Because it's not true. CENTCOM can reopen the strait whenever they want, but doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it. It's still a strategic defeat, but for different reasons than what you are saying.

Recommend studying the public comments of General MacKenzie who was the previous CENTCOM commander, comments from Admiral Cooper before he was appointed to current CENTCOM commander, or previous Joint Chiefs of Staff.

They've all given public interviews about Hormuz during the current war or before it over the last decade saying the same thing about what's required and whether it can be done.

Well sure, but everything short of committing the whole country to total war will always come down to “we could do it, it’s just too politically expensive”. Even in authoritarian countries, there is a limit to what you can get away with.

That “we could do it, we just don’t want to” argument will face its acid test later in the year when the midterms are closer, but certainly if I were in charge of Iran I’d be feeling pretty good about the current situation.

> doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it

So the US Navy is unable to achieve the objective in a reasonable timeframe and cost. That's the same as failure.

First of all it's a failure since they attacked without considering they would be closing the strait, they just did not believe Iran would do that, hence not positioned themselves. https://archive.ph/XkXCf

Second, you are basing your assessment that they could open it whenever on some statements what the US could do - again not taking into consideration what Iran what respond with. It's like with all the other goals of this war, the US telling us what they could be doing (which boils down to "more bombing"). Admiral Cooper that brought us the famous 24h "Project Freedom"? Pardon our skepticism, some of their plans maybe sound nice to them, they just expect the other side to not react appropriately, that has been the biggest mistake with Iran.

I assume you're talking about "slow and expensive" like sending tens of thousand of troops to occupy at _least_ the ~entire shore around the narrow part of the Strait, indefinitely?

Yeah, shocking there's no political will for that.

> Because it's not true. CENTCOM can reopen the strait whenever they want

This is not true.

There is too much coastline to guard to protect from coastal drone launches.

There are too many cheap drones and not enough cheap drone counters.

There are still a LOT of working ballistic missile launchers.

There are still a lot of anti-air threats, including medium and short range anti air, and combination infared+electro-optical MANPADS capable of shooting down true 5th gen stealth fighters.

They don't need to hit 999 of their drone or missile launches, they need to hit 1 or 2 to make insurance companies unwilling to take the risk of allowing movement through the straight.

Not to mention the cost of this... military excursion has been extensive in both depletion of competent military officers, depletion of strategic use precision guided weapons, we have lost some very expensive and critical airframes, and politically and around the world, have shown to be somewhat of a very expensive paper tiger in modern large scale operations that is clearly not yet ready for the realities of a modern conflict that isn't being fought by a state in the middle of a civil war.

I could go on and on from both a tactical and strategic angle about why this was awful, but I don't think I'd sway the minds of anyone already set in their perspective.

This sounds a lot like what some lazy people will say "I could be a doctor/astronaut/millionaire/movie star. I just don't want to"

The Vatican City could develop nuclear weapons whenever they want, but doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it.