alt Hacker NewsI mean thats Iran's play right?
Its worked before (see 1980s https://www.strausscenter.org/strait-of-hormuz-tanker-war/), and it'll probably work again. Especially as Iran has different values on loss.
The other issue that is less said is that the USA probably doesn't have the capacity to keep bombing in this way. They are using all the fancy missiles first, but haven't made a safe path to do unguided cheap bombing. This is Russian level stupidity, and shows the danger of letting "true believers" organise things over actual planners who've done this before.
more over, allies can't keep up that level of air defence.
It _could be_ bullshit that iran has a whole load of ballistic and drones spread all over the place, but frankly the US can't afford to find out if thats the case.
Sure the US could escort tankers, but that would mean much higher risk of casualties. Given that the USA is reasonably self sufficient in oil, thats probably a hard sell.
Also, does the US have enough stock of ship born anti-missle systems? Sure it has the expensive stuff, and the Phalanx at last resort, but does the USA have the stomach to have a ship sink? I fear what happens after that.
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Why would the US and Israel resort to unguided cheap bombing? That’s how you end up with wide scale civilian deaths. They’ll use more and more jdams vs stand off weapons as air superiority has been mostly established. There’s also been a significant drop in missile attacks as more and more launchers are destroyed.
https://understandingwar.org/research/middle-east/iran-updat...
There's already videos of US/Israeli jets over tehran dropping guided bombs.
That's my assessment. By threatening and targeting bystanders, Iran tries to make any military action against them costly to those not involved, who will naturally apply pressure to whomever is taking the action.
> They are using all the fancy missiles first, but haven't made a safe path to do unguided cheap bombing.
Global media is reporting B-52s over Iran, which implies complete air supremecy and complete Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses, so this, on the face of it, seems to be untrue.
This war will end with regime change in Iran one way or another. Whatever the 'play' is won't change that.
> but haven't made a safe path to do unguided cheap bombing
Do you seriously believe it? That we're not going to see the US/Israel bombers over Iran?
The oil market is likely to adapt to disruption in the Strait of Hormuz. Initially, the Tanker War led to a 25 percent drop in commercial shipping and a sharp rise in the price of crude oil. But the Tanker War did not significantly disrupt oil shipments. In fact, Iran lowered the price of oil to offset higher insurance premiums on shipments, and the real global oil price steadily declined during the 1980s. Even at the its most intense point, the Tanker War failed to disrupt more than two percent of ships passing through the Persian Gulf.[x]
This seems relevant to the global stock/oil market overreaction.