Obtaining accurate Battle Damage Assessment after a raid or strike is rarely quick. What effect you have had is sometimes hard to see and what knock-on effect you have had, hard to judge.
Following Operation Midnight Hammer and the US penetration strikes on Iran’s nuclear programme, one place likely to see knock-on effects is the Strait of Hormuz. Those of us who have faced down onrushing swarms of fast-attack craft there, or been involved in planning how to counter them – or the Iranian mines or submarines – will know how important the Strait is to Iran. Much effort and expense has been devoted to ensuring that they could control it if the moment arose. Is this the moment?
Yesterday afternoon the Iranian parliament officially approved closing the Strait for the first time since 1972. While that is a nominal authorisation rather than a decision, it affirms the Iranian belief that control of this key chokepoint is in their gift.
One point that needs to be made loud and clear is the difference between closing the Strait and contesting it. They could close it in spite of the fact that the skies appear to belong to the Israeli air force. The Strait is a long sortie for Israeli planes and will not have been a priority in the last few weeks. Iran has thousands of mines and fast attack craft, dispersed along the coast specifically to make them hard to strike. They have hard-to-detect midget submarines armed with heavyweight torpedoes designed to sink the largest ships. They also have an array of shorter-range cruise and ballistic missiles on mobile launchers which could cause havoc if all deployed at once: think Houthis x 10. We now know these capabilities are not as good as we thought, and some will have been neutralised, but mass and mobility still count.
But I don’t believe they will close the Strait, not deliberately anyway. It’s not in their economic interest, would annoy what few regional friends they have – in particular Qatar – would unite the Gulf against them and, most critically, a closure would be unacceptable to China. The tried and tested assumption has always been Iran would only close the Strait if the regime was about to fall, and we don’t seem to be there yet.
Iran might contest the chokepoint, though. This is a different proposition and is being confused in the dialogue a lot. GPS jamming there is already at record high levels, though this is probably not aimed at merchant shipping: it will be intended to confuse US and Israeli aircraft and missiles. Boardings, riding off and harassment have been standard fare for the last 20 years – they could turn this up a notch, targeting specific carriers and cargoes – perhaps those destined for Western nations only.
Obtaining accurate Battle Damage Assessment after a raid or strike is rarely quick. What effect you have had is sometimes hard to see and what knock-on effect you have had, hard to judge.
Following Operation Midnight Hammer and the US penetration strikes on Iran’s nuclear programme, one place likely to see knock-on effects is the Strait of Hormuz. Those of us who have faced down onrushing swarms of fast-attack craft there, or been involved in planning how to counter them – or the Iranian mines or submarines – will know how important the Strait is to Iran. Much effort and expense has been devoted to ensuring that they could control it if the moment arose. Is this the moment?
Yesterday afternoon the Iranian parliament officially approved closing the Strait for the first time since 1972. While that is a nominal authorisation rather than a decision, it affirms the Iranian belief that control of this key chokepoint is in their gift.
One point that needs to be made loud and clear is the difference between closing the Strait and contesting it. They could close it in spite of the fact that the skies appear to belong to the Israeli air force. The Strait is a long sortie for Israeli planes and will not have been a priority in the last few weeks. Iran has thousands of mines and fast attack craft, dispersed along the coast specifically to make them hard to strike. They have hard-to-detect midget submarines armed with heavyweight torpedoes designed to sink the largest ships. They also have an array of shorter-range cruise and ballistic missiles on mobile launchers which could cause havoc if all deployed at once: think Houthis x 10. We now know these capabilities are not as good as we thought, and some will have been neutralised, but mass and mobility still count.
But I don’t believe they will close the Strait, not deliberately anyway. It’s not in their economic interest, would annoy what few regional friends they have – in particular Qatar – would unite the Gulf against them and, most critically, a closure would be unacceptable to China. The tried and tested assumption has always been Iran would only close the Strait if the regime was about to fall, and we don’t seem to be there yet.
Iran might contest the chokepoint, though. This is a different proposition and is being confused in the dialogue a lot. GPS jamming there is already at record high levels, though this is probably not aimed at merchant shipping: it will be intended to confuse US and Israeli aircraft and missiles. Boardings, riding off and harassment have been standard fare for the last 20 years – they could turn this up a notch, targeting specific carriers and cargoes – perhaps those destined for Western nations only.