They definitely can defeat US intervention and cause a lot of damage to their position in the middle east, but I keep mulling over what they can win. They can certainly force them to abandon some bases closer to them and maybe even keep a toll of some kind of the strait, but I don’t think it’s realistic to expect to force the US to abandon the middle east and even Israel. At that point they’d need to actually move troops or something to do that, which isn’t realistic.

Maybe just force them to give up sanctions? And make the bomb?

  • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    shrug-outta-hecks I didn’t expect the US to actually be stupid enough to start the war so I can’t predict what it will look like a week from now. As it stands, I see Iran as rationing its drone/missile stocks and sending out small attacks to prove it can. If they can fit six Shaheds on a cargo truck somewhere in the Middle East, they can hit a target that day which drastically undermines the GCC countries and Israel while keeping the NATO navies engaged but out-of-range. It’s already the worst oil crisis since 1973 if not worse and they haven’t even mined it extensively or used hypersonic shipkillers, both presumably still options in some tunnel system waiting to go. They haven’t even called Yemen into the war yet, the last force the US Navy couldn’t defeat and an entire other trade route they could shut down.

    The UN can try to force it back open, but what does that mean to a country that already grew a siege economy under crippling sanctions? What landmark could UN peacekeepers invade that the US military isn’t afraid of invading? What moral or regulatory standing do those laws have after the UN allowed Gaza to happen? What’s to say that NATO won’t use the UN presence as an excuse to continue bombing like in Yugoslavia?

    As long as they can fire anything into the Strait of Hormuz, and especially if they lock down Suez transit again, ship insurers are the ones with the last word on reopening the Strait. For all the threats of US and EU naval escorts, those countries know it would be the modern Gallipoli and the image of one sinking ship will be a whole new kind of lost war. I don’t see them risking that again like they did in the 1980s.