Sure I should have been more specific when I said oil. Those pipelines will have to be redirected or Iran will just have to leave them be. Blowing them up would result in reciprocal action of blowing up Iranian oil and gas facilities. It goes both ways.
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But isn’t that the situation we are in now? Both side can hurt the other, without much chance of a real military loss. So it’s a contest for who can withstand more pain for longer. It seems Iran wins that contest.
Well we hurt them much more. For Iran oil is by far their biggest economic activity, and it hurts the regime more. For the US it's higher prices. It actually screwed with the rest of the world quite a bit more, Asia in particular given that the vast majority of exports from the Strait go to to Asia.
Iran doesn't really win that contest. Is your day-to-day intolerable? No it's not. Is the day-to-day of the average Iranian intolerable? No but it's trending that way.
Absolute pain is not the right measure. You have to look at the level of pain that will threaten the stability of the current government or group in power.
On that basis, it’s less clear. How close Iran’s to meaningful instability is debated, and I’ve not seen a convincingly definitive argument from any side.
It's also less clear because you aren't really getting much reporting in western media about day-to-day life in Iran (curious isn't it?).
You're certainly correct that the level of pain tolerance varies between countries and governments, but we tolerated a lot of oil and gas pain during Russia's invasion of Ukraine (I support Ukraine then and now), and if you take your thoughts here to their conclusion you're in my view implying Iran can take more pain than the US can.
What is the conclusion then?
The conclusion is that the US military is completely irrelevant because any activity which seems to affect some sort of consumer or industrial good means the US just can't stomach $5/gallon gas for the MAGA trucks and thus we are incapable of fighting a war to support Ukraine or Taiwan for example because gas prices will go through the roof.
I think (based on reading people who seem well informed) that what matters in Iran is the commitment of the elites in power and loyalty of the security forces. Authoritarian governments can suppress popular will for a long time before collapsing.
For US military power, it seems like the lesson is we can do two things:
- inflict a great deal of physical damage quickly, without any domestic support.
- fight a sustained conflict for an extended period of, with domestic support.
It seems they planned for the first, not the second. Both world wars, the Korean and Vietnam wars all inflicted great costs (loss of life, costs to the government budget, and costs to consumers), but were maintained for quite a while. But they all had significant popular support.
Both Kora and Vietnam involved American ground forces, which is a significant factor in public war weariness. In the case of the blockade of Iran, aside from gas prices being too high, it's all rather abstract to the everyday American. Some ships somewhere are stopping other ships from floating in the wrong direction, the news said we bombed some thing and Iran bombed some other thing. We've been reading about bombings for more than 20 years - it's just routine now.
You're again right, the commitment of the elites in power in Iran matter. BUT if things get bad enough their hand will be forced. And if not, oh well, we can just maintain a blockade. Either way countries in the gulf region will move away from utilizing the Strait due to war uncertainty.
One possibility is that the real activity at this point is not between the US and Iran, but between the gulf states (who are probably willing to accept a compromise) and Iran, and then also between the gulf states (again, who want this over) and Trump who needs to claim victory.
So we learned nothing from Iraq and ISIS?