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Comment by energy123 | Hacker News Reader

Because it's not true. CENTCOM can reopen the strait whenever they want, but doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it. It's still a strategic defeat, but for different reasons than what you are saying.

Recommend studying the public comments of General MacKenzie who was the previous CENTCOM commander, comments from Admiral Cooper before he was appointed to current CENTCOM commander, or previous Joint Chiefs of Staff.

They've all given public interviews about Hormuz during the current war or before it over the last decade saying the same thing about what's required and whether it can be done.

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Well sure, but everything short of committing the whole country to total war will always come down to “we could do it, it’s just too politically expensive”. Even in authoritarian countries, there is a limit to what you can get away with.

That “we could do it, we just don’t want to” argument will face its acid test later in the year when the midterms are closer, but certainly if I were in charge of Iran I’d be feeling pretty good about the current situation.

Do you think the military gave a realistic assessment of what time and resources it would take to control the strait? Was this pitched as an operation that would take a huge political commitment of troops and drag on for years?

> Was this pitched as an operation that would take a huge political commitment of troops and drag on for years?

That has been the military assessment in leaks, yes.

No idea. Do you think it was pitched like that before the conflict began?

I don’t know. My prior is that this admin was never willing to put boots on the ground. And for purely self-serving reasons, they wouldn’t have risked a scenario where Iran blocked oil traffic through the strait, causing gas prices to go up.

So, to me, the two possibilities are: the military told the administration it couldn’t control the strait without boots on the ground, and Trump disregarded that advice.

The other possibility is that the military was overconfident. We know it has been developing plans to attack Iran for decades. It’s possible the military thought it could control the strait based on obsolete plans that didn’t account for new developments like Iranian fast boats and drones.

> doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it

So the US Navy is unable to achieve the objective in a reasonable timeframe and cost. That's the same as failure.

You can call it a failure, it's just not a military one.

Hell there's an argument to be made that the US should downsize its military because there's no universe in which exercising its full capability is not either the end of the world as we know it or absolute political suicide.

> You can call it a failure, it's just not a military one.

Would that work in corporate America? Try telling your boss, "I didn't actually fail because had you given me an unreasonable amount of time and resources I would have succeeded." Every project has an expectation of time and cost, and if you can't meet that expectation then you failed.

If your boss sets patently unreasonable expectations then that's arguably his failure as opposed to yours though obviously he will attempt to shift the blame to you.

> Because it's not true. CENTCOM can reopen the strait whenever they want

This is not true.

There is too much coastline to guard to protect from coastal drone launches.

There are too many cheap drones and not enough cheap drone counters.

There are still a LOT of working ballistic missile launchers.

There are still a lot of anti-air threats, including medium and short range anti air, and combination infared+electro-optical MANPADS capable of shooting down true 5th gen stealth fighters.

They don't need to hit 999 of their drone or missile launches, they need to hit 1 or 2 to make insurance companies unwilling to take the risk of allowing movement through the straight.

Not to mention the cost of this... military excursion has been extensive in both depletion of competent military officers, depletion of strategic use precision guided weapons, we have lost some very expensive and critical airframes, and politically and around the world, have shown to be somewhat of a very expensive paper tiger in modern large scale operations that is clearly not yet ready for the realities of a modern conflict that isn't being fought by a state in the middle of a civil war.

I could go on and on from both a tactical and strategic angle about why this was awful, but I don't think I'd sway the minds of anyone already set in their perspective.

> There are still a LOT of working ballistic missile launchers.

About half or so have been destroyed if one averages various estimates. The continuation of combat operations was the sensible option: not finishing off a wounded but aggressive animal is always a mistake. Iran will put whatever sanctions relief they get out of a "deal" towards rearming and rebuilding their nuclear facilities, and we will be back to square one in a decade or so, only against a more emboldened enemy.

> About half or so have been destroyed if one averages various estimates

This is a pretty bold claim. What's your source for this?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2026/05/07/iran-missiles...

CIA report claims 70% available.

There are massive connected and independent tunnel systems that house, protect, and maintain those systems.

Very hard to get all of them.

First of all it's a failure since they attacked without considering they would be closing the strait, they just did not believe Iran would do that, hence not positioned themselves. https://archive.ph/XkXCf

Second, you are basing your assessment that they could open it whenever on some statements what the US could do - again not taking into consideration what Iran what respond with. It's like with all the other goals of this war, the US telling us what they could be doing (which boils down to "more bombing"). Admiral Cooper that brought us the famous 24h "Project Freedom"? Pardon our skepticism, some of their plans maybe sound nice to them, they just expect the other side to not react appropriately, that has been the biggest mistake with Iran.

> Admiral Cooper that brought us the famous 24h "Project Freedom"? Pardon our skepticism, some of their plans maybe sound nice to them

At least some form of it secretly continued until now.

I assume you're talking about "slow and expensive" like sending tens of thousand of troops to occupy at _least_ the ~entire shore around the narrow part of the Strait, indefinitely?

Yeah, shocking there's no political will for that.

You assumed wrong. Maybe listen to the interviews before responding with aggressive sarcasm.

It was an honest question.

I would point you to Gen MacKenzie's interviews as the reference on that question, I would just be regurgitating his views.

He says that a sustained coastal invasion is not necessary. Raids would be necessary to destroy any buried weapons, but these troops wouldn't need to stay there.

Other than this you need more of what they were already doing, "shaping operations" as he calls it, which is ISR drones overhead and lots of bombing/strafing runs.

Eventually, because they don't have a remaining industrial base and cannot effectively replenish their stocks (excepting more simple one way attack drones), they will lack the ability to project enough power beyond their borders to keep the strait closed.

Operation Praying Mantis is a somewhat dated case study, but still required reading.

The reason it's so expensive should be more intuitively obvious - interceptors are expensive and are needed to pace China, and a few more months of closure is significant inflation before the midterms.

> Raids would be necessary to destroy any buried weapons, but these troops wouldn't need to stay there.

Shaheds can be launched from trucks from inside densely populated cities. Good luck with those raids.

> Eventually, because they don't have an industrial base and cannot effectively replenish their stocks

Modern drones are cheap and easy to assemble, Iran's allies (Russia, China) can easily smuggle them inside country.

The win condition is not zero Shahed attacks, the win condition is to open the strait.

Its the same thing. Businesses won't move ships if there are shahed attacks.

And yet they are moving ships despite Shahed attacks that occurred yesterday, so by this empirical observation, you must conclude that you are operating under a flawed worldview.

yesterday's attack happened allegedly because Iran didn't allow specific ships to move. Those which are moving today likely received permission from Iran.

Thanks for the info, I'll track down that interview. That is an interesting strategy that I didn't consider.

If the truth is that our extremely expensive military is relatively useless in this situation, do you really think he'd admit that?

Hundreds of thousands

That would not be sufficient because Iran can send drones from deeper within its territory.

There is no way to keep the straight open without cooperation from Iran, or a near destruction of all their military assets.

The Vatican City could develop nuclear weapons whenever they want, but doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it.

This sounds a lot like what some lazy people will say "I could be a doctor/astronaut/millionaire/movie star. I just don't want to"

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