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.
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 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.
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.
And large merchant ships, especially crude oil tankers, and quite tough to sink. When they take a hit it usually just causes some damage.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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).
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.
https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-V...
> 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.
However, I believe Oman also collects fees. So in practice the distinction wrt shipping is moot
Is it? Depending on how far back into "prior administrations" you go, the modern US Navy is a shadow of itself.
Pirates are many things, maybe even criminals under international law, but terrorists they are certainly not.
$300/launcher here: https://www.un.org/depts/los/nippon/unnff_programme_home/fel...
A decade ago it wasn't terrorist groups funding them.
From the writings at the time 'Muslim sources, however, sometimes refer to the "Islamic naval jihad"—casting the conflicts as part of a sacred mission of war under Allah'
These Islamic pirate/slavers are the SPECIFIC pirates that "The Barbary threat led directly to the United States founding the United States Navy in March 1794.". These are the specific type of pirates that the US Navy was founded to combat to protect ships being seized and their crews sold into slavery.
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.
https://www.ft.com/content/eabadd1a-a712-4b44-99bf-bb50eb753...
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.
Everything is either what you hold by force, or have a friend who holds it by force for you.
The issue is they block all non-Iranian ships, not just American ships. Basically nobody would have complained if they only blocked American ships.
Yes
> (and the world)
No
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.
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 the 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. Much more transactional - pay to play and a global 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
The 'moderates' often referred to PERSONALLY pushed students off of the tops of buildings to their deaths.
Moderate is being used very loosely.
Please read and understand the violence inflicted upon ordinary Iranians who fought to get to this point against the 'moderates' Shia Islamic theocrats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman,_Life,_Freedom_movement
Have the Islamic regimes coverings rules been repealed? No. Have the Basij Islamic religious police been disbanded and removed from the street? No.
Are there any link' to the regimes revision of rules/laws and elimination of the religious police? Or have the moderates been forced to tolerate women?
All I see are brave Iranian women willing to push back against Islamic theocracy at personal risk. Amazing stuff!
Have a look at some pics from Tehran and let me know if you notice something:
https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/tehran-iran-daily-life-cafe...
Spin harder.
The truth is after the start of this war Iran has been importing Shia militias members from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to be their enforcers because the Islamic regime does not have legitimacy with the Iranian populace.
When the US violates the law of the sea in the South America, why not. Everybody complains but understands.
The question is not about whether the US can blockade the Hormuz Strait but who gets blamed for the blockade. Iran is messaging that it is making serious attempts to reopen the strait, while China and Russia are probably reinforcing the message. When people around the world suffer from the consequences of the blockade, they are more likely to blame America for their troubles. Or at least that's what Iran is trying to achieve.
And cryptocurrency should be even better for deniability. In reality it would be a really good idea for certain governments that rely heavily on Middle Eastern oil (e.g. Philippines) to pay fees in the short term. More than a month ago the Philippines was already claiming to have "safe and preferential access", if that involves money they'll pay it. (https://www.rappler.com/business/philippine-flagged-ships-sa...)
Same for the major airports, they keep working, people keep flying to the asia, albeit in less numbers.
https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-uae-nuclear-drones-71e7e5...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-a-e-has-been-secretly-car...
The US can also fuck with Iran by getting slight cooperation from ships in the Gulf of Oman by getting some small inflatable boats with remote control and AIS transmitters on them. Put the boat in the water next to a ship, turn of the ship's AIS, turn on the boats AIS, and send the boat through. Send hundreds of them. IRGC won't know what to shoot at or will expose their positions by firing at a rubber raft.
s/n/d/6
Hilariously the USS George HW Bush had to go the long way around Africa rather than risk transiting the Bab El Mandeb after the Houthis defeated the US Navy last year.
> Hilariously the USS George HW Bush had to go the long way around Africa rather than risk transiting the Bab El Mandeb after the Houthis defeated the US Navy last year.
Valuing the lives of your crewmen and avoid terrorists is bad how? USA not wanting their soldiers to die is weak? Would you want more deaths on US side to show strength?
USA can win this war with barely any casualties, why would you not do that? And USA being able to do this with barely any losses shows tremendous strength to me, Iran was more powerful than Ukraine but USA could establish aerial superiority immediately with no losses, this is so much stronger than what Russia displayed.
Rest of the world is quite pissed with USA. But that's just emotion. Unless it gets realised into something concrete it matters little.
The ship went the long way around because why risk being attacked by missiles? It's less that the US Navy "was defeated", which itself is a plainly asinine comment which only serves a purpose of trying to incite others, and more so a practical safety concern.
But if you really want to argue that the US Navy was defeated, I would submit our next step should be to utilize nuclear weapons on Yemen and destroy the Houthis. That way you can't make these claims and we'll see who really is defeating who :)
You can't block the strait if we block the strait! lmao
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/how-trumps-crypto-ven...
I have read many comments that the regime wants to money launder the inflow. Bitcoin would be rather inconvenient for that.
It can be untraceable with CashFusion
Given modern computer consumer hardware, I don’t see why they couldn’t even have built implosion lens based fission devices without testing. DPRK would probably provide them with all the data they needed for the simulations.
Iran has been a few weeks from having a few bombs for the last 30 years because they decided not to build it.
"terror state". I would have hoped that HN users would be smarter than to parrot FOX news propaganda.
Europe also designated them as a terrorist organization, happened right before the war started. It is a terror state, its just left wing propaganda that they aren't. Or is EU also too influenced by foxnews propaganda? Many countries recognizes them as terrorists, including US, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia etc.
"EU terrorist list: Council designates the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation"
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2026...
If anything, in the current war, Iran has suffered far more civilian casualties than it has inflicted.
Even the most leftist publications in the west acknowledged that the iranian regime has been slaughtering 30 000+ of its own, unarmed, civilians in january this year. They went as far as following the, still unarmed, wounded into hospitals to finish the job.
Iran also then, once they came back to Iran, publicly hung iranian athletes who spoke against the islamist regime while competing abroad.
Now of course the leftist propaganda machine being what it is in the left, here's a documentary I saw on "Arte" (a heavily left-slanting TV channel producing movies and documentaries): as they couldn't not mention the 30 000+ deaths the iranian regime made, they made a documentary about it...
But the entirety of the documentary was about the "hurt feelings" of a poor islamist guard of the iranian regime who was forced, poor him, to kill innocents.
That movie channel, Arte, literally managed to make a documentary turning the thing on its head and presenting the killers as the victims because it was "so hard" to kill unarmed civilians.
So enlighten me a bit a propaganda please.
Too bad trump and Hegseth killed them all as they were wantonly blasting targets in Iran and now there is nobody in a good position to take over.
These descriptions are from objective scholars including Jewish ones btw.
And that declaration of "genocide"--by an organization whose sole membership qualification is paying the membership fee. And at that by a small portion of said organization.
(And I'm no Faux Noise sheep. The "mainstream" news is bad, Faux is worse. The quest for eyeballs means all news is slanted towards what the viewer wants to see.)
there is a lot of examples on how to design it, and it doesn't really seem like this Iranian one for shipping is designed well if its just an insurance pool in bitcoin at all times
but if they are using the bitcoin blockchain to sign the insurance transactions, and then the state administrator acquiring bitcoin to pay out policies at time of claim, then that could work. that was one of the bullish cases theorized for bitcoin back in 2011, 2012, its a long list
The fact that many states are now using it for funding purposes to get around the banking system further adds proof to bitcoin's potential origin.
Also, it doesn't help that Satoshi Nakamoto means basically central intelligence in Japanese...
I'm not saying Bitcoin was created by the government, but if it was there are signs...
This kind of thing explains in part why despite being an obvious scam, the government allowed cryptocurrencies to grow so large that eventually they formed their own feedback loop so strong that crypto bros were the biggest funders the 2024 presidential campaigns.
Convert it into Euros. Or Yen. Or Yuan.
Like the Treasury/Dept of Commerce & others did with North Korean backed Tornado Cash. Some very quickly retrieved/not well researched (caveat reader) search links; https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0916 https://www.paulhastings.com/insights/crypto-policy-tracker/...
They could also make it illegal for any US financial institution to do business with any financial institution that interacts with crypto.
They could probably also make it a crime to buy/sell crypto in America.
Its also trivial to turn your crypto into yuan and your yuan into $. So I'm not sure such a ban would be even remotely effective.
This comment chain starts with "Maybe after the mobster losers in the white House finally get kicked out we can just ban this thing forever."
In America? KYC would suffice.
> In America?
No.
I don't give a f--k about Bitcoin but I wouldn't want governments to start banning it.
Because then why not ban VPN forever too? And require a digital ID for anyone going on to the Internet?
And why not also mandate cameras operated by the state in every room of your apartment/house to make sure you behave?
And backdoor in every cryptographic protocol.
I mean why stop at banning Bitcoin komrade?
BTW the EU is thinking about creating an EU-wide registry of every single asset owned by every single EU citizen, down to every gold coin (oh btw maybe we should ban individuals owning gold coins too?), every jewel, every painting, sculpture, old car, watch, pokemand and Magic the Gathering card: they literally have a plan to make an inventory of every single asset. When asked, by a member of the EU parliament I think, if they could promise this would never be used as a basis for confiscation the EU Commission answered they couldn't promise that.
Where do you draw the line? Is there one point at which you start saying that freedom shouldn't be taken away?
If the Dems don't win the Senate, nothing will change until maybe February 2029 but pretty sure the same people that gave him this power of insanity are just going to vote for the next nightmare, there's no lesson learned, not even with $5 gas and $6 diesel
I don't even think a full blown recession would change anything
And now they are bringing the warships back to Cuba so get ready for next distraction from this distraction from the other distraction while they crime-spree away
Whatever is going to happen over the next 24 months is already in motion. All we can do now is prepare. And maybe get a little less squeamish.
Corrupted but there's more I guess.
Maybe Trump should bomb them some more?
Geopolitics understands one language alone.
The main thing it resulted in is the Europe led coalition that aims to ensure the strait will never get blocked again, so Iran can never play this card again, that will lose them a lot of political power in the future since this card is now gone.
"never get blocked again" just like when it was claimed by the U.S. it wouldn't be blocked in the first place, or that it would only be a few days...sure sure. I'm sure the IRGC is about to call the European and U.S. leaders and tell them how bigly they are and how scared of more bombing they are.
Second of all, it's also more likely the USA will back down as a result of widespread disapproval, than it is that USA will effectuate a full ground invasion (which would result in heavy losses).
Whereas if they had complied with the don's demand that they be a vassal state of the USA and israel, they would not be a sovereign country anymore.
This isn't exactly abnormal: for a USA analogue, look at Patrick Henry's comments on liberty.
What Iran has learned from this is they don’t need sympathy, they need to exercise the leverage they do have, and there’s no way they’re ever going to willingly give that leverage up - they’ve seen what would happen.
What? I understand sympathy but I am not understanding what the path could've been to meaningful support against US aggression here.
Seriously dumb. And now this mafia-esque blackmail?
From who?
There are protests against the war/against the US/against Israel in major capitals, the Lego videos go viral, news regularly mention EU heads of state talking to Iranian ministers. After weeks of the strait being shut, no EU country has joinedUS and Israel.
For most of the world, Iran is the victim of two dangerous countries. I bet you a tenner that when the US and Israel give up and the end of the war is officially announced, there'll be dancing in your streets.
This doesn't sound like the don to you? "hey Iran, nice country you have there..."
> Maybe Trump should bomb them some more?
If the USA is going to be bombing every country which doesn't give up their sovereignty and bend the knee to the don, then the USA is going to need more bombs.
Poe's Law in action, I guess. In general, sarcasm isn't a good way to have a good discussion. Better to just say what you mean, rather than the opposite of what you mean, with the assumption that everyone will know you didn't actually mean it.