Subject: Re: About Iran’s Navy “At the Bottom of the Sea”
You'd think that would be enough to motivate certain European countries to not want to be in a position where a collection of nutjobs can hold them hostage at whim, but maybe not.

Right - that's why none of them would have ever signed off on this ill-advised adventure in the first place. The prior threat against Iran (if you hold the strait hostage it would start a war) was sufficient to keep Iran in check, but once we launched an attack on them anyway and killed all their leaders they had little to lose by going up the escalatory ladder.

This certainly isn't going to lead them to bail us out of the problem we've caused, though. Again, opening the strait by force will require significant ground forces to seize all the islands and coastal areas. They're not doing that for the same reason we haven't invaded Iran with ground forces to keep a collection of nutjobs from getting a nuclear weapon: not because the goal isn't important, but because their electorate would never stand for putting their troops in harm's way that way.

And will that help or hurt their economy?

It will hurt their economy.

But this is the disconnect, I think. Our war objectives aren't "to hurt their economy." Our war objectives deal with their nuclear program, sponsorship of terror groups, etc. There is a difference between those two things. To use the "underpants gnomes" syllogism here:

1. Hurt their economy.
2. ? ? ?
3. Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.

The core problem with this strategy is Step 2 (just like the more humorous scenario of the Underpants Gnomes). How does "hurt their economy" translate into "Iran never gets a nuclear weapon"? Unless it causes the regime to fall, it's hard to see many other paths by which achieving the first step leads to the third step. Which leads us back to the main point - Iran is fairly confident that it can last longer than the U.S. is willing to endure the economic costs.

I suppose they could all fish.

They do have other parts of their economy, you know. Lots of economies in the world don't export oil. Iran had their oil exports driven down to only 0.4 mbpd back at the height of Trump's "maximum pressure" on sanctions back in the day, driving the oil sector below 3% of their economy - and they got by without being reduced to only fishing.

https://www.gisreportsonline.c...

Then domestic pressure on Trump in the form of the democrat party essentially rooting for an American humiliation grows. That's what the Iranians are counting on. Bush43 held firm; we'll see what Trump does. The democrats don't have unlimited cards to play, though.

You have no idea how relieved I am to hear you say this. Seriously.

Trump has started a war that is unlikely to achieve the objectives he's set out - at least not with the resources he's willing to commit and the (lack of) casualties he's willing to endure. He seems unable to get to a point where he can point to the outcome and declare it a victory in a way that will be credible. Perhaps he might, but the Iranians seem unwilling to give him even what was on offer before the war started. Given all that, it seems like an irresolvable dilemma. The mistake was in starting the war, expecting it to be a quick high-reward outcome with very little cost, rather than the very real likelihood of a long damaging conflict. But Trump cannot be seen to have made a mistake, so we have to keep going on and on....

....unless. Unless Trump has someone to blame. Someone whose fault it is that we "lost," someone his base can get behind and agree that they're the problem, not Trump. So it's great to see the first stirrings of "blame the Democrats" starting to emerge. If that takes hold, then we might be leading somewhere that Trump can find the political (and ego) cover to say that it's the Democrats' fault, not his. And then we can possibly escape the worst consequences of his folly...