Shaheds can be launched on battery or generator power as long as there's gasoline. Iran's satellite targeting is managed through Chinese intermediaries[0], and Trump isn't going to bomb China over it. So the denial of naval traffic can continue effectively forever, considering that Shaheds can be made with lawnmower motors and homemade fiberglass.

Building pipelines is a contingency, because Iran's leverage over the strait will exist until the US dismantles the cell-like resistance structures of the IRGC. A few years of this will have disastrous effects on the tourism-dependent Gulf economies, and could force mass migration if desalination facilities are attacked and fertilizer is denied import. If the rich people leave and the poor people die, then Israel's victory over Iran is pyrrhic for America's allies and the global order. Escalation is therefore a sociopathic choice, for Americans.

[0] https://www.irishtimes.com/world/middle-east/2026/04/15/iran...

Shaheds are not at all a problem. Yours truly is one of perhaps hundreds of entities who work on them and in Ukraine, it is a solved problem - virtually none of them ever gets through (question now is how to fight them cheaper and while letting them slip through less Ukrainian territory before being shot down - but in Gulf states it won't a problem, distances are much longer there).

And after pipelines are built, straight will no longer be needed, and Iran will have to negotiate, or end up like Afghanistan (without electricity -> without functioning cities) - no one could call it a victory.