U.S. Navy turns down Hormuz escort requests because of high risk
maritime-executive.comIt seems like Iran has a lot of options for attacking ships. So far theyve used speedboats to attack tankers in Iraqi waters and they used "unknown projectiles" to attack ships in the strait. The ships are on fire and crew have died with the remaining rescued by Oman's and Iraq's navies. I don't know what a us navy ship is going to do as an escort other than be a sponge for incoming projectiles.
Ukraine sunk half of the Russian Black sea fleet, the other half is hiding in safe ports and still get hit occasionally. Remember when there were talks about grain corridors? There are no more such talks because Ukraine actually managed to deny Russia the control of the Black sea and the Bosphorus straits are held by the Turks anyway.
It's just a different world now. Large powerful ships aren't that useful anymore, USA and Israel destroyed some of the largest and the most advanced Iranian ships in the first day of the war they started and yet can't sail their own ships in the region either.
One of my peers sent me a discussion from the Council on Foreign Relations and it was a difficult listen. Within the first 5 minutes of the hour-long vid, one of the "experts" was opining that Iran had no ability to close the Strait because "all of their ships are destroyed". These DC swamp creatures are CLUELESS. As you said, I dunno how any national security professional can watch Ukraine bully the Russian Black Sea Fleet with Starlink-equipped kamikaze USVs and not understand the implications for other theatres of war. Especially involving an adversary that has rehearsed and even pioneered asymmetric capabilities for decades.
Who do you follow for news on the Ukraine-Russian war? I use to follow combat footage to see what was going on, but I had to stop after seeing too many minefield and drones bombing humans videos.
https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/new/
This is considered the most "pro-Russian" sub-Reddit, so it balances the Anglosphere deluge of pro-Ukrainian material pretty well. The most important poster is u/HeyHeyHayden, who's content is so important another user built a site to archive it: https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1pfjpx...
Hayden mostly compiles battlefield progress from Suriyak Maps (reputable Russian mapper) and AMK_Mapping (reputable pro-Ukrainian mapper). I think you can find both of them on Twitter.
On Youtube, I recommend WillyOAM (Australian infantryman turned journalist), MarkTakacs (Hungarian infantry officer who makes tactical analysis vids), Daniel Davis Deep Dive (retired US Army LtColonel, Desert Storm vet), and HistoryLegends (meme-heavy but generally well-researched battlefield progress vids).
To add to that, I would also recommend Markus Reisner from Austrian Military Academy: https://youtu.be/L89HmVKewfg
From time to time he does situation reviews and analysis on Ukraine in English and he doesn’t hold back.
Here are two of the weapons mounted on U.S. ships that would fire upon small boats.
Like the tracers bouncing off the water
There's at least missile, gun, laser and electromagnetic countermeasures for air threats. It has been a mainstream subject for long, for example against aircraft and missiles. But also lots of startups also in this space, especially against cheap drones or UAV:s.
> It seems like Iran has a lot of options for attacking ships.
I wonder if the recent USV shipping attacks came Iraqi militias. Maybe Iran set them up with some drone boats like how they send them missiles/drones to hit US bases with. Meanwhile the US was focused on surveilling the Iranian coast. I wouldn't be surprised if Iraq remains the hardest part of maintaining security in the region.
Are these speed boats manned ? Like with kamikaze pilots ?
Typically man-optional.
Best source on all this stuff is a classic proper OSINT blogger (who does awesome pics too): https://www.hisutton.com/
What I worry about is the shot in the arm Russian finances are about to get due to oil revenue at a point they seemed to weaken strategically. Not to mention pressure to weaken oil sanctions.
I was just going to post this. You don’t have to wait long to know their thoughts…
> Not to mention pressure to weaken oil sanctions.
The Trump administration instantly folded under that pressure and has already removed some sanctions: https://xcancel.com/SecScottBessent/status/20297142537252622...
Maybe a short financial shot in the arm, but destroying their ability to get Shahed drones is substantial.
Russia has been mass producing its own copies or the drones - the Russian version is called Geran 2 - for several years now. They use a lot of western and sanctioned components and they assemble them in big factories eg Kupol plant in the Russian city of Izhevsk
AFAIK by this point they are now building them all themselves in the big Yelabuga factory.
Alternative scenario:
Iran should be militarily defeated in a few weeks, so that's a brief shot in the arm.
If Iran gets a half decent government and sanctions on Iran are lifted, that would lower oil prices and hit the Russian economy.
By way of comparison, Iraq's oil production didn't return to the pre-war level until mid 2012.
It's probably reasonable to expect several years of disruption to Iranian oil even if sanctions were to be completely lifted in the very near term.
Sure, but blocking Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi, Qatar etc from exporting through Hormuz has a much bigger effect on global oil prices, and that can be resumed immediately if/when the war stops.
> at a point they seemed to weaken strategically
They can hold out for many years. Oil prices going up just means a slightly gentler market for russians.
> They can hold out for many years.
They are running down cash, gold, and cannon fodder.
Russia's oil revenue was down but it was far from being game changing even with stricter sanctions. The oil sector hit has always been more of a big incentive to end the war then something than will impact it militarily on the ground.
Really? Cost of extraction in Russia is about $30/barrel, sanctions introduced discount of about $20/barrel in 2025 which means 70% profit drop at market price of $60. Sounds pretty game changing to me.
Russia can still produce tens of thousands of drones, missiles, and push up endless meatwaves of conscripts even if their oil sector declines (oil is 15% of their GDP). This war hasn't been that sophisticated for a while. Drones are cheap and China will keep selling them parts while buying their oil.
But would it have got them to stop the war? Seems unlikely.
Probably not but it changes the calculus of whether Ukraine or Russia will win.
Not necessarily: Money isn’t everything. Russia cannot produce electronics on its own, so only because American companies sell to shell companies that sell to Russia is Russia able to launch missiles and similar high tech weapons on Ukraine and, no, Russia has no chance in hell of winning in Ukraine with the so called (sadly but truly deeply dehumanising) “meat wave” attacks sending in soldiers with little training and just a riffle… So really oil revenues are a way to hurt Russia but not a way to cause them to lose the war, but depriving them of American technology that they need to develop the kinds of weapons that they use to attack Ukrainian cities and power stations and infrastructure probably would
I mean no matter how the war ends ukraine has lost
> no matter how the war ends ukraine has lost
This is nonsense. Lviv is by all accounts a thriving city. And Ukraine's defence-industrial base is now among Europe's finest.
Lviv, the Polish city? Come on let's be real.
> Lviv, the Polish city? Come on let's be real
No, Lviv the Molotov city. Like, yes, if you've already carved up Ukraine in your head, it's obviously losing. By that metric China has been losing to the Mongolians its whole history.
Look, ukraine's economy is destroyed, the men are either dead, disabled, or have fled, and the ones who haven't are being kidnapped off the street to be pressed into service, the grid has been set back by decades, they're deep deep in debt, and everyone knows they aren't getting the mineral-rich east back. It's beginning to look doubtful if they can even keep their black sea port. They have under half the population now than they did when the soviet republic collapsed (granted, mostly due to circumstances unrelated to the war—notably, outmigration.)
So perhaps I was being a bit of a dick by calling Lviv polish, but it will probably take ukraine decades, maybe a century or more, to recover from this devastation, even if against all odds they manage to enforce their absurd demands that russia withdraw. It does matter to a nation to keep its historic lands, and ukraine has already lost about half of all traditionally ukrainian land + crimea. Far western ukraine, including Lviv, has only been considered "ukraine" for a little over a hundred years.
Why do you spell Lviv capitalized but Ukraine not? You are too xenophobic toward Ukrainians?
Be serious. I don't care about any of europe; the rest of the west is doing just fine caring about it incessantly at the top of their voices regardless of who asked. My heart belongs in east africa.
I'll try to be more sensitive with what I capitalize—but I don't really give a damn about either ukraine or russia—both seem like far-right corrupt states that don't take care of their citizens well—though I do feel very sad for the humans caught between them.
> ukraine or russia—both seem like far-right corrupt states that don't take care of their citizens
what makes you think Ukraine is far-right corrupt state, what would you do differently if you would be Zelenskiy (jew btw).
The cover of war is a great use for targeting fossil fuel infrastructure Russia relies on for exports. Sufficiently inhibiting their ability to export will force them to shut in wells (as we're seeing with major Middle Eastern oil exporters as shore storage reaches capacity), which will potentially take years to restart.
Come again - what Russian fuel infrastructure is being targeted, with the Iranian war as a cover?
Russian shadow fleet vessels.
https://fortune.com/2026/03/11/oil-situation-strait-hormuz-s...
From the American perspective it's a plus - If Russia is getting richer (when it desperately needs the cash) it has an incentive to not get involved in the Iran war (at least in the short-term). (Remember that just before the Iran invasion, US and some of its European allies were suddenly capturing Russian "shadow fleet" oil tankers and increasing pressure on India to cut down Russian oil, and its oil revenues dropped drastically). If Iran can be conquered, Americans gets richer, gain more influence in the middle-east and the Europe (to whom they'll sell the gas) while the Russians will lose much of their influence in the middle-east.
As for Ukraine, nobody in the west really cares for it - that proxy war has given all the dividends it can for the west (EU has cut off all economic ties with Russia, EU is now dependent again on the US for its energy thus making the US richer, EU's next generation have now been brainwashed to hate the Russians again, Finland and Sweden have been successfully pressurised to give up neutrality and join NATO, Finland and Sweden joining NATO means the Arctic Council is now dominated by NATO - Arctic is where the west will next try to cut off Russian influence, Ukraine - which had a large territory and the one of the largest military in Europe - has been cut down in size and is now totally economically and military dependent on the west in effect a vassal state) and the Ukraine war is a stalemate now, where Russians will make slow gains as their army grinds down and keeps losing soldiers - and that's a plus too. As Russia becomes weaker, another proxy war or even a direct attack against it can be waged later in the future (maybe after Putin?). American deep state always plans long term - Death by a 1000 cuts ...
EU has cut off economic ties? Sure, if 2027 is in the past and you believe they will stay the course
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
Fear keeping our naval power in check is ironic given the "peace through strength" mantra. Turns out Iran has always held the long tactical advantage. How long does it take to build a desert road to the other side of the ocean? I think we're going to find out.
KSA can get most of their oil to the Red Sea in 2-3 years (like 90%+). By the end of the year, they should be able to get >50% there.
UAE can get ~30% through Oman now, and probably ~75% in 3-4 years.
Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar are screwed without the straight. Qatar could probably work a deal with KSA to get all of their oil through its pipes to the Red Sea if need be in 2-3 years, but they'd pay a premium.
If I had to guess, I think this will structurally push KSA and UAE to move out of the straight, and for anyone in the straight to be tied to China and India.
I imagine Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran are all going to become Chinese and Indian client states.
North & South America now have a major oil & natural gas surplus. Their total usage is declining and production is increasing.
Meanwhile, the EU, Japan, SK, etc are moving towards renewables & nuclear as fast as they can.
China's probably reached peak fossil fuel imports already.
The Houthis offer a similar threat in the Red Sea though. And we've seen how successfully they managed to disrupt shipping there.
At least with the Red Sea there's the option of going the other way around Africa.
Not to Europe.
KSA -> Europe.
UAE -> Wherever it wants.
Gulf -> India and China client states.
Isn't Qatar's main export gas?
>Meanwhile, the EU, Japan, SK, etc are moving towards renewables & nuclear as fast as they can.
Yeah, but current EU energy prices are as high as they ever been, so that doesn't help the EU manufacturing industry that in 10 years we'll be fossil fuel free, if they have to close shop in 12 months from the energy price hikes.
> but current EU energy prices are as high as they ever been
This is factually inaccurate.
Ember Energy: European electricity prices and costs - https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-an... (updated daily)
Ember Energy: Wind and solar generated more power than fossil fuels in the EU for the first time in 2025 - https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-gener... - January 22nd, 2026
Bloomberg: How Europe Ditched Russian Fossil Fuels With Spectacular Speed - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/ukraine-n... | https://archive.today/yxGp2 - February 21st, 2023
> But what the past year has shown is that it’s possible to go harder and faster in deploying solar panels and batteries, reducing energy use, and permanently swapping out entrenched sources of fossil fuel.
> Solar installations across Europe increased by a record 40-gigawatts last year, up 35% compared with 2021, just shy of the most optimistic scenario from researchers at BloombergNEF. That jump was driven primarily by consumers who saw cheap solar panels as a way to cut their own energy bills. It essentially pushed the solar rollout ahead by a few years, hitting a level that will be sustained by EU policies.
(Europe has enough wind potential to power the world, their energy constraints are deployment rate of renewables, battery storage, and transmission)
>This is factually inaccurate
Yes, if you ignore the brief 2022 spike, they're as high as they ever been. Oh wow, you got me on a technicality, you're so clever, bravo, even though that doesn't change the situation of today where plenty of EU manufacturing companies have closed shop or moved jobs and manufacturing abroad since 2022.
From the link you posted, I see that energy today is still roughly 4x higher than it was before the Russian war, at least in my EU country. How competitive do you think EU manufacturing is today versus back then given the current pricing? How long can Eu companies stay in business given these circumstances? How long can EU taxpayers subsidize the energy of private business to make sure they don't go bust or leave before higher inflation kicks in?
Edit to answer your reply below here: No, the EU can't flip its energy producing industry on a dime in response to instantaneous external shocks. All it can do is print money and subsides energy costs for industry at the expense of inflation and higher CoL for the population.
Yes, energy is more expensive than when Europe received favorable fossil gas prices from Russia (as the Ember graphs demonstrate) prior to the Russo-Ukrainian war. Europe is not going back to Russia for energy. Europe has sufficient domestic renewable and low carbon (nuclear, hydro) energy potential to achieve a similar "energy cost ratio" as they previously achieved when cheap Russian fossil gas was procured. Europe will experience elevated energy prices until they have deployed enough renewables and storage to achieve historical energy costs.
How long it takes for Europe to achieve this outcome is a capital investment and deployment velocity decision. The capital exists, the technology and manufacturing capacity exists. How competitive does Europe want to be from a manufacturing perspective? The answer to that is the speed at which they drive down energy costs using the various technologies I've enumerated.
I've reached out to an Ember contact to inquire if they could communicate this time window and velocity in some fashion on their graphs for Europe ("time to historical energy price levels via energy transition").
We had positive announcements like these 40 years ago, ways before Nord Stream was even planned, when Natural Gas was the future and households converted to Natural Gas heating.
It seems very unlikely that with sustained temperatures of -5 to -8°C in the winter months, which seem to get longer again, heating can be achieved with renewables in any way.
Heat pumps were already collapsing and making irritating fan noises at -8° this winter. Converting to heat pumps is expensive and the service costs are expensive, too.
LNG is needed for fertilizer and other chemical products, too and is hard to replace at all.
By all means, try renewables, but these enthusiasm waves leave me skeptical.
Heat: 250MWh 'Sand Battery' to start construction in Finland - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46073855 - November 2025 (249 comments)
Low carbon fertilizer production: Green ammonia production: Process technologies and challenges - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00162... | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2024.131808 - Fuel, Volume 369, 1 August 2024, 131808
Skepticism is important, but the evidence so far proves out we have a long way to go with the "easy" parts of decarbonizing until we have to solve the last "hard" parts. Capital and cashflows saved on fossil fuels from the easy parts can be directed towards the hard parts when that time comes. Enough sunlight hits the Earth every 30 minutes to power humanity for a year; it's a capture, transfer, and orchestration story broadly speaking. We are bound mostly by the laws of physics.
If heat pumps don't work in the winter, how come Sweden has (as of 2022) 2.2 million heat pumps (209 per 1000 residents) and Finland 1.4 million (251 per 1000 residents)?
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J...
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J...
Most of Europe isn't Sweden, and many industry manufacturing doesn't run on heat pumps, but on gas.
US Naval power has been drastically hollowed out - other than for strategic force projection for low intensity conflicts involving air strikes. Even for that, it's a shadow of what it once was.
This isn't the 1980's where we can surge 100 warships to an area of the world to deny the area or perform escort missions.
If we decided to 10x the Navy budget today and start building ships we'd be a couple decades out since we'd have to start from "train the ship building workforce" first principles to begin with.
Other than air power, the US has been operating off military (reputation) inertia for decades now.
There is also the question of whether ships even make sense right now, when a multi-billion-dollar ship full of sailors is at huge risk from a swarm of drones costing 1/1000th as much, and we have not yet mastered drone defenses.
I think ships make a lot of sense - particularly much cheaper ships built in larger quantities. Think WWII era destroyers and frigates that can be mass-deployed by the dozens for air and sea coverage. Obviously updated quite a lot with cheap point defense, and of course some more expensive ballistic missile defense systems. The fact we can't send 100+ warships out there to create an integrated air and sea defensive screen for not even drone swarms - just a few dozen drones at at time at best - is pretty embarrassing.
The question is if the US is even capable of building such a thing these days? My bets are on no, since we can't seem to build much of anything at an industrial scale for any cost. But that can turn relatively quickly so long as there is emergency of existential scale and time enough to do it.
ships are carriers of cruise missiles they can launch from 2k miles distance out of range of swarm of drones.
It’s not fear, it’s cost-benefit, and it would take all the trucks in the middle east to move a tiny portion of the export that typically goes via ship. It would be easier and more aligned for Qatar, UAE, Saudis to pay mercs to keep the strait clear.
> it would take all the trucks in the middle east to move a tiny portion of the export that typically goes via ship
May I suggest an alternative mode of freight that pre-dates trucks and can move much larger volumes at a much lower CO2 cost, namely... a transcontinental train line?
(obviously not going to happen, and might even trigger a few PR cycles about a "hyperloop", but if you were going to try to build large-volume freight, that's where I'd start)
Pipelines are by far the best option for large-volume oil freight on land!
Note that it takes about 10000 trucks to carry the 2 million barrels of oil in one typical oil tanker.
I can't believe that I didn't think of a pipeline first. So... yes.
Also another argument against trucks: they consume fuel to carry fuel.
> I can't believe that I didn't think of a pipeline first.
Don't feel bad, a pipeline is just a different type of train. The tracks are hollow and the cars are molecular in size.
I guess a train line has a similar risk of security concerns/disruption, vs. trucks which can be re-routed.
that railway can be bombed too
I'd say there are orders of magnitude of difference between attacking a narrow passage of water that borders your very large country (here the narrower the area you want to block, the better), versus a few-meters-wide railway that starts in another country and goes thousands of kilometers in a direction pointing away from you (and in the second case, the narrower the target, the more difficult to hit).
I'm reminded of the pre ww1 Berlin–Baghdad railway.
Well see? Problem solved!
Is there a real merc naval power that can support operations against ground based anti-ship missiles?
The problem is not the road.
It is prohibitely expensive to move things using trailers vs. freight.
If they're literally shipping just fuel, wouldn't the transporting cost almost be free?
You cannot burn your fuel and then sell it.
Also ... hmm ... trailers don't work with unrefined oil ...
Trailers work with unrefined oil. There isn’t much difference between a truck trailer and an oil tanker car on the railway.
Difference is size and cost per unit to move it. We are talking about Middle East light sweet crude oil here, not Alberta’s oil sands or whatnot which does require some processing and heating even before sending it through a pipeline.
North Dakota currently sends a few trainloads of crude oil directly from the fields to refiners 50 miles away from me today. Tanker trucks do routes picking up a few dozen barrels per rig every few days/weeks/months in low producing areas of the country.
>Trailers work with unrefined oil.
No.
Those engines aren't used in trains through. They are used in boats.
A large industrial diesel engine is about the size of a house and displacement is measured in cubic meters.
No. Large industrial oro marine diesel engines are not truck engines.
The engine isn't in the trailer. That is in the tractor, which pulls a trailer.
If OP meant "fueled by unrefined oil" then sure, but I didn't even consider that to be an option.
The heavier crude grades cannot be (realistically, at least) put into trailers or tanker cars - which is what I thought was being implied here for the Gulf oil sources.
At least they're thinking cautiously about it in some ways and not completely forgetting lessons learned w/ Gen Paul Van Riper in the Millennium Challenge (2002). Worth a read. The sim had the USA lose even with superior weapons.
There’s a reason no prior administration did this - Iran’s had 40 years to plan for this war.
Also because prior administrations were successful with diplomacy and/or nonviolent sabotage.
US was escorting tankers during the 1980s in the Persian Gulf:
As a note on this: it only worked because neither party wanted to start a war with the US. US naval escort during times of war - especially modern drone- and missile-based war - is just putting more eggs in the basket.
And right in line with the OP you responded to, that was 40 years ago
There were no drones back then and it's a real game-changer for asymmetric warfare.
That was a completely different time when the US Navy had around 600 ships.
There is a good chance they are trying to bait the US navy to enter the strait
So? USA and Israel had the same 40 years.
They didn't spend it planning for this war.
You clearly haven’t seen their militaries… the U.S. developed a bunker buster bomb that they didn’t need for anywhere else just to target the Iranian nuclear programme, which is what was used last June and it is believed that Israel hacked the Tehran traffic camera network… I would say this looks like preparation. As an Israeli too, I can tell you that the only thing that the military establishment was developing for in the last couple decades has been Iran… it is why Israel wasn’t prepared for the October 7th attacks from Iran and why in contrast the beeper attacks on Hezbollah (the Shia Iranian-run proxy in Lebanon) were so successful. But just discount the worlds largest and most successful military in history and the 7th largest military exporter… it is good for us when you underestimate us
For Israel, sure - Iran's been considered the existential threat to them, so yeah, that's the IDF's primary focus. Israel's a peer-level state to Iran (with wide error bars around peer, but they're geographically colocated and neither is large or powerful enough to fully overwhelm the other) - without the US's involvement, this would be a very, very costly war for Israel (and likewise, Iran attacking Israel would be very, very costly for Iran without the US too).
For the US, yes, we've spent a lot of time and effort focused on Iran, but our goal historically has been containment - Iran can't win a war against the US, but they're also not an existential threat to the US, so for us, the question's always been a cost/benefit analysis. Iran knows this, so their act for the last 40 years has been to keep the math on the US attacking Iran unfavorable enough to keep it from happening. This is why they never actually built a bomb - Iran's strategic position was calculated around not pushing Israel into the red zone while still making things too expensive for the US to be willing to bear the cost of attacking Iran.
Unfortunately for all parties, there's three primary flaws in the US's strategic posture: the first is we're too fucking big to feel like we have to do our homework anymore. We can "win" any military conflict shy of full open war against China insofar as we'll be the last ones standing, which puts the rest of the world in the position of having to accommodate themselves to us, not the reverse. The second is that as a people, we've got the shortest memory of perhaps any major nation on earth - the Iranian revolution was in 1989 and the coup was 1953, and to Americans, that's not just distant history, it's practically archaeology. Why would we worry about the Iranians? It's been months since they did anything. The third is we've managed to elect the physical embodiment of that short-termism into office and given him and his friends unilateral permission to do whatever they want in the national scale, which means there's no strategic calculus happening at all - whatever plans, frameworks, or understandings we've built over the last 40 years are in the dustbin along with the rest of the woke DEI crap left over from, eg, the Bush administration.
So, yes, the US has been planning for this for 40 years, but we've got the notable flaw of not reading our plans or caring what happened 40 years ago - as the old joke goes, "a serious problem in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine."
LOL, ROFL even. For decades now, the main purpose of Israeli Air Force has been to fight this war.
Don't you need an escort from a neutral country? Being escorted by a party to the conflict is just putting your non-military, non-target really close to a military, legitimate target?
I am certain this entire misadventure was war gamed in Israel by AI. What is certain that regardless of what happens to IRI, United States of America will no longer have a welcome home in Middle East. GCC countries are also toast - gone is tourism, global air travel hubs, and techno hubs of the Arabs. Someone must have been rather jealous.
None of what has happened to date was even remotely unforeseeable. It really took a special kind of stupid (that would be the commander in chief of our military) to get drawn in to this fiasco.
We really need to get rid of dual citizens in corridors of power and influence in this nation. ASAP.
This seems in-line with modern US military doctrine.
The US generally only wages wars of aggression against a nation as well-organized and well-armed as Iran when it can do them at arm's length with remote weapons and air superiority. Since the US has a volunteer army, actual risk to soldiers for something not perceived by the public as an existential threat jeopardizes future fighting efficacy.
The US public will tolerate missiles launched in its name; it is far less likely to tolerate video of entire Navy ships going down or sailors (not) coming home in body bags by the shipload for a cause that the administration didn't even try to sell them on as necessary.
What are the factors influencing the US Navy's position here? Not enough small/cheap ships for this work? Too hard to defend against guerilla speedboat attacks?
Let's see
No minetrawlers, the four US had were scheduled to be scrapped earlier this year. So if there's even a single mine you're playing russian roulette with hundreds of people on board
Probably heaps of various anti ship missiles that have been squirreled away with ranges reaching from few nautical miles to few hundred, just for this exact scenario, please keep in mind that you only need one missile to get through to cause dozens if not hundreds of fatalities.
Unmanned naval drones of various kind, not exactly ultra-high tech in this day and age.
And then there's the guerrilla speedboat attacks which means more missiles
Did I mention that one ship has possibly hundreds of people on board? The political system of the US probably cannot tolerate a military mass casualty event of that scale and spectacle. It's therefore just too risky to get anywhere nearby with a ship so all US navy can do is just lob missiles from as far away as possible, while hoping that this whole mess ends before US runs out of standoff weapons. And between Ukraine, Yemen and now this, the armament stocks aren't probably looking too good considering the meager production numbers.
This isn't a military decision but more a public opinion one. Should an American ship take a hit, have casualties, become disabled, etc it would put immense pressure on the administration to settle/end the war, even though on a military objective level it makes a lot of sense. This is a reality of the instant informational world we live in.
I read the tone of this comment to be as if that's a bad thing, even though it's a good thing?
Like a lot of things, little about this war is purely bad or purely good.
If the Iranian regime were over thrown, that would be good for basically the whole world except the people actually operating the regime. So, if the war ends without that happening, then that's at least partly a bad thing mixed in with the good of, y'know, not having a war anymore.
You can't really gauge 'tone' via text, I was just referring to the mission success reality on the President's side.
Imagine the optics of a single destroyer/cruiser being on fire. It would shatter the myth of American naval power (some are arguing that this war already did that, which I tend to agree with).
Armchair here:
Its like the issue with the Vietnam war. You need 100% perfect security, or its not worth it. If you are only 98% successful, you arent going to have oil tankers or any cargo ships even attempting it. A single failure every 2 months was a massive waste of resources.
While Iran still has fire control, these ships can be hit by shore-launched anti-shipping missiles, one way drones of even old fashioned shelling. Their "navy" was never even a factor.
Too risky, and doesn't make sense from a cost-benefit perspective. Iran uses cheap and disposable weapons that are also effective. If you think about how much a single US ship costs, and the political price of US service members dying, I think the picture becomes clear.
I agree with you.
The decision of the US Navy to not provide escort services makes perfect sense and it is no surprise.
The only thing that is newsworthy about it is that this has exposed yet another lie of Trump, who at some point has promised that the traffic will not be affected, because USA will provide such escort services.
It would take far more ships (ideally destroyers and frigates ) than we can muster to the gulf.
Also, it exposes the ships to easy attack in a constrained body of water
Also, the ships would need to exit the gulf and travel a long distance to re-arm their defensive weapons, requiring even more ships.
Not wanting to lose USN ships as a de facto mercenary force is reason enough.
Protecting the economic interests of the US and allies by defending commercial shipping is well within the remit of the US Navy. This is a risk management decision with a side of optics, not one of scope.
You could hit anything going through the straight with artillery and rockets from the shore. Escort won't do much.
The modern US Navy lacks the number of ships it once had. And the destroyers it has in the area are already doing too many other jobs like defending carriers from unmanned drone vessels, firing million dollar missiles at 50k drones, and shooting Tomahawks to blow up little girls at school.
My thoughts. The escorts serve little benefit to the US given the risk. US doesn’t “need” the Persian gulf exports as much as other countries (who could run their own minesweeping operations). Iran mining Hormuz is a feature not a bug for US effort in a “proxy war” against Iran (hint: it’s all about China)
What do you think happens when China starts increasing prices on goods sold worldwide, due to oil shortages?
Global supply chain impacts have global ramifications.
Both China [0] and India [1] are getting safe passage via the Straits of Hormuz from Iran.
Additionally, Russia is redirecting LNG from Europe (the ongoing Hungary-Ukraine spat) to Asia [2].
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-talks-with-ira...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/iran-allow-india-flagged...
Didn’t they attack the Chinese flagged “Hailan Journey”?
I think you are confusing it with the Thai "Mayuree Naree" [0].
Honestly, it's best to ignore X/Twitter for this conflict. Internet access has been restricted bordering on nonexistent in Iran since the massacres in January, and most countries in the region have also either locked down internet access or don't interact in the English language social media bubble.
The Ukraine War is the last war where OSINT had significant accuracy - most states have cracked down on information dissemination and enhanced OpSec.
Edit: turns out the Heilan Journey transited [1].
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/thailand-seeks-ap...
[1] - https://chinaglobalsouth.com/2026/03/12/chinese-ships-strait...
So once again, this operation seems to just benefit Russia, and no one else.
China still gets access to Iranian oil, though with high risk and a much slower pace.
India is getting access to Russian oil without sanctions now, but they're in a really tricky situation - one Iranian ship was torpedoed coming from an event promoted by India where there was safety requirements in place. This isn't good.
Many countries are tapping into reserves, and being severely affected by higher prices.
All while Russia gets sanctions removed and a oil price hike, when they were in a critical situation economically. Even the USA shrugging off of the reports of Intel shared with Iran is insane.
> All while Russia gets sanctions removed and a oil price hike
Yes, CNN has an analysis:
"How Trump’s Iran exposure could hand Putin a lottery win"
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/12/politics/trump-iran-war-r...
There's two sides to it. Russia of course wants the war to become a quagmire for everyone supporting Ukraine.
But the reason the US and Israel is even able to do what they are doing is because Russia is spending all its resources fighting Ukraine.
Russia is too weak to do anything to meddle in the conflict. Five years ago Russia would have its navy in the area, private militias on the ground and been an all around nuisance. Today they are non-existant outside of Ukraine.
A sound analysis on it:
Trump, Putin, and the war in Iran
I'm not sure if that's the reason why US and Israel pulled the trigger, twice.
But for sure it helped. It helped with Syria, Armenia, Venezuela, and now Iran.
But that doesn't explain why the current US administration continues to be submissive to what Russia is now: an isolated regional power - and even this is arguable because it will depend on the region.
Like, this is the biggest geopolitical blunder of modern Russia that will probably lead to the collapse of the federation (economic, demographic, diplomatic) - and this catering is all based on personal good relationship?
It just doesn't make any sense.
The video goes into detail on that. And how with the actions the US is taking it is not submissive, although Trump also is in some ways a fanboy of Putin.
I really recommend it, it’s from a real Danish military analyst without any over the top dramatization
Pretty interesting paper/presentation:
https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
Now the world suffers because of intel and pressure from Israel.
It's like we never learnt from Iraq, Syria, Libya.
At least there’s a major silver lining:
Higher oil prices and more volatility in the oil market makes renewables even better of an investment.
Climate change has somewhat faded from popular culture, but the problem still persists. The faster everyone gets off oil the better the less the world will suffer in the future for many different reasons.
They do not seem to have a plan for Hormuz at all. Realistically, it takes Russia to supply 10 high precision drones per day to keep up the fear with pinprick operations. This can go on forever.
The winners are Russia and Trump's LNG fracking friends. The losers are the EU, who had their pipeline blown up and now had their Qatari suppliers blown up. But EU politicians sit still and leave it all to Trump and Putin.
> Realistically, it takes Russia to supply 10 high precision drones per day to keep up the fear with pinprick operations.
Considering Iran supplies Russia with a lot of its high precision drones, I don't think it even takes this. Iran can do it all on their own.
Russia no longer buys Iranian drones. Russia tied up with Iran to setup drone manufacturing in Russia instead, so that both can benefit ( https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/08/europe/russia-drone-facto... ).
Europe's first mistake was abandoning nuclear energy, and their second mistake was not going all in on renewables.
Apparently, Trump was told that the Iran war is 10 to 1 (politically) winning for him. What do you think are the real odds now?
The reporting is the Trump administration was told NOT to attack Iran by the military and intelligence agencies but they did it anyway.
Yeah, they didn't expect iran to fuck everything up and now the dudes that sell oil in dollars because of security guarantees and their ships are being bombarded and running out of air defenses.
Iran has no choice. They've been observing how US destroyed and / or co-opted all their neighbours, one by one, over the decades and have been preparing for their turn for a long time. The undeclared US-Israeli strategy against Iran, and Tehran’s counter-strategy - https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/the-undecla...
I’m honestly shocked by the support for the Islamic regime of Iran (I refuse to call it Iran since it and the IRGC and the Basij does not represent the Iranian people who showed us this January in their millions that they don’t support it) on this platform. Honestly, any sick human being who supports them, well they are either deeply ignorant or deeply evil and inhumane. I am awaiting the response comments from tens of Iranian bots and hundreds of idiots who ignored the Iranians demanding help in this January
Sure, Iran (its regime) is bad.
Iran's neighbour, Israel currently has a genocidal regime (where Netanyahu is trying to become the Jewish Ayatollah by crippling its democracy with the help of his right-wing buddies) that has already massacred and injured more than 50,000 children ( https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unimaginable-horrors-m... ). (The Palestinian genocide is still ongoing). The start of the Iranian war with a massacre of 100+ children suggest that an Iranian genocide too is planned.
America is today run by a President who believes that the rise of India, China, Brazil, South Korea, EU etc, means that American might will be challenged soon, and thus America needs to drop its facade of respect for international law and order and use its full economic and military might to strengthen itself. The Attack on Venezuela and Iran has no politically moral goodwill behind it and is a pure resource grab - it's just a return of imperialism not even trying to pretend otherwise, which none of us in the Global South (former colonies) wish to experience again.
So, tell me again, how is Israel and US morally better than Iran?
I live in the US, and I have no idea what support you’re talking about. Is saying this attack on Iran was a massive fuck-up now considered support for the regime? Is pointing out that this chaotic, badly planned conflict looks terrible, and likely will not weaken the regime much at all, now considered support? If anything, it risks giving them exactly what they want: a younger Ayatollah, fresh grievances, and more national unity. Or is any criticism automatically support now?
Agree. Need to see the grey between the black and white of the discourse.
And I’ll add on a friendly reminder to anyone who needs it that only 22% of the USA population voted for the current administration.
Gaza was already a demonstration of what will be done to you and your people if you "unconditionally surrender" to Israel/US. Genocide is what you'll get. And please do keep in mind that Israel is no stranger to lying about it's neighbours as was seen with Saddam Hussein and the mythical weapons of mass destruction back in 2002-2003.