most of the 'problems' Americans talk about when referring to Iran is just the justifications fed to them by Israel.
>Britain is on the brink of falling to hostile Islamists
Ahh, I think I see where you're coming from.
>Congratulations. Free Palestine.
There it is!
Am Yisrael Lie!
The US has killed a lot of people, but it seems like everything gets much much worse every time Trump intervenes. Iran had agreed to not build nuclear weapons. Trump just didn't like that it was work done by Obama, and—in a typical act of petty spite—withdrew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_...
Fast forward to today and the US has sustained billions and billions of dollars costs. To still not have any clear success, or to even have any promise of success possible. Nothing seems like it will be better in the end. Freedom of Navigation (Carter, 1979) seems off the table for the world now. Oil production facilities in the region have been massively impacted. The US doesn't seem able to deal with mines. And with US intelligence saying there's still vast reserves of Iranian drones and missiles to cause ongoing problems. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/05/07/...
The tough talk perspective would be vaguely endurable if there were any signs of planning or competency, if there were any possible actual ways things were going to get better here. It just looks like more blustering bullying, but there was no plan, and no objectives ever get met, have any chance to get met. Trump threw away peace long ago, sat around doing nothing while protesters were getting slaughtered, and then engaged in a very pointless act that by all indicators he thought would be a clear victory like Venezuela. Tough or not, it's ridiculously frelling stupid.
Meanwhile the US continues to itself engage in lawless international savagery on the high seas, blowing up boats at a steady pace in the Caribbean. And starving Cuba & denying them electricity. All this anti-woke anti-"mollycoddling" looks deranged, and has been actively terrible for the world, achieving nothing, and is empty fury bearing nothing.
Or is it posible this administration just took a win-win-win position?
1 - US oil and gas companies make money as oil proces rise. The US is the largest producer in the world.
2 - China loses it's major source of oil and gas.
3 - Iran gets neutralized. It may not look like it now, but it will probably end up that way.
1 - A win for the shareholders of U.S. oil companies, close to half of which aren’t even Americans, but not a win for Americans even on a purely financial basis given that they are paying more for gas and food. 2 - China hasn’t lost its source of gas and oil. They have more reserves than the rest of the world put together and can outlast every other country, and they’re still getting shipments. 3 - The exact opposite of reality. Iran’s potential to acquire nuclear weapons was one of their biggest dangers for the rest of the world. But with this the U.S. has given Iran a new actual power that had been conjectured but never realized. Control over 20% of the world’s fuel supply and large percentages of other critical raw materials.
People can try to come up with 4D chess explanations for the Trump admin's actions here all they want, but the truth is this is 0D chess.
Just a massive strategic blunder, one for the history books.
Any minor damage to China is tiny compared to the strategic loss America has undergone here
Even if this analysis were accurate, I would feel much better if the administration had intentionally gone this route rather than accidentally blundering into it.
You don’t permanently remove 20% of the worlds oil, 30% of the fertilizer while having a incredibly financialized economy and somehow get on the other side of it healthy and rich.
For one, this would be the end of the Petrodollar and with it the ability to have huge trade deficits siphoning more than 1 trillion in goods and services from the rest of the world in exchange for fancy green paper.
3 - Iran moderates are neutralized, so hardcore fanatics from IRGC take over. Loss for literally everybody.
Otherwise, 1) and 2) are true, Europe is bleeding through the nose with buying US oil and depending on its current antagonist, not smart long term situation that we need to move away asap.
Somebody in US government is making literal billions on shorts and various trade deals just before major announcements keep happening, those are not that hard to see in markets. Current top public bet on this is trumps family and his close coworkers, and their families. If you ever want a witch hunt on traitors and collaborators against US citizens and society, smart up, forget Wall street and just follow those money very directly to culprits.
[flagged]
8 replies →