It's just a different world now. Large powerful ships aren't that useful anymore, USA and Israel destroyed some of the largest and the most advanced Iranian ships in the first day of the war they started and yet can't sail their own ships in the region either.
I wonder if the recent USV shipping attacks came Iraqi militias. Maybe Iran set them up with some drone boats like how they send them missiles/drones to hit US bases with. Meanwhile the US was focused on surveilling the Iranian coast. I wouldn't be surprised if Iraq remains the hardest part of maintaining security in the region.
Best source on all this stuff is a classic proper OSINT blogger (who does awesome pics too): https://www.hisutton.com/
The Trump administration instantly folded under that pressure and has already removed some sanctions: https://xcancel.com/SecScottBessent/status/20297142537252622...
Iran should be militarily defeated in a few weeks, so that's a brief shot in the arm.
If Iran gets a half decent government and sanctions on Iran are lifted, that would lower oil prices and hit the Russian economy.
It's probably reasonable to expect several years of disruption to Iranian oil even if sanctions were to be completely lifted in the very near term.
They can hold out for many years. Oil prices going up just means a slightly gentler market for russians.
They are running down cash, gold, and cannon fodder.
As for Ukraine, nobody in the west really cares for it - that proxy war has given all the dividends it can for the west (EU has cut off all economic ties with Russia, EU is now dependent again on the US for its energy thus making the US richer, EU's next generation have now been brainwashed to hate the Russians again, Finland and Sweden have been successfully pressurised to give up neutrality and join NATO, Finland and Sweden joining NATO means the Arctic Council is now dominated by NATO - Arctic is where the west will next try to cut off Russian influence, Ukraine - which had a large territory and the one of the largest military in Europe - has been cut down in size and is now totally economically and military dependent on the west in effect a vassal state) and the Ukraine war is a stalemate now, where Russians will make slow gains as their army grinds down and keeps losing soldiers - and that's a plus too. As Russia becomes weaker, another proxy war or even a direct attack against it can be waged later in the future (maybe after Putin?). American deep state always plans long term - Death by a 1000 cuts ...
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
UAE can get ~30% through Oman now, and probably ~75% in 3-4 years.
Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar are screwed without the straight. Qatar could probably work a deal with KSA to get all of their oil through its pipes to the Red Sea if need be in 2-3 years, but they'd pay a premium.
If I had to guess, I think this will structurally push KSA and UAE to move out of the straight, and for anyone in the straight to be tied to China and India.
I imagine Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran are all going to become Chinese and Indian client states.
North & South America now have a major oil & natural gas surplus. Their total usage is declining and production is increasing.
Meanwhile, the EU, Japan, SK, etc are moving towards renewables & nuclear as fast as they can.
China's probably reached peak fossil fuel imports already.
Yeah, but current EU energy prices are as high as they ever been, so that doesn't help the EU manufacturing industry that in 10 years we'll be fossil fuel free, if they have to close shop in 12 months from the energy price hikes.
This isn't the 1980's where we can surge 100 warships to an area of the world to deny the area or perform escort missions.
If we decided to 10x the Navy budget today and start building ships we'd be a couple decades out since we'd have to start from "train the ship building workforce" first principles to begin with.
Other than air power, the US has been operating off military (reputation) inertia for decades now.
May I suggest an alternative mode of freight that pre-dates trucks and can move much larger volumes at a much lower CO2 cost, namely... a transcontinental train line?
(obviously not going to happen, and might even trigger a few PR cycles about a "hyperloop", but if you were going to try to build large-volume freight, that's where I'd start)
It is prohibitely expensive to move things using trailers vs. freight.
None of what has happened to date was even remotely unforeseeable. It really took a special kind of stupid (that would be the commander in chief of our military) to get drawn in to this fiasco.
We really need to get rid of dual citizens in corridors of power and influence in this nation. ASAP.
The US generally only wages wars of aggression against a nation as well-organized and well-armed as Iran when it can do them at arm's length with remote weapons and air superiority. Since the US has a volunteer army, actual risk to soldiers for something not perceived by the public as an existential threat jeopardizes future fighting efficacy.
The US public will tolerate missiles launched in its name; it is far less likely to tolerate video of entire Navy ships going down or sailors (not) coming home in body bags by the shipload for a cause that the administration didn't even try to sell them on as necessary.
No minetrawlers, the four US had were scheduled to be scrapped earlier this year. So if there's even a single mine you're playing russian roulette with hundreds of people on board
Probably heaps of various anti ship missiles that have been squirreled away with ranges reaching from few nautical miles to few hundred, just for this exact scenario, please keep in mind that you only need one missile to get through to cause dozens if not hundreds of fatalities.
Unmanned naval drones of various kind, not exactly ultra-high tech in this day and age.
And then there's the guerrilla speedboat attacks which means more missiles
Did I mention that one ship has possibly hundreds of people on board? The political system of the US probably cannot tolerate a military mass casualty event of that scale and spectacle. It's therefore just too risky to get anywhere nearby with a ship so all US navy can do is just lob missiles from as far away as possible, while hoping that this whole mess ends before US runs out of standoff weapons. And between Ukraine, Yemen and now this, the armament stocks aren't probably looking too good considering the meager production numbers.
Its like the issue with the Vietnam war. You need 100% perfect security, or its not worth it. If you are only 98% successful, you arent going to have oil tankers or any cargo ships even attempting it. A single failure every 2 months was a massive waste of resources.
The decision of the US Navy to not provide escort services makes perfect sense and it is no surprise.
The only thing that is newsworthy about it is that this has exposed yet another lie of Trump, who at some point has promised that the traffic will not be affected, because USA will provide such escort services.
Also, it exposes the ships to easy attack in a constrained body of water
Also, the ships would need to exit the gulf and travel a long distance to re-arm their defensive weapons, requiring even more ships.
Global supply chain impacts have global ramifications.
Additionally, Russia is redirecting LNG from Europe (the ongoing Hungary-Ukraine spat) to Asia [2].
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-talks-with-ira...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/iran-allow-india-flagged...
China still gets access to Iranian oil, though with high risk and a much slower pace.
India is getting access to Russian oil without sanctions now, but they're in a really tricky situation - one Iranian ship was torpedoed coming from an event promoted by India where there was safety requirements in place. This isn't good.
Many countries are tapping into reserves, and being severely affected by higher prices.
All while Russia gets sanctions removed and a oil price hike, when they were in a critical situation economically. Even the USA shrugging off of the reports of Intel shared with Iran is insane.
Yes, CNN has an analysis:
"How Trump’s Iran exposure could hand Putin a lottery win"
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/12/politics/trump-iran-war-r...
But the reason the US and Israel is even able to do what they are doing is because Russia is spending all its resources fighting Ukraine.
Russia is too weak to do anything to meddle in the conflict. Five years ago Russia would have its navy in the area, private militias on the ground and been an all around nuisance. Today they are non-existant outside of Ukraine.
A sound analysis on it:
Trump, Putin, and the war in Iran
https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
It's like we never learnt from Iraq, Syria, Libya.
Higher oil prices and more volatility in the oil market makes renewables even better of an investment.
Climate change has somewhat faded from popular culture, but the problem still persists. The faster everyone gets off oil the better the less the world will suffer in the future for many different reasons.
The winners are Russia and Trump's LNG fracking friends. The losers are the EU, who had their pipeline blown up and now had their Qatari suppliers blown up. But EU politicians sit still and leave it all to Trump and Putin.
Considering Iran supplies Russia with a lot of its high precision drones, I don't think it even takes this. Iran can do it all on their own.
Iran's neighbour, Israel currently has a genocidal regime (where Netanyahu is trying to become the Jewish Ayatollah by crippling its democracy with the help of his right-wing buddies) that has already massacred and injured more than 50,000 children ( https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unimaginable-horrors-m... ). (The Palestinian genocide is still ongoing). The start of the Iranian war with a massacre of 100+ children suggest that an Iranian genocide too is planned.
America is today run by a President who believes that the rise of India, China, Brazil, South Korea, EU etc, means that American might will be challenged soon, and thus America needs to drop its facade of respect for international law and order and use its full economic and military might to strengthen itself. The Attack on Venezuela and Iran has no politically moral goodwill behind it and is a pure resource grab - it's just a return of imperialism not even trying to pretend otherwise, which none of us in the Global South (former colonies) wish to experience again.
So, tell me again, how is Israel and US morally better than Iran?
And I’ll add on a friendly reminder to anyone who needs it that only 22% of the USA population voted for the current administration.