It’s not even clear if it’s possible to do it without occupying the coastal terrain around it with actual troops.
Could somebody enlighten me as to the benefit of destroying “inactive mine-laying vessels” as distinct from “active mine-laying vessels”? Sounds like the US has been blowing up fishing vessels on the grounds they could be used to deploy mines?
Another point about the Straight of Hormuz is that it is both narrow and not very deep. Which really restricts the shipping channels and an obstruction like a couple of sunken/stricken vessel could cause the area to be scarcely navigable by vessels of the scale of oil tanker tonnage. Even if missile strike wasn’t a danger.
No plan for Hormuz. Hey, maybe starting a war with idiots in charge, no mission, and no plan, is a really terrible idea?
We just need to dig a canal across the lower peninsula. What’s that - 50-60 miles? A month or two of hard digging and Bob’s your uncle! /s
How many guys would it take to conquer Iran? A million? Half a million? How many have been mobilized?
Note that I wrote “The coastal terrain”, not the whole country.
That said, it’s hard to believe the U.S. has the capacity to successfully occupy the whole of Iran for long.
Right. It’s very possible that the military has a plan for controlling the strait, but it requires more commitment than the administration really believed was necessary. Because the administration is stupid. So they disregarded the military advice, launched a war anyway, and are now caught with their pants down.
This is what happens when idiots start a war with no plan. No regime change, lots of dead civilians, and chaos in global trade.
Trump, meanwhile, says the strait is fine and to go ahead and sail on through.
He should demonstrate his confidence by personally planting his fat ass on an oil tanker that is sailing on through the Strait of Hormuz! Isn’t that how real leaders display their confidence and resolve?
Wearing a flight suit and standing beneath a Mission Accomplished banner.
just about all
I’m sure that makes the CEOs feel so much better about it. Are you feeling lucky?
I think it should say Accomplishing Mission.
Yeah, a Shaeed-136 can go about 1500 miles. The Straits of Hormuz are measured in the tens of kilometers in its narrowest range. There’s no way these doofuses are going to be able to protect shipping in that area any time soon. I hate theocracies, but Iran has a pretty sweet card to play there.
A concept of a mission.
Does anyone have a clue as to how this will end?
This for the BBC today:
Trump might learn that starting wars is much easier than ending them. It is hard to know when to stop if you don’t know exactly where you’re going.
It is even harder to do that when the US, the world’s most powerful country, seems to have gone to war without a coherent political strategy, under a president who the evidence suggests is making it up as he goes along.
War is over!
JFC, is this real? Is that actually the president of the USA?
I just read an article about the mining of the Strait of Ormuz (Strait Al-Dope in Persian) in the German Handelsblatt (probably paywalled, so I’ll let DeepL translate under my supervision):
Although the US Central Command reported the destruction of 16 of these minelayers, Iran reportedly has an arsenal of up to 5,000 such boats.
The boats are very small, measuring 6.70 metres in length, can reach speeds of up to 170 km/h and are very difficult to locate due to their fibreglass-reinforced plastic hulls. They are also inexpensive to manufacture in large quantities. They come in three versions: equipped with rocket launchers and machine guns, as troop transporters and as minelayers.
I am not sure about the 170 km/h claim. Feels a bit fast for a boat, but who knows? They have two big off-boarder motors, you can find a picture in the article, if the paywall allows.
Once the mines are laid, the US Navy faces its next dilemma: in recent years, it has lost much of its mine clearance capability.
The specialised Avenger-class minesweepers have already been withdrawn, while the Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) planned as their successors still do not have operational clearance modules due to technical deficiencies.
There is also a lack of airborne capabilities: heavy clearance helicopters are not stationed in the region and are technically outdated. At present, the US only has small underwater drones at its disposal, which can locate individual objects but are far too slow to clear the strategically important shipping lane over a large area. Without partners with special capabilities, such as non-magnetic boats, the Strait of Hormuz will remain blocked indefinitely.
I invite you to search for Sadaf 01 (aprox. 115–120 kg TNT), Sadaf 02 (aprox. 20 kg TNT) and Maham 2 (aprox. 350 kg High Explosive) mines. Iran is supposed to have between 2,000 and 5,000 units of the Sadaf 01.
The width that a big oil or gas tanker can navigate is about 3 km in each direction, writes the article I linked to above. That is easy to mine, they claim. The rest seems to be too shallow for big boats. I am not an expert, but the Handelsblatt is a serious news source, something equivalent to the German Financial Times.
Sounds like a box fight announcer to me.