[A] closed strait [of Hormuz] is a chokehold on Iran’s own windpipe, because the overwhelming share of Iran’s trade and oil exports must pass through that same water.... A chokepoint you can obstruct but cannot profit from, defended by a navy that no longer exists, is not a lever of power. It is a siege, and Iran is on the losing side of it. ... The essay’s hidden premise is continuity, an Iran picking up where it left off, only leaner and bolder. Compare the two trajectories honestly. The Iran of the road not taken had a maturing missile and drone industry, a rebuilding air-defense network, an intact ring of proxies, and Hormuz leverage backed by a genuine fleet, all of it shielding a nuclear program as it advanced toward a survivable deterrent. The Iran of June 2026 has a defense-industrial base gutted by 90%, a navy measured in decades of repair, proxies severed and fending for themselves, an economy in freefall, and a command structure Cooper described as “shattered.” The first Iran was being built. The second is being salvaged. [The uranium] ... sounds like a card Tehran still holds. It is closer to a noose. A stockpile is not a deterrent by itself. A deterrent requires a survivable means to build, conceal, and deliver a weapon, and an air-defense umbrella to keep the effort alive long enough to matter. Iran has lost all three. Nasr himself warns that ordinary Iranians increasingly see the bomb as their only shield. Precisely so. A hollowed-out state whose last available move is a dash toward a weapon it cannot protect is not safer for having the material. It is more exposed, because that dash is the single act most certain to summon the finishing blow the regime has so far been spared by President Trump.
Alexander Muse has been publishing excellent essays this year. On Iran's purported victory lap:
Yes, for years I have been recommending professionally that the 5th Fleet reconsider its mission from keeping the strait open to closing it. The gas prices are painfully high; more for those of you who don’t live on a motorcycle! That said, there’s a grand strategy victory here— not just regarding Iran, but China.
ReplyDeleteI've always had a problem with statistics offered without context. Maybe Cooper offered it in his closed door testimony, maybe the politicians (and their staffers?) asked for it during that closed door testimony, but it's not reported.
ReplyDelete...1,450 strikes on weapons-manufacturing facilities alone....
...
Against how many such facilities extant before the strikes went in? How many of those strikes resulted in complete destruction of the facility, how many only suffered damage, and to what extent? How many repeat strikes are included in that number?
...10,200 sorties and over 13,500 strikes....
...sunk 161 vessels across 16 classes of warships...
To what effect from the perspective of the men and women of the Iranian government? These sound like Vietnam-era body count stats absent context. And so on.
...destroyed or severely degraded the backbone of Iran’s missile, drone, naval, and air-defense infrastructure....
More than a nuisance-level force remains from the perspective of the shippers wanting to cross the Strait of Hormuz in either direction.
Iran closing the Strait is putting a noose around its own neck? From whose perspective? Iran's command structure is shattered? From whose perspective? It looks more like a heavily decentralized structure to me, one they've rehearsed for decades. Just like we did as a matter of course in the USAF.
Most important, beyond any statistic, is this. The reason Iran hasn't been defeated isn't due to any failure of the combat effort or our own blockade of Iran. It's because those phases haven't gone far enough. Iran hasn't been defeated because the men and women of the Iranian government don't believe they've been defeated: they still live to struggle on.
That's the lesson of the Second Punic War, and it's time we heeded it.
Eric Hines