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.
The US navy was unable to keep hormuz secure for civilian traffic but was able to blockade it themselves. I think that's exactly the outcome you'd expect in this scenario.
No, not at all. As I said, controlling straits and keeping them open for shipping is a fundamental function of a navy. The ability to protect shipping was a key reason for the ascent of the roman empire and the british empire. And the U.S. navy has protected shipping routes for a century.
The inability to keep the strait clear shouldn’t have been expected. It’s a purely military objective that’s squarely within what our ridiculously overspecced Navy should be able to do.
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.
Imho the regime was made stronger because of this war. It was really a bad moment to strike. Khomeini had a cancer, and waiting for his death and the succession crisis that would have ensued would have been a better choice. Now the regime is stronger than ever.
Although my real thoughts is that this strength the Khomeini project is temporary, in the sense that the only reason the regime lasted this long before was because the power was shared. If they keep pushing for more control, without sharing, they will end up loosing everything.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So, to me, the two possibilities are: the military told the administration it couldn’t control the strait without boots on the ground, and Trump disregarded that advice.
The other possibility is that the military was overconfident. We know it has been developing plans to attack Iran for decades. It’s possible the military thought it could control the strait based on obsolete plans that didn’t account for new developments like Iranian fast boats and drones.
That has been the military assessment in leaks, yes.
So the US Navy is unable to achieve the objective in a reasonable timeframe and cost. That's the same as failure.
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.
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.
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.
At least some form of it secretly continued until now.
Yeah, shocking there's no political will for that.
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.
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.
This is not true.
There is too much coastline to guard to protect from coastal drone launches.
There are too many cheap drones and not enough cheap drone counters.
There are still a LOT of working ballistic missile launchers.
There are still a lot of anti-air threats, including medium and short range anti air, and combination infared+electro-optical MANPADS capable of shooting down true 5th gen stealth fighters.
They don't need to hit 999 of their drone or missile launches, they need to hit 1 or 2 to make insurance companies unwilling to take the risk of allowing movement through the straight.
Not to mention the cost of this... military excursion has been extensive in both depletion of competent military officers, depletion of strategic use precision guided weapons, we have lost some very expensive and critical airframes, and politically and around the world, have shown to be somewhat of a very expensive paper tiger in modern large scale operations that is clearly not yet ready for the realities of a modern conflict that isn't being fought by a state in the middle of a civil war.
I could go on and on from both a tactical and strategic angle about why this was awful, but I don't think I'd sway the minds of anyone already set in their perspective.
About half or so have been destroyed if one averages various estimates. The continuation of combat operations was the sensible option: not finishing off a wounded but aggressive animal is always a mistake. Iran will put whatever sanctions relief they get out of a "deal" towards rearming and rebuilding their nuclear facilities, and we will be back to square one in a decade or so, only against a more emboldened enemy.
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.
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.
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."
A naval force isn't required to control the Strait. Artillery, drones and missiles fired from inland can do that quite easily.
HN sometimes poses really difficult questions.
The person who posted that question is Israeli.
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 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.
When Arab hit civilian targets, it's terrorism, when the US does, it's freedom. I personally fail to understand the difference, but I'm an europoor
> 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.
this function is outdated since u-boat appearance, and now cruise missiles and drones. More important modern function of navy is projecting power.
Japan made public that one of the motivations for continuing rail gun research is defending naval vessels against saturation attacks.
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.
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.
Those are tactical objectives, not strategic aims. The US is very good at winning tactically, but losing strategically. This is yet another example.
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
How much of it would you attribute to bad planning? (The full plan of which the Navy will be part.)
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
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.
https://warontherocks.com/irans-anti-access-and-area-denial-...
Even setting the ballistic missile threat aside, LCS can't defend itself against regular drones and cruise missiles. It's severely limited in terms of sensors, fire control, and magazine depth. In order to operate in that area with reasonable survivability it would have to be escorted by a more capable surface warship with area air defense.
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.
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.
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.
Everything we know about war is going to change.
What is new is Irans willingness to use them. Which skyrocketed after a few missiles assassinated their supreme leader.
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.
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.
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.
Indeed it isn't. The military has been doing cheap drone swarm research since well before ukraine. But I think that for everyone - including the military - whether or not the people in charge update their worldviews is an entirely separate matter.
I think you vastly overestimate speed with which people acknowledge new facts.
Second best is only Catholic Church fully acknowledging heliocentric theories in 1992.
"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...
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.
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-...
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Claiming that a country can't exercise military control over its territorial waters seems like a legal or political fiction to me. Granted they share part of the waterway with their neighbors but expecting a country at war to honor such things also seems like wild fantasy to me. They've been bombing those same neighbors.
Israel is not part of the deal, wasn't directly involved in discussions, and did not sign anything.
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.