Post #75859 by Dope1 on the US Policy board

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The immortal VDH on Iran:

https://amgreatness.com/2026/04/14/iran-a-longer-v...

Iran: A Longer View America’s leverage in the Strait exposes Iran’s weakness—turning its greatest asset into a liability and reshaping the balance of power without a ground war.

*Potentially* without a ground war.

The prognosis of the Iran War is now so couched in politics and so warped by the American Left that the public has grown tired and wants it all to go away. But in truth, the situation is so fluid that any accurate prediction is impossible. Yet there is good reason to believe in an eventual outcome quite favorable to the U.S. and one far better than the status quo ante bellum.

Indeed.

In other words, Trump can flip the Iranian strategy of selective entrance to the Strait, with the key difference that he has the wherewithal to carry out such a calibrated blockade, and Iran does not. World opinion will be with him, for economic reasons and, should Iran seek to stop him, for its breaking the ceasefire and thus justifying the rain of retaliatory bombs that will descend upon it. Or if Iran restarts missile and drone attacks on U.S. military and allies in the region, the administration can warn Iran that it will lose its oil facilities on Kharg Island as well as dual-use generation plants—until it relents. But in the long term, no one will forget Iran’s third—and most egregious—effort to hijack the Strait, despite its failure to do so completely and for any sustained period.

Jiu-jitsu. A great reversal from having Iran in our guard to a full mount position.

Given the hysteria of his political enemies, who smell a takeover of Congress in November, impeachment for Trump, trials for his family members, and the end of the Trump counterrevolution, the stakes are high. To avoid all that, he needs a booming economy based on a steady stock market, lower interest rates, and a return to historically low oil prices—but in the next seven months. The American people also expect a “win” in Iran, defined now by the inability of Iran to close the straits, to launch missiles at U.S. and allied targets, and the surrender of fissionable nuclear material. Iran feels they can delay, harangue, barter, and passively-aggressively stall until the midterms. So the window on the military solution is closing fast. Trump might point out that the long-term outlook is not good for Iran. Saudi Arabia will expand its pipeline capacities to the Red Sea. The UAE will do the same and expand its existing pipeline to the Gulf of Oman. There is even some talk of Saudi Arabia building a new massive line across Jordan to the Israeli Mediterranean port of Haifa. These Gulf agendas will eventually make the Strait irrelevant to oil exporters like Iran and flip its advantage to the disadvantage of Iran’s vulnerable dependency on the Strait. In sum, we should ignore the periodic 24-hour schizophrenia of the Left and the media, and instead examine the reality of the war so far, and what will be its likely long-term effects.

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