Iran may threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz all it wants but the fact of the matter remains that it does not have the capability to do so.
Almost all of its surface combatants have been eliminated. Earlier today, the US took out 16 of its minelayers. Despite its supposed large stockpile of anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles, almost none of them seems to have been used in this conflict, suggesting that they have been destroyed or not many were produced to begin with. Iran's air force put up less of a fight than Iraq's did back in 2003 and are essentially no longer a viable fighting force. Iran does not have any materiel with which it could credibly threaten shipping in the Strait, and certainly not with USN submarines at the standby. The US realizes this and understandably has not really paid too much attention to Iran's verbal threats.
At this point, with the Hormuz "trump card" all but negated, Iran's remaining credible deterrent in this conflict is its leftover stockpile of ballistic missiles, which is undoubtedly being depleted or destroyed at a rate faster than they could be replaced. It has no navy, air force, organized command and control, or a credible proxy network. Sooner or later, those missiles will run out as well. While it may be correct to point out certain shortcomings of the US effort in this campaign, it needs to be said that Iran faces a much more dire - and perhaps even existential - situation.
Then you clearly do not understand how a modern strait closure actually works, and your memory span is about that of a goldfish. You need exactly
zero traditional navy for that.
The Houthis already proved the point in Bab el Mandab.
They kept it disturbed for months, even against the active US and a naval coalition of more than ten allied vassal states, and they still won strategically (attacked 178 vessels throughout their two-year partial blockade in total, and more than halved the traffic).
That is because you do not need to sink every ship.
You just need to hit a few commercial vessels with drones or missiles, create enough risk, and then the shipping companies and insurers do the rest for you by panicking and pulling back; that is the whole logic.
In Iran’s case, the traffic tempo
already dropped massively, way more than what the Houthis achieved, by at least
ninety percent, aside from mostly Iranian and Chinese shipping.
So how exactly are you claiming Iran has no ability to do this when it has already been doing it successfully for more than ten days in actual
reality?
What are you even talking about?
And why would Iran waste anti ship ballistic missiles if the US Navy is already too scared to properly escort tankers and does not dare move in close enough?
If they did come closer, then you would find out very quickly.
To sustain this blockade indefinitely, which is exactly what Iran has been demonstrating while still hitting targets even today, they have more than enough tools, UUVs, USVs, UAVs, anti ship missiles, mines, and fast boats armed with missiles.
So what exactly led you to write something this catastrophically wrong? US "exceptionalism" media brainwashing?
Lack of understanding of emerging ubiquitous military tech and geographical edge, and how outdated the US power projection model is now?
