Sherman123
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 5, 2012
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- 7,774
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- Northeast US
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The Iranian navy isn't really the problem. Mines and land based anti-ship missiles are. Oil tankers are slow, huge, incredibly fragile and filled to the brim with flammable materials. The strait makes it impossible to hide or maneuver. Even then, the biggest problem is that civilian operators have zero tolerance for any kind of casualties.
The U.S. has the ability to force open the strait eventually if Iran tries to close it, but don't pretend that it won't be very very expensive in economic terms.
Tankers are emphatically not fragile. They are some of the largest most heavily hulled vessels afloat today. They can sustain an enormous amount of punishment before being sunk or even damaged beyond repair. Of the 239 crude tankers (from Suez/Afro Max to VLCC) struck by ASCM's, mines, and other weapons during the eponymous 'Tanker War' only 23% were actually sunk or damaged to the point of being written off as a loss by their firms. Even suicide attacks such as the boat bomb that penetrated the outer hull of the Limburg in 2002 was quickly repaired and never endangered the ship.
These vessels are enormous. Most of the weapons in the Iranian and Iraqi arsenals were too small to do serious damage while military circumstances prevented protracted engagement with vessels other than raids, circumstances that would certainly repeat themselves in a conflict in the Gulf.