Modern US surface warships such as the DDG-52 Arleigh Burke class are pretty survivable. The Iranians (and their Houthi proxies) have made sustained attacks on them and don't seem to have hit anything. And a single hit would be highly unlikely to sink such as vessel: we're not talking about something like the Russian Moskva cruiser that was crewed by drunks and had inoperative defensive systems.
The real problem is that there are too few such vessels to sustain convoy escort operations. Each destroyer can only provide area air defense for a handful of merchant vessels, and they can only stay on station for a few days at a time before they have to cycle out to refuel, rearm, and conduct critical maintenance. Some of the key munitions also appear to running low. And it appears that the other Gulf states are refusing to allow use of their facilities over fears of Iranian retaliation.
Other countries generally aren't really in a position to assist as part of a coalition either. They either don't have sufficiently capable warships at all, or lack the logistics train to sustain them in the Persian Gulf / Gulf of Oman region. After the Cold War a lot of countries like the UK and Germany essentially dismantled their navies so that they now exist only as government jobs programs.
Assisting the US with regard to Iran is phenomenally unpopular. The increase in energy prices isn't outweighing people's desire not to have their country assist.
The other thing is: even if a country like the UK committed billions of dollars to joining the fight in the gulf - there’s no reason to think it’d lower their energy prices, or earn them any favours from Trump.
Short of a nuclear strike (which isn’t on the cards thankfully) nothing short of a ceasefire can get shipping moving again. Sending more warships doesn’t help with that.
So it’s not just that helping Trump would be incredibly unpopular at home - there’s also no guarantee the huge expense would lower energy bills at all.
Many countries have said they will help patrol the strait as long as the war stops. Iran wont be able to keep this after the war. Iran wont declare war against the entire world, so they wont shoot down their destroyers.
The attack on Iran was an attack on the globe, causing energy and supply chain issues for everybody, including the attackers.
Other countries are not volunteering to help prosecute more attacks on Iran, because they are already victims of those attacks, and it's bad enough that the USA and israel aren't even apologizing for hurting them, much less paying for the damages.
Thus, the offer to "help patrol the strait" once the USA and israel stop attacking is meant to persuade the USA and israel to stop attacking, not an indication of support for the USA and israel's attacks. Indeed, most countries do not support the USA and israel's attacks on Iran, were totally okay with the status quo, and would have preferred if the USA and israel had not attacked Iran.
So what? Attacking Iran was a stupid move, but the US and Israeli regimes don't particularly care about the other victims whining. If other countries are going to make themselves dependent on fossil fuels from the Persian Gulf region then they'll either have to secure their own sea lines of communication or accept that supplies are unreliable. Asking for apologies or payments won't accomplish anything. That is the geopolitical reality.
There are refeniries dependent on the Persian Gulf region(PGR) but the majority of countries are dependent on the the general commodities market of downstream products. The US famously produces more oil than it uses and is not generally receiving fuel that's downstream of the PGR and yet if you look at the gas prices in the US you'll realise that it's not as simple as being reliant on fossil fuels from the PGR.
That's without taking into account other things like high grade helium or specific niche products.
The us imports more crude oil than it exports. An easily looked up fact.
The us does export more refined products than it imports but it’s highly dependent on crude imports for it’s significant refining capacity.
> the US and Israeli regimes don't particularly care about the other victims whining
This does seem to be true of israel, but as for the USA, it does not, hence the USA limiting their attacks.
> If other countries are going to make themselves dependent on fossil fuels from the Persian Gulf region then they'll either have to secure their own sea lines of communication or accept that supplies are unreliable.
This sort of rhetoric is why other countries do not support the USA and israel: the other countries already did that, then the USA and israel came and attacked those supply lines, thus attacking those countries.
It strikes me as gaslighting abuser language to attack someone else, then blame it on them for not protecting themselves better. It's better for the attackers to acknowledge their mistakes, apologize for them, and pay restitution.
It's not rhetoric. I'm not trying to convince anyone, I'm just explaining how things work. Since the other countries largely lack the ability to act, their support or lack thereof is irrelevant. The US and Israel have no incentive to apologize or pay restitution; more likely outcomes are that they either escalate, or unilaterally disengage and leave others to clean up the mess.
The world does have another much better option: they can pay the Iranian ransom and call it a day. No need to participate in another war.
this is in no small part because Iran is viewed a bit like America's Poland.
Yes, I know ww2 comparisons are tired but honestly the Lebensraum explanation makes more sense than what trump has said publicly, so here we are...
And yet national leaders do phenomenally unpopular things all the time when they decide it's necessary. In this particular case it's mostly moot because none of the other impacted countries really has the capability to act regardless of popularity or lack thereof. Like the UK chose to spend all of their money on nationalized healthcare instead of the military. I don't mean that in a critical or negative way, on balance that might have been the right choice for them. But that choice does constrain their options in a crisis.
The UK spends a lower fraction of its GDP on health than the US (the US is an outlier because of its system).
The UK's NHS is not why it's not taking part in this mess.
Would it not be pretty counterproductive for other countries to assist the US in this case? That seems only likely to prolong / exacerbate the war. The US giving up would be much faster.
Whether it would be counterproductive or not depends on what those other countries are trying to produce. None of them particularly want to pay tribute or protection money to Iran, especially because Iran could then decide to close the strait again or raise the fee at any time. They also don't want to set a precedent that other countries might exploit for charging transit fees through their national waters. And the USA might impose secondary sanctions on any country which makes payments to Iran. So the current stalemate might last quite a while.
"Like the UK chose to spend all of their money on nationalized healthcare instead of the military"
I believe the equation is a bit more complex than that.
Fair enough. There are a multiple additional reasons why the UK can no longer afford an expeditionary military to protect their overseas interests, but the full explanation can't fit into an HN comment. The exact reasons aren't relevant to the current state of affairs, the main point is that they lack the capability to do anything even if they wanted to.
Is it even worth to escort tankers? The money you spend on countering cheap drones would be massive, and this administration would likely ask the escorted ships to pay for protection. At that point, they might as well just pay Iran.
The rub is the insurance for the tankers. The providers are looking at the risk and saying “hard pass.” Unless the US govt wants to get in the tanker insurance business they are stuck.
The US government is already in the shipping insurance business. That hasn't helped. War risk insurance is also still available from other carriers.
https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/breaking-news/w...
I don't know anything about this but I am a software engineer.
Stop laughing for a minute because I do have a point.
As a software engineer, I typically build something and engineer it so I can iterate quickly and improve it. I know that the first version won't work.
Isn't this a perfect opportunity for Iran to iterate on sinking cargo ships? I'm struggling to believe that a regime that is (allegedly) weeks away from a nuclear bomb wouldn't be able to keep launching missiles at ships until they notice the right type of hole.
And, think of the apprenticeship opportunities.
Iran doesn't want to sink merchant ships. They want to extort money from merchant shipping companies by threatening to sink their ships if they don't pay for 'protection'. All they need is a credible threat, which they already have absent any naval ships willing to stay at point blank range to defend merchant ships.
While there are religious, cultural and political aspects to this, the Iranian govt has primarily become a kleptocracy in recent years. It sustains power through the Revolutionary Guard (aka IRGC) which has grown into what's essentially a state-run, money-making commercial enterprise. It collaborates and colludes with various entities across the Iranian economy which it controls either directly or via bribes and coercion. While reasonable people can debate what the recent attacks on Iran accomplished, they certainly nerfed a large part of the IRGC's income. The new Hormuz extortion scheme isn't just retaliation or vengeance, it's replacing lost income which is urgently needed to prop up the Iranian government.
Yes, Iran has already hit several merchant vessels. Their ability to do that occasionally is not in doubt. It's mostly a question of economics. The ship owners and insurers have to decide whether it's worth the risk to run their cargoes through. This has all happened before with the 1980s "Tanker War" between Iraq and Iran: despite some losses the traffic never completely stopped.
And large merchant ships, especially crude oil tankers, and quite tough to sink. When they take a hit it usually just causes some damage.
Iterating on a rocket design is not like making a tweak to a line of code. It needs production line changes, manufacturing, testing, (repeat X times) where the process takes weeks, months or even years untill desired results can be achieved. And their manudacturing sites have been reduced to rubble, so that slows things down too.
As I said I'm only a software engineer but didn't Ukraine revolutionize the rules of asymetric warfare by drone iteration? Your statement rings true but I wonder if there are aspiring rocket engineers that really want to test their totally unproven new ideas without the constraint of a military hierarchy in peacetime.
The thing is, Iran doesn’t need to. US maybe can defend their ships, but they can’t defend commercial ships well enough for them to resume regular operations. Even unsuccessful attacks would cause insurance to make it not possible.
Houthis closed their straight some years ago and US wasn’t able to do anything about that neither. And Houthis are nowhere near as capable as Iran.
US gambled on decapitation strike and failed.
It's clearly clogged, could PNE's unclog it?
Yes, that is a fair point. However, the cost of drone versus latest generation ballistic missile that has a chance to reach us naval ship is very different. And in that sense, iterating on a drone is closer to iterating on a line of code because one drone would cost you a thousand bucks and your iteration is a small tweak like adding a different grenade triggering mechanism. Rockets require custom design, custom manufacturing lines, and generally much more difficult to modify and make more effective.
You also have a lot more tries with cheap drones since the target is lower value, so you have hundreds of data points on how each iteration performs vs hitting a naval ship which is an extremely rare event, so it's hard to see whether your iteration on a rocket actually succeeded.
The Iranians (and their Houthi proxies) have made sustained attacks on them and don't seem to have hit anything.
That's because the US has kept the surface combatants far back from the Persian Gulf for the duration of the war.
As far as we know, they have attempted to run the strait twice and had to turn back because they were under sustained attack.
I assume these ships can defend themselves for some period of time, but eventually the munitions run out, and they become sitting ducks. There is a reason the US Navy fled the Persian Gulf on Feb 26 and has not returned since.
> There is a reason the US Navy fled the Persian Gulf on Feb 26 and has not returned since.
Two US Arleigh Burke Class Destroyers transited Hormuz a couple of weeks ago without damage and are still there last I heard. The Iranians were really upset, but couldn't do anything to stop it.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2-us-navy-destroyers-transit-st...
Do you have supporting evidence they are still there? I though they exited toward the Gulf of Oman around May 6/7 https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-V...
I had not heard about that transit, thanks for sharing! The ships mentioned in our two links match up, so it certainly sounds like they spent a some number days in the Persian Gulf and transited back. There was also a transit that occurred in April which mentioned other ships joining the operation in the future, not sure if that happened or not.
If it went so swimmingly, why only twice then, when there are thousands of marooned ships in need of escort services?
Transiting by themselves is a lot different than escorting merchant vessels. By themselves warships are free to maneuver at any time and do so at military speeds. Convoy duty with merchant vessels requires repeatedly moving slowly along a predictable route for sustained periods. Mobility and speed are two of a warship's main strengths.
The extreme narrowness of the strait right next to so much enemy-controlled shoreline is a unique problem. All of the destroyers and frigates from all the world's navies combined couldn't sustain protecting the massive number of merchant vessels wishing to transit the Strait of Hormuz on a daily basis.
> Transiting by themselves is a lot different than escorting merchant vessels
The second crossing was conformed to be such an escort mission. They shot down everything Iran threw at them, but the cost assymetry still holds.
> All of the destroyers and frigates from all the world's navies combined couldn't sustain protecting the massive number of merchant vessels wishing to transit the Strait of Hormuz on a daily basis.
My point exactly: the argument that the "US Navy isn't as large as it used to be" is moot
Ships don’t need escort services because you don’t give command of oil tankers to risk taking thrill seekers. And insurance isn’t enough when the captain is literally on the ship, potentially getting killed.
Ships need a robust, sustained ceasefire.
Warships vs. insurers willing to underwrite a policy for merchant vessels to transit are definitely two very different things. The Iranian Government has a much higher pain threshold/resolve than Trump, but they're also in a lot more pain with the Gulf of Oman closed. Both sides are losing, who will get tired of it first?