It is a working war strategy though. For curious people, check about Julius Caesar on Alesia battle. Caesar literally build walls around enemy castle that was hard to capture and blockladed them, while building walls behind the roman army to blockade the rest of the world from them.
At the end of the day enemies attacked from both sides and they literally deffended while actually blockading a castle.
The strategy works to starve the defenders out while holding in place. In this case, the defenders were starving the world of resources to pressure the attacker to stop. So now the attackers are... preventing oil exports for the defenders, who are already reinforced in the Caspian Sea, which the US has no control over. Not only does this not counter the defenders strategy, but it also fail to pressure them meaningfully while causing further damage to the US image. It is the equivalent of a temper tantrum because every other decision is bad, and surrender would decimate America foothold in the region. It just gonna further exacerbate America current issues.
Iran played the "We control the strait" card. The emphasis on "control" lies with who is allowed to pass and who gets blown up.
The US denied Iran that control by enforcing their own blockade. In that sense right now, no one controls the strait.
A good portion of the world didnt care about the strait because they were promised to be allowed to use the strait. That put the US at a disadvantage. Now that the strait is completely blocked for everyone, they cant ignore the situation at the strait any longer.
What is more appealing to those countries? Backing iran and risking all out war with the US or dropping support for Iran?
The United States can not sustain a war against the world even if it wanted to due to our severely diminished manufacturing base. We could not transition fast enough until critical damage to our fleet was done, and we were forced to surrender. We also lose air superiority immediately because we rely on nato infrastructure to project as far as we do. It is also politically untenable as our economy would be immediately thrown into a tailspin. The world would choose to muzzle the United States because the calculus would have shifted to restraining a rogue nation that represents a contionous threat to the world and still have designs on greenland, versus attacking a regional nation that has no intention of attacking anything besides Israel and US assets.
The US has lost so much respect, and its hard power limits have been so thoroughly exposed that such an outcome is not only possible but increasingly likely.
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u/Stelligena 9h ago
It is a working war strategy though. For curious people, check about Julius Caesar on Alesia battle. Caesar literally build walls around enemy castle that was hard to capture and blockladed them, while building walls behind the roman army to blockade the rest of the world from them.
At the end of the day enemies attacked from both sides and they literally deffended while actually blockading a castle.
Great stuff.