We paid to get out of kerfuffle in hopes voters forget by the midterms.

There might be. But, from the US point of view, the tolls are not a strategic problem. A conspiracy theorist might even argue that tolls in the Strait of Hormuz make the US oil exports more competitive, and therefore more profitable. The strategic problem for the US (and the rest of the world, Israel obviously included) is for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. One might say that the Memorandum of Understanding is quite vague about that. But the natural conclusion from last Summer and from the last few months is that the US will not hesitate to bomb Iran if it tries to resume its pursuit of the bomb. This does not need to be codified in any agreement, the threat is there implicitly. The MoU is more focused on the carrots than the stick, but the stick is there, in the background, and Iran knows it.

They were still used heavily... you think aircraft carriers are only useful if you can get right next to your target? A huge part of American doctrine is to kill the enemy before you are ever in their view. This is also just basically intuitive. I'm not sure what is confusing you. Its like asking why isn't a bomber parked next to its target before taking off and deploying its munitions.

It's a good question and there are three aspects to this:

1. The US Navy is designed for the Cold WAr. It's often called a "deep blue" Navy because it's designed to operate in the open ocean in deep water. Also, it's designed to operate in colder climates like the North Atlantic and the North Sea. The Persian Gulf is none of those things. It's shallow, warm and narrow. The warm part also matters. It increases wear on ships, it's harder to keep them habitable, you get faster biofouling and so on;

2. Geography just isn't a friend here. The navigable part of the Strait of Hormuz at its narrowest is about 6 miles wide. You'll hear claims about it being 2 miles wide. That's incorrect. There are 2 mile wide navigation channels, one in each direction, and they're separated by a ~2 mile wide buffer; and

3. Another clue here was the continued use of so-called "stand off" weapons [1]. Rather than using gravity bombs, missiles continued to be fired from ships and planes. That's inefficient because you lose weight for the munition part to fuel. So you only ever do this if you can't safely use gravity bombs. Therefore, one can conclude that the military could protect air or water assets. Water assets can't be protected mainly from drones. There was a lot of talk about mines and that is a threat but the same drones that essentially destroyed Gulf military bases could overwhelm the defenses of an aircraft carrier battle group too. Plus there's drone boats. But the way aircraft were used also demonstrated a lack of air supremacy.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48380176

Is there a map that shows generally where they are?

Why do you think they were barely used? I dont know, but assume they were being used nearly non stop to support bombing runs. They dont go on land and they dont have cawasn't.

I'm no expert, but the attack range of the carrier flight wing is 4-500 miles

Mission accomplished!

It affects global prices and sets a precedent against rules on international waters and freedom of navigation.

Does anything America imports through the Strait travel on U.S.-flagged vessels?

If the only recourse is to spend tens of billions on another bombing campaign, or even more on a land war, why would Iran be looking for a path out of anything?

There is zero commercial shopping through the Strait with US flags, everybody uses flags of convenience.

> US ships

What US ships?

1. They already did, Fujairah is a major oil port.

2. Fujairah is within drone and missile range of a lot of remaining Iranian strike capability.

3. Fujairah is not really equipped with a large amount of high precision, reliable, expensive, slow to procure and replace air defense systems.

4. Fujairah has already been struck repeatedly since this conflict kicked off.

5. The oil pipeline capacity from the 'west' side of the UAE to Fujairah is nowhere near enough to meet demand, even if the port and oil terminal were considered totally safe by ship owners and cargo owners, which it isn't.

They already did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habshan%E2%80%93Fujairah_oil_p...

But it obviously wasn't designed to carry all the oil going through the Strait.

Imagine thinking this was a good idea when you cut your ribbon after all that money and effort and then a ~$500 drone flies over and with one explosion has it leaking.

Do you think people are dumb? Obviously beneficial and easy actions that no one has taken rarely exist in the real world. You're basically suggesting the people actually there who have a better view than you are profoundly stupid.

Well, gosh! You're right, that's just not fair! We should make sure the relevant authority figures pass judgement or something to make them stop.

Folks, this is what happens when you lose a war. You have to pay the bad guys to win the war in a more comfortable way for you.

Iran knows this is a protection racket. They don't care. What're we gonna do about it? Bomb them again?

Some real 5 dimensional chess being played here

The Ever Given was stuck in the Suez Canal.

Narrowest width:

- Strait of Hormuz (33 km)

- Bab-el-Mandeb (26 km)

- Strait of Gibraltar (13 km)

- Strait of Malacca (2.8 km)

- Bosphorus (700 m)

- Suez Canal (205 m) <- Ever Given

- Panama Canal (55 m)

> The US military executed nearly flawlessly

Did they? They

- Started the war off by (to all appearances accidentally) bombing a girls elementary school

- Had an aircraft carrier spontaneously catch fire via laundry - forcing it to go for repairs mid war

- Lost a bunch of very expensive aircraft, and some (though not very many per airframe) soldiers with them

- Proved that the F-35s stealth capabilities aren't quite what they were hyped up to be by having one hit by a guided missile

And on the strategic objectives front (where, to be fair, they were given impossible tasks)

- Killed the person they were hoping to install as the new head of state

- Didn't manage to destroy Iran's missile launch capability

- Didn't manage to secure the straight of hormuz

- Didn't manage to defend their own bases against missile attacks, instead fleeing to hotels

> The US military executed nearly flawlessly

The US military exhibited numerous flaws. To cover numerous flaws not yet covered by other replies:

* Required the deployment of assets beyond their useful operational capability (which caused the aircraft carrier to catch fire).

* Demonstrated that their targeting list is not only based on outdated information, but failed to update that information when informed it was outdated (which led to the bombing of the elementary school).

* Failed to anticipate literally the one military contingency everyone expected Iran to do--close the strait. Hell, even after it was clear that was happened and everyone was screaming "what are you going to do about it?" the answer was, shockingly "absolutely nothing."

* Failed to adequately secure supply lines to ensure that military units in the area have sufficient food. This is literally logistics 101 stuff.

* Defined operational success criteria not based on results achieved but on effort spent--in other words, how many bombs you launched rather than whether or not the targets you wanted destroyed were destroyed.

* Definitely several C2 issues we're not entirely privy to, given the midair collision that cost a tanker, and the loss of an AWACS unit.

The strategic issues are even more myriad, but since strategy is supposed to be largely a civilian, not military, decision, it's not really the military's fault. Except I will note that a lot of civilians in this field do come from ex-military background, and there does seem to be a major recurring problem that CENTCOM is producing a lot of people with really bad strategic judgement that is partially responsible for this debacle in the first place. Really to the point that we should consider blackballing everyone from CENTCOM from ever having a military or civilian defense job of importance ever again.

The cost of defeating Iran military (in enough detail to stop them from firing rockets at ships or doing insurgency harassment etc) would probably take years, so honestly the whole operation was unrealistic from the outset without trying to install a favored successor.

Is this really just about the market? I imagine it's also about a ton of body bags coming back just around the midterms. Because that will happen in a ground war.

> War is one way of forcing political will on another

War is politics by other means (Clausewitz).

> pay the cost of defeating Iran by force.

And how much do you think that cost would be? What are we at now? $139 to $1T in long term costs baked in so far.

> > Why even have this military if anything that affects the market makes the US cower in fear?

First of all the chain of those cowering in fear begins with the the actors around ship transit , meaning the owners but also the seamen , they don't want to cross if there is a > 5% chance of being hit . And the seamen are actually being forced to accept such risk, they signed up for something else entirely, their risk preference would be around 0.0% because these days nobody dies at sea anymore.

Without Hormuz the world runs out of oil and that is a much bigger problem than just stock market going down

With the mines and drones and asymmetric warfare you'd need to conquer the entirety of Iran alley by alley and mountain by mountain to secure the strait for a risk tolerance in line with the aforementioned 5%

This war was lost when the U.S. wasn't ready to intervene during the week of popular uprise against the regime, had the intervention happened back then , maybe it could have been possible to overthrow the Ayatollah system and reinstall the Shah (who btw was no Saint either)

John Mearsheimer has called this right from the first day, he said that Iran 'holds all the cards' and he's been right on everything down to a T (no pun intended) [0]

It has been an acrobatic adventure in the Middle East with lots of expenses and very little human losses to follow the 'Greater Israel' ambition of Israel and Bibi. But we must not forget that we killed their Supreme Leader and Religious Leader all wrapped in one , they will not let this slide and with the asymmetric war and warfare this Administration has exposed itself to potentially another 9/11 that would at that point force a ground war with lots of victims.

[0]http://youtube.com/watch?v=DBOVT0UdHXg