Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Ships are turning toward Iranian islands, checking in with Iran, and then moving on if they are one of the few allowed ships. Iran controls the Strait.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqr3s6uTays
An F-35 may have been hit by an Iranian anti-air missile. The plane and pilot survived, making it safely to a base in the Middle East. Stealth makes the F-35 harder to detect and hit, but not invisible. If a video given by Iran purporting to be the F-35 getting hit is real, then it looks like a smaller payload delivered by a relatively short-ranged infrared or electro-optically guided weapon, or even a shoulder fired missile. If a radar guided weapon targeted it, the plane would sense it and the pilot would be trying to avoid it. And if larger, longer-range weapons hit it, the plane would not have survived that size of payload.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEA-vXR3WgI
Regime change wars have never been successful from the air with conventional weapons. Administrations get wooed by the ability to strike targets with precision from afar, and forget that blowing a bunch of stuff up and killing important people doesn’t end a regime’s ability to suppress its people or fight back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YptXQ3UFumQ
Ukraine’s drone killers are much cheaper than many US interceptors, and the US and Gulf countries are running out of such interceptors, so want these cheaper Ukranian drone killers to defend against Iranian drones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zViz_78w_lc
Militarily opening the Strait of Hormuz will be incredibly hard. Iran only has to get through once, the US needs to stop every weapon. It will require the great risk of putting a lot of forces close to Iran.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRrfFhRxNi4
Ships can get insurance to go through the Strait of Hormuz, but most ships won’t go through because they don’t think it is safe enough.
Iranian ships are still going through and the US is letting them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SELRtaciaI
Iran was prepared for the US to dominate with “overwhelming” airpower. Iran saw the US take out Saddam’s centralized command with airpower and decided to focus on missiles, drones, and decentralization. Taking out the snake’s head is less effective when there are many snakes with their own weapons, each able to lash out. Iran knew it couldn’t go toe to toe with the US in the skies, so scattered and hid their weapons. Iran knows that the US would not like a long war, so they planned for a long war where a determined Iran can outlast a US that grows weary with the costs of war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGCjDWZthk0
Protecting shipping would require pulling assets away from offense. Destroying 95% of Iranian weaponry does not matter if they can still threaten ships. Iranian oil ships are still going through the Strait. The US isn’t stopping Iranian oil ships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5S2ek2QcHQ
The Iran war has been great for Russia so far. It’s oil is worth more thanks to the war. Some sanctions on its oil have been lifted by Trump as he tries to lower gas prices. The many munitions used by the US in the war mean there are fewer for the Europeans to buy for Ukraine. It allows Russia and China to go around the world saying how evil the US is, unjustly attacking a global south country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LvPObzkF-8
The mission of keeping the Strait of Hormuz safe from Iranian attacks on civilian ships is a burdensome and dangerous mission. The US needs to focus on protecting its carriers until the Iranian threat is further diminished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIynxSI7ZQg