Mines are incredibly effective but in a hypothetical clash between Iran and the U.S. Navy they won’t be decisive.
Assume that Iran deploys all 5,000 of her mines in the Straits of Hormuz before the conflict, or even throughout the Persian Gulf at large. Also assume lots of suicide speed boats loaded with explosives and things of that nature.
I don’t doubt that some suicide speed boats may cause some losses or that a ship might hit a mine.
But in reality suicide boats and mines are better at inflicting “attrition” losses, they have limited ability to enforce large numbers of losses right at the outset of a conflict.
If we are in a 30 day naval engagement with Iran, they may get some wrecked American ships. But within 10 days the U.S will have so heavily bombed Iran’s military operations facilities in the Gulf (assuming a somewhat limited scope conflict) and so much of Iran’s own operational effectiveness will have been degraded that losing a destroyer to a single mine or 2-3 destroyers over a 30 day span will be irrelevant. Essentially what I’m saying is, Iran will hurt us if this goes into a shooting match, but they lack the capacity to hurt us bad enough to significantly diminish our ability to hurt them. And their ability to take the hurting we lay onto them isn’t so great that they can come out of 10 days of getting pounded by the U.S. Navy without having lost so much that the whole conflict would have to be considered a catastrophe for Iran.
Would be a major PR coup if they are able to hit and sink a US (or NATO) ship though, all out of proportion to the actual losses. And if they hit a carrier it might be worth the lumps they will take in return…at least worth it to some factions in Iran.
My guess is that they’d lose them all, at sea or not. If the gloves come off, even just a little bit, the Iranian navy will cease to exist overnight. They will be down to the aforementioned speedboats in a hurry.
But the Iranian Navy belongs to one Iranian clique, while the Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy belongs to another. If the radicals (in Tehran and Washington) start a war, the navy takes the hit and Guard Corps gains more power and budget.
I keep wondering how long it’s going to take Iran to get into a full-blown civil war with at least four sides: Ahmadinejad, Khamenei, the IRGC, and the pro-democracy dissidents.
I wouldn’t hold my breath, BG. I doubt there is going to be any real confrontation between Iran and the US over any of this stuff (this is basic sabre rattling 101 by Iran, and mostly for their own or the regions consumption), and the Iranian’s literally wrote the book on keeping their descendents under wraps. Ask the Syrians, who have been trying to read the book to keep their own down.
Kind of, but it is also kind of the point. Why would anybody, who can lay a minefield, charge the US navy with four frigates? The weapons with best chances of success are used most.
Because a minefield alone isn’t going to pose that serious of a threat to the US Navy, and if the Iranians really want to get in their licks they are going to have to use more than just that. They have a rather large gun boat navy and have practiced using it to attack something like a US carrier battlegroup. They also have some small subs. And they have their destroyers, which are missile boats. If they REALLY wanted to pick a fight with us they would want to use all of that plus their shore batteries as quickly as they could…because otherwise it’s going to be a use it or lose it type situation. If they keep the destroyers in port then we’ll just sink them there. If they hold back the subs and gun boats then we’ll destroy them where they are. If they don’t use their shore batteries then we’ll destroy them or destroy their central C&C networks that control them. So, they really gain nothing by holding anything back in such a confrontation, and they lose most of their chance to get in some sort of blow if they don’t.
5000 or so mines SOUNDS like a lot, but even in a confined region like the straights it’s not all that much…and the US Navy has mine sweeping and detection capabilities. Really, that threat is more for the civilian ships, and it’s only good for a limited time unless the Iranians follow it up with other things to augment the threat.
Highly unlikely. Ahmadinejad won election through fraud, primarily because he was the candidate the Ayatollah supported. Ahmadinejad doesn’t get along great with the clerical establishment but anyone seriously against the clerics also hates him, so I don’t see him being able to wage a civil war. The IRGC is a tool of the Ayatollah so I don’t see them going against him. So it would really just be pro-Democracy Iranians against the military and the clerical establishment. I think a sizable portion of Iranians are urban and fairly cosmopolitan and aren’t super thrilled about their government. However a lot of Iranians are religiously conservative and big supporters of the clerical establishment…and generally the Iranians with the military training and the hardware are the conservative ones, not the more liberal and educated urban Iranians who use facebook and twitter.
Its bluster. Noone can go up against our navy (or our army in any conventional war). Its not just nationalistic chest thumping, its fact.
A FEW potshots? If we’re dropping bombs anyway, I don’t see why we wouldn’t take out the supreme coucil and ahmedenijad while we were at it.
Normally when a price of a commodity drops the supply drops… unless the suppliers NEEDS to raise a certain amount of money to pay its bills then they sell more of it which causes the price to drop further which forces them to sell even more. Sanctions on Iran that reduce their income per barrel of oil might force Iran to sell more of their oil rather than less.
I agree
oil sands oil sells for less because it is more expensive to refine and the yield is not as good.
The market price is very elastic. You can affect the price of oil significantly with small changes in supply.