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int32_64 3 hours ago

There's no insurance scheme the IRGC can concoct that protects against the US navy hitting your rudder with a 20mm gun.

jltsiren 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Military history is full of quotes like "war is too important to be left to the generals". When you put people who focus on technical matters in charge, they often make poor decisions, as they are not looking at the big picture.

The question is not about whether the US can blockade the Hormuz Strait but who gets blamed for the blockade. Iran is messaging that it is making serious attempts to reopen the strait, while China and Russia are probably reinforcing the message. When people around the world suffer from the consequences of the blockade, they are more likely to blame America for their troubles. Or at least that's what Iran is trying to achieve.

Jensson 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No government have accepted Iranian tolls so far, that is just not going to fly ever. If every country controlling a strait started taking out such tolls that would cause much worse issues than we are seeing currently, nobody will have that.

telchior 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No government has accepted Iranian tolls so far, but some shippers sure have; ships have been passing through the strait. Those shipments go on to countries with governments. I don't think you can actually know that there wasn't government support for any of those payments so far.

And cryptocurrency should be even better for deniability. In reality it would be a really good idea for certain governments that rely heavily on Middle Eastern oil (e.g. Philippines) to pay fees in the short term. More than a month ago the Philippines was already claiming to have "safe and preferential access", if that involves money they'll pay it. (https://www.rappler.com/business/philippine-flagged-ships-sa...)

baq 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just wait for CENTCOM bulletin with their USDC blockade insurance address

outside2344 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

bc1qxy2kgdytzdonaldjlostiranwartrump

spwa4 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You mean that these mafia style insurances are a joke, but free (as in safe and not taxed) access to the seas is something many wars have been fought over. "Insurance" selling by navies was the norm until WW1 at least.

FireBeyond 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Hah, far more likely that it would be $TRUMP or $PATRIOT shitcoins. Gotta skim somehow.

outside2344 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A Iran drone then bombing UAE's oil infrastructure as payback?

Jensson 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They are already doing that so it wouldn't change anything.

kakacik 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No they are not right now, otherwise we would have full news every day of it. Defense rockets for stuff like Patriot ran out, those systems are trivial to overwhelm and deplete in the age of cheap drones and become useless quickly.

Same for the major airports, they keep working, people keep flying to the asia, albeit in less numbers.

_DeadFred_ 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>No they are not right now, otherwise we would have full news every day of it.

Yesterday Iran stuck a nuclear plant with a drone, and launched them at other targets as well. And there is news on it even...

https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-uae-nuclear-drones-71e7e5...

adrr an hour ago | parent | next [-]

UAE is firing weapons at Iran's oil infrastructure.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-a-e-has-been-secretly-car...

tmnvix an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Just to be clear, Iran has been accused of the attack.

Helloworldboy an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

mothballed 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A combination of enough insurance to make it worth the time of the owner + offer the workers a generous amount to their next of kin could make it worth it. Being turned into minced meat might be worth it for some people if it means their families become rich.

wang_li 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Exactly. The US just announces that they will take any vessel that pays for transit. So, what happens then? Any vessel that goes through and the IRGC doesn't shoot them, the US seizes. So, no one pays since they can't pay for successful transit. The fun game is that all the vessels just go at once. Any that the IRGC doesn't shoot the US takes. Any that it does shoot sink. So, no transit. Unless IRGC doesn't shoot at all, in which case everyone gets out of there with just one vessel paying the ransom. Ultimately this doesn't work for the IRGC as the US is far more capable of closing the strait than Iran is.

The US can also fuck with Iran by getting slight cooperation from ships in the Gulf of Oman by getting some small inflatable boats with remote control and AIS transmitters on them. Put the boat in the water next to a ship, turn of the ship's AIS, turn on the boats AIS, and send the boat through. Send hundreds of them. IRGC won't know what to shoot at or will expose their positions by firing at a rubber raft.

lefra 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Or they'll use a pair of binoculars (or a drone with a camera) to ignore the decoys and shoot at the actual ship...

wang_li an hour ago | parent [-]

The horizon at sea level is about 3 miles. The strait of Hormuz is 35+ miles wide. Any mechanism used to get around this would be detectable and could be attacked with relatively inexpensive ordinance.

cyberax 9 minutes ago | parent [-]

About 20 meter elevation would be needed to cover the navigable part of the strait. So, a couple of tall ladders?

bdangubic 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

US Navy has shown particular strength in this conflict against Iran, sitting in the international waters many (many, many) miles away and chillin :)

srean 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I would have never realised that things would have taken such an Onion worthy scatological turn.

s/n/d/6

Jensson 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Whats weak about doing the smart thing?

nerfbatplz 3 hours ago | parent [-]

American destroyers and aircraft carriers have been chased away from the Strait multiple times now.

Hilariously the USS George HW Bush had to go the long way around Africa rather than risk transiting the Bab El Mandeb after the Houthis defeated the US Navy last year.

Jensson 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In what way were they chased away? Iran tried to sink them and didn't hit any shots, and many on Iran's side died trying. Many IRGC soldiers dying and not even scratching the paint on US vessels doesn't show US to be weak.

> Hilariously the USS George HW Bush had to go the long way around Africa rather than risk transiting the Bab El Mandeb after the Houthis defeated the US Navy last year.

Valuing the lives of your crewmen and avoid terrorists is bad how? USA not wanting their soldiers to die is weak? Would you want more deaths on US side to show strength?

USA can win this war with barely any casualties, why would you not do that? And USA being able to do this with barely any losses shows tremendous strength to me, Iran was more powerful than Ukraine but USA could establish aerial superiority immediately with no losses, this is so much stronger than what Russia displayed.

srean 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Given how expensive they are they were presumably supposed to do more than primarily stay out of range. There are less expensive ways of doing that.

Jensson 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They block Iranian ports so Iran can no longer export oil, that is doing a lot.

srean 3 hours ago | parent [-]

And Iran has blocked the strait too. It's at best a stalemate.

Jensson 3 hours ago | parent [-]

But this stalemate benefits US corporations by raising the price for oil, so its not really hurting the attacker. In order to hurt a plutocracy like USA you need to hurt the American stock market but American stocks are doing great.

srean 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's true. Both USA and Russia should be quite happy with the current state of affairs. China not so much.

Rest of the world is quite pissed with USA. But that's just emotion. Unless it gets realised into something concrete it matters little.

yongjik an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Trump is at -20% net approval and it's steadily getting worse even now. Seems like most Americans don't decide whether things are going great by looking at S&P 500.

LorenPechtel 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We are quite incapable of dealing with a mass attack by Iranian small boats with bombs.

Jensson 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They are not, they updated their tactics to account for that so they destroyed a lot of Iranian small boats with bombs trying to attack the vessels. If they were incapable of countering that we would have seen American casualties in these skirmishes but only Iranians died.

chrisco255 21 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not one U.S. ship was damaged by the Houthis. Meanwhile airstrikes took out a ton of Houthi assets.

ericmay an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> Hilariously the USS George HW Bush had to go the long way around Africa rather than risk transiting the Bab El Mandeb after the Houthis defeated the US Navy last year.

The ship went the long way around because why risk being attacked by missiles? It's less that the US Navy "was defeated", which itself is a plainly asinine comment which only serves a purpose of trying to incite others, and more so a practical safety concern.

But if you really want to argue that the US Navy was defeated, I would submit our next step should be to utilize nuclear weapons on Yemen and destroy the Houthis. That way you can't make these claims and we'll see who really is defeating who :)

tehjoker 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You realize that America "in theory" wants ships to transit the strait right? The US blockade is self-defeating.

You can't block the strait if we block the strait! lmao

SubiculumCode 11 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I think this is incorrect. The point is to show that if Iran does this, then they will not be the only ones that can do it. The last thing that should happen is to reward Iran for rent seeking on the Strait. Others can also seek rent then, and the whole strait gets shut down..which encompassed around 90% of all Iranian oil exports, which in turn was about 90% of their economic exports.

Pay08 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The US is blockading the Iranian coast, not the entirety of the Strait.

IncreasePosts 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The reason the US is blockading is because Iran is only partially blockading it. If Iran wasn't blockading at all then America wouldn't either. But it's pretty clear that "only shops whose countries pay a lot of money to Iran" would help Iran.

yongjik 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sure, but when it happens it's no longer Iran's problem - it's your problem. (And maybe America's problem, unless America gains anything from the global trade burning down.)