Five decades doesn't seem to mean much when most of their leadership, military and air defenses can be laid prostrate by the US and Israel in a couple of days. I don't ever take Trump for his word, but neither do I think there's wisdom in believing that a technologically superior force couldn't easily wipe out Iran's ballistic-capable navy just because they've been preparing for a long time.

Edit: am I wrong? Can copium in fact save inferior boats from a vastly superior military force?

You’re wrong in a few ways -

- Iran has structured the functioning of its government and military to be highly resilient to decapitation. Every function has redundancy and every military unit can exercise autonomy. Their goal is to build a theocratic revolution around an ideology and not a personality, and intentionally built a system to survive a hostile environment.

- You have to find what you want to destroy and quantity can out last highly sophisticated and expensive systems. They have been aware of satellite imaging for some time and almost certainly have planned for closing the straight against the US navy for decades. What they have going for them is asymmetric warfare that relies on mass and surprise. For instance, the $20,000 drone that requires multiple $4mm interceptors to stop. They can just keep dropping those randomly indefinitely on their time table and burn a steady supply of interceptors that are increasingly spread out then roll out the hypersonic missiles they have but haven’t even used yet knowing the defenses have been spread thin across an ever increasingly wide region as they demonstrate the radius of attack they have. Ground warfare would be against an enemy who has fortified and prepared for decades with full awareness of our capabilities as we demonstrated them globally.

- the idiocy of a talk show host leading a military commanded by a real estate developer turned reality tv show host with delusions of megalomaniacal grandeur can self defeat any military against any foe