So say VP Rahimi. IOW, they are threatening to interdict the oil exports of Iraq and Kuwait and all the Gulf States. It’s just bluster, right? They wouldn’t actually try that, would they? The Iranians can’t possibly think their navy can go up against the U.S. Navy or the Royal Navy.
They don’t have to win a military encounter. They just have to create enough disruption in the interim to make gasoline (and heating oil, and natural gas) prices double or triple in the US and Europe for a few weeks. Or at least that is what they think. If the interruption is expected to be brief enough, the strategic reserves can be used to alleviate the impact of the actual supply disruption, and the financial markets’ anticipation will moderate the price impact. But it could be rather nasty in the middle of the northern winter.
Mining the Strait would do it and give the US few if any targets for direct attack.
The other powers in the region might support war against Iran in that case, however.
That plus the fact the Iranians have never let reality or rationality get in the way of threats and bluster.
Mining the straits wouldn’t happen through magic, ships have to lay those mines and the U.S. Navy would sink pretty much all of the Iranian ships trying to do such a thing.
Mining the Straits of Hormuz would be a serious casus belli in any generation, it’s the equivalent of the U.S. blockading all of Iran’s ports, it’s equivalent to warmaking and doing it is tantamount to a Declaration of War.
That’s why I seriously doubt it will happen.
You guys have heard of brinksmanship, right?
Good luck with that. I hope they have insurance.
Pretty much, yes. They could probably close the straights for a short time and perhaps attack or interdict ships transiting the straights, but it would be highly costly for them (it would be an act of war, basically). Until and unless they get those nukes and have that as a threat to hold over the worlds head (figured out why they want the things yet?) and make them immune from doing dippy shit like this their options are fairly limited.
They might. Totalitarian governments tend to believe their own propaganda to a certain degree, and are also fairly isolated. Look at North Korea as an example. It would end badly for them if they actually tried to do this though.
They might. They probably really believe that they shot down our drone and can reverse engineer it as well. They might think that just the threat will be enough to make us and the Euro’s back down. If so they are dreaming on both counts (though the backing down thingy is more likely then being able to go toe to toe with the US Navy and coming out with even a draw).
-XT
but then again you have to consider the american public. We’ve been in 2 wars+ support in libya, we’ve given billions to egypt, americans have no jobs/food/housing, and public morale is low.
Can the US even survive another war? They had problems against a bunch of rag-tag terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, how can they stand up to a semi-modern army?
Right, Iran would bank that by causing a disruption energy prices would soar so high that the West would have to capitulate. I actually think it would be a watershed moment, the West would have to decide if they were essentially going to bow down to Iran and let it do whatever it wants, or if they were going to basically suffer through high energy prices and respond to Iran with overwhelming force such that they would not be able to do such a thing again for a long time (think massive strikes against the Iranian navy, and then tons of ships clearing away mines and such.)
The price of energy probably went up massively during WWII as well, hell, you had to deal with ration cards for basic consumer goods. The idea that a powerful Western country has no ability to function just because prices of certain things skyrocket is ludicrous.
What sort of problems? Militarily we had no major setbacks in Iraq or Afghanistan, we win pretty much every fire fight and have lost less than 1 of our soldiers for every 100 of the enemies that we’ve killed. We’ve never been at any risk of losing occupied territory or etc.
The U.S. Army specifically is designed to take and hold territory and to crush the conventional armies of its enemies. At that task no force in the Middle East would pose any serious challenge. No Army in the world can remake Iraq and Afghanistan into peaceful civil democracies, because those are not military objectives.
If you really think the U.S. military would have any problem destroying the conventional military forces of Iran, you are simply uninformed about military affairs.
Additionally, if Iran does something we dislike like try to block the Straits of Hormuz, our response would not be invasion but instead punitive strikes followed up by a naval presence in the Straits to prevent Iran from doing it again.
The British Navy didn’t have to invade continental Europe to destroy Napoleon’s navy as a power.
I dunno what they might try. I think if they really wanted to, they could make it very difficult/expensive to move oil through the Straight of Hormuz for some period of time. If they do that, they could end up paying a very high price. They’d piss off most of the rest of the world, including some of their neighbors. China does not really have the ability to project force into the region, but seem unlikely to veto any action the U.N. Security Council might take. Russia is a wildcard…they hold a veto, and are reasonably friendly with Iran. They could veto in the Security Council, but they’d know such a move is not going to stop U.S./NATO action to keep the Straight open.
I suspect that Iran is mostly bluffing. I don’t think they really want a full blown confrontation with the West–they can’t risk having their military exposed as the second or third rate outfit it actually is. They do want to take a tough posture for domestic consumption, but it’s a delicate balance…
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but then again you have to consider the american public. We’ve been in 2 wars+ support in libya, we’ve given billions to egypt, americans have no jobs/food/housing, and public morale is low.
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I’m an American and I have ‘jobs/food/housing’. And I’m hardly unique. I don’t know what ‘given billions to egypt’ has to do with anything, but Libya went fairly well for us, and I envision that any clash with Iran would be similar in scope (actually, probably a lot shorter). We wouldn’t be invading them, after all, just sinking a bunch of their ships and clearing a bunch of mines, assuming they pushed us that far, which I doubt.
Good grief. Um, yeah…we can. Easily. We could even survive a REAL war, though we’d be in bad shape. We could certainly survive sinking a bunch of Iranian gunboats, trashing some Iranian military facilities, shooting down some Iranian creaky aircraft and perhaps clearing a bunch of Iranian mines…and then negotiating with them in the aftermath (probably the hardest part of the exercise) Much better than Iran could survive us doing all that stuff to them.
-XT
And airstrikes out the wazoo. I’d wager that once the gloves came off, elements within America/Israel’s/others’ military establishments would be beating the drums for rubbling Iran’s airforce, government buildings and taking a few potshots at its nuclear program while we’re at it.
I believe much of those “problems” were due to an enemy hiding in plain sight among the local populace; read: innocent civilians that our forces did not want to engage or injure. That will not be an issue with the Iranian navy.
I will go out on a limb and say, we ain’t made of the same stuff as the WWII generation. There was a lot more willingness to sacrifice for WWII because US territory was actually attacked. Iran getting the nuclear bomb is a still only a prospect, not a reality. Plus coming at the end of the depression, ration cards probably didn’t seem as bad as they would now, when so many think a big sacrifice involves non having channels 501-1000 on your satellite box, or making do with a 3-G phone for a few more months.
But all in all, I would agree that this is a bluff. I think the Iranians talk a lot more crazy than they would ever act.
yes the US did so well in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s why terrorists grounds are killing civilians, assassinating politicians, destroying anything the US rebuilt, etc.
if you really think that the US won the war, you are either 1) naive, 2) stupid, or 3) both.
Let me guess, the US won the Vietnam war too. That’s why it became a communist country. You people and your delirious states
Read: the US fought with traditional military troops against saddam troops. Those troops then became terrorists and blended in with the populace. What’s going to stop iran troops from blending in and continuing terrorists attacks?
Don’t be naive, this isn’t WW2
let me guess you’re one of those rich people who believe that because they have nice things, the rest of america has nice things. Even though you failed to look at the census which determined that a large portion of Americans are without housing/food/or jobs. But hey, you don’t give a crap about them.
let me guess you believe our economy is fine.
Right, whatever Iran did be it a traditional attempt at a naval blockade or just dropping a bunch of mines they could definitely make energy prices go very high for awhile.
But blocking naval transportation out of the Straits is a straight up, traditional casus belli. It’s the equivalent of blockade, which has been seen as an act of war pretty much since time immemorial. If Iran does such a thing they invite overwhelming punitive strikes that would probably destroy most of their navy in a few nights time and much of their air force. It would also probably result in massive bombings of all of their known nuclear facilities. Because at that point, why not? This wouldn’t have to be a full scale war by NATO/US, it’s more “sink all Iranian ships, bomb their air fields, launch a bunch of missiles at their nuclear facilities.” After that Iran’s ability to continue blocking the Straits is essentially removed, but the cleanup would take some time, as would removing the mines.
I guess if Iran just wants to fight an endless war they could then keep fighting us, but that’s as unrealistic as this whole scenario in the first place. Let’s say Iran loses its mind and really does block the straits, what I said above will probably happen. At that point, Iran is going to be bankrupt because Iran will not be selling oil to anyone, and her navy and air forces will be destroyed and millions of dollars in nuclear enrichment facilities will have been destroyed. (I don’t believe we can destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities completely with a few missiles, but in such a scenario with sustained bombings, we could do massive damage to them and cost Iran millions.) Iran’s situation gets worse and worse every day after that because something like half of Iran’s budget is funded by oil shipments.
The U.S. sanctions are not designed to stop Iran from selling oil, instead they make it expensive for other people to buy Iranian oil so it will force Iran to sell their oil at a discount. That is why Iran is making these infantile threats, because the sanctions are designed in such a way Iran really can’t do anything about them.
Traditional sanctions would prohibit purchasing Iranian oil, which would just raise the price of oil and potentially help Iran as they’d be making more money and still be selling some of their oil to someone. These sanctions instead create a framework that will make it more expensive for buyers to purchase Iranian oil, and Iran can’t stop that. So for Iranian oil to remain competitive it will have to be offered at a discount versus global oil prices. Now, overall global prices will probably increase when the sanctions go into effect (I don’t agree with the speculation that overall prices wouldn’t increase, they would, moderately), but Iran will be selling at a discount to move their oil which will hurt them immensely.
But what would hurt Iran even more is closing the Straits and then having the entire world stop buying Iranian oil at all. Because we’ll reopen the straits by force, and at that point Iran is going to need to be peaceful and start selling its oil again or it will literally be unable to operate long term. Iran doesn’t want to turn into North Korea, Iran actually has decent standards of living comparatively, their people aren’t about to put up with a massive decrease in quality of life over an infantile shit fit by their leadership. Further, the leadership knows this. That’s why the whole scenario is just silly.
If the sanctions actually go into effect, Iran will not do this.
What might happen is Iran (which is showing it fears this round of sanctions) might agree to some things to stop the sanctions from happening. By making this threat before hand, if they make some concessions and we don’t impose the sanctions, Iran can sell it that they “forced us to back off the sanctions by manfully threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz.” This is all about Iran saving face, and I would be shocked if it goes to outright conflict.
Well, Iraq and Afghanistan were successful military campaigns followed up by long civil rebuilding projects. Unfortunately many elements in both Iraq and Afghanistan were more focused on fighting against the occupation than they were in rebuilding their own country.
In Iraq, things went a certain way, only time will tell how stable Iraq remains. Obviously right now we can see that the Iraqi government is being tested and is going to be tested harder still in the months to come, if it survives a few more years Iraq may have a real chance.
Afghanistan is a different matter entirely, Afghanistan isn’t even a country. Afghanistan is a region on a map, but the lines drawn mean very little. The people who live there are simply not people we can give a traditional western government to, they aren’t able to operate that way, and it is foolish to continue trying.
But it’s absolutely not true that we’ve had any “problem” fighting “rag-tag insurgent groups” in Iraq and Afghanistan. We fought them fine, and had no real danger of ever losing to them militarily. But the problem is, those rag-tag insurgent groups weren’t just fighting us, they are cutting power lines, blowing up infrastructure, terrorizing the civilian population and etc. We can fight them when they come out of their holes, and we invariably do very well at that. But defeating the enemy and protecting civilians is a very different mission, and protecting civilians is a lot harder than just beating the insurgents in the field.
In Iran we wouldn’t be occupying Iran so none of this would be relevant.
Hell, this might work to our advantage. Once the shooting starts its a perfect excuse for the US/Nato/Israel to bomb the shit out of any industrial facility in Iran that remotely looks like it has anything to do with nuclear weapons. And at the end we will have perhaps lost a few soldiers/ships/airplanes and spend a bunch on bombs but Iran will be royally fucked and set back another few decades militarily and nuclear wise.