Comment by Majromax
5 hours ago
> 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.
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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.
> 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.
Another key issue is Iran's regional neighbors haven't invested significantly enough becoming credible military threats against Iran. Instead they tried to play an in-between game of being tacit frenemies because Iran and its proxies could be politically useful. But in the last 3 years, Iran lost most of its proxies through a series of catastrophic miscalculations, dramatically shifting regional dynamics. Iran now has less reason to cooperate regionally and its neighbors lack of credible offense is costing them dearly.
A contributing factor is that the direct customers for much of what passes through the strait are Western European countries who've failed to sustain any real naval power beyond ceremonial presence. In recent years, the U.S. Navy had to quietly ask the German navy to stay away from the Western Indian ocean due to the additional burden of guaranteeing the safety of the German "warships" if they were attacked by Somali pirates.
Without going too far into the political weeds here, I'll say that the problem is less "Germany and UAE needs more guns" and more "maybe we shouldn't have pissed off Iran".
> Iran has too many targets and the only thing that can stop them is the equivalent to an Israeli Iron Dome
Wasn't Iron Dome coverage deteriorating due to low munitions? The cost asymmetry between drones and interceptors makes any drawn-out conflicts mutually punishing - unless someone on the future decides to gamble on another decapitation strike. The Iron Dome is great against improvised pipe-rockets, but less effective against ballistic missile salvos.
I think this is not discussed enough. These are huge investments and destroying them requires a significant time to recover. Our key growth play being AI which is a huge energy consumer, impacting the long term supply chain for energy is questionable.