[virtualritz]

The US blockade of the strait does not affect Iran's ability to blockade the strait.

And the latter hurts the US (and the rest of the world) way more that the blockade by the US hurts Iran.

No amount of F35s will change that. Iran has no reason to try to attack US military vessels or aircraft.

Surprisingly (actually unsurprisingly) relevant: https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran/

Especially the part about who blinks first ...

[gpt5]

You are missing the point above - the F35 has enabled complete air dominance over Iran, and ability to perform any operation with impunity over Iran's land.

Iran is leveraging its geography and asymmetrical warfare against civilian ship (as done by its proxies), but if the US has build tons of cheap attack drones, that wouldn't have changed anything about this equation. The US already has the ability to strike anywhere in Iran.

Eventually, defense capabilities against drones may catch up and change the equation, but this is all research at this point.

[marcus_holmes]

Your definition of "complete dominance" is different from most people's.

If you completely dominate your enemy, you prevent them from being able to affect the situation. Iran is maintaining a blockade over a major shipping lane that the USA does not want them to. The USA's inability to prevent this shows that they are not "completely dominating" Iran.

[bpodgursky]

No, "air dominance" is a well recognized term, it means you can fly your planes basically anywhere you want, to take out whatever target you want, without risk from AA. They are using it exactly how anyone familiar with warfare terminology would understand it.

[marcus_holmes]

I think the accepted term is "air supremacy" which is a completely different set of words (and meaning) from "complete dominance"

[tennysont]

"Air supremacy" would be dominance of the air such that enemy cannot effectively interfere. "Air superiority" is the lesser level (enemy interference is not prohibitive).

At least in NATO lingo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_supremacy

I can't tell if this comment chain is a factual disagreement (ability to interference) or a linguistic one (supremacy vs superiority).

[marcus_holmes]

Kinda both, really.

Air supremacy (using your useful NATO definition) is not stopping Iran from flying drones and missiles. I don't know if that therefore contradicts the US/Israeli forces having Air Supremacy, or if Air Supremacy itself is an outdated term because it doesn't allow for the kind of drone bombardment we see now.

Either way, it's not "complete dominance" which is where we started from ;)

[virtualritz]

Maybe re-read the last sentence of parent which my reply was to?

Your presumably Ai-generated reply missed that, unsurprisingly, because you probably just copypasta'd parent and my reply in there?

P.S. air dominance in Iran is meaningless in this conflict. Read e.g. the blog post I linked to for context.

[lenerdenator]

> P.S. air dominance in Iran is meaningless in this conflict. Read e.g. the blog post I linked to for context.

It's meaningless now.

If the US, for some reason, decided to say, "For each drone or missile that you fire at one of your Arab neighbors or Israel, we launch an old-fashioned B52 raid on your industry or infrastructure. Come to the negotiating table." and actually carried out that threat, well, there would be nothing the Iranians would be able to do about it.

That's not the case because of the currently scattered nature of US leadership, but it is a possible contingency that the Iranian government has to take into account. There's a reason they're not actively targeting US warships in the region.

[marcus_holmes]

Bombing civilian infrastructure never works like this. As we saw in The Blitz (and in Vietnam, and in Ukraine), it just draws the bombed together, unifying them and hardening their resolve.

[lenerdenator]

If you ignore Japan and Germany, this is absolutely true.

[marcus_holmes]

Japan was nuked, different thing.

Germany was not bombed into submission. Millions of Russian soldiers invaded their capital city and forced them to surrender.

[tick_tock_tick]

Can you use an example that doesn't prove the exact opposite?

Bombing absolutely worked in Vietnam so much that the south didn't actually lose the war until 2 years after the USA left. The war becoming a political nightmare is why the USA left not because the horrendously effective bombing stopped working.

Ukraine is really weird to put in here because Russia has fail to establish any effective air superiority so I can't make heads or tails why you put it in here.

As for the Blitz is was absolutely effective vs the British but USA factories and supply shipments were largely out of reach of the Axis.

Add in the fact that the people of Iran are largely opposed to being governed by a Muslim theocracy (most of the population is not Muslim) I'm frankly struggling to see how you get any of your viewpoints.

[carefree-bob]

That is a unique view of what happened in Vietnam.

But let's look at a more modern example that makes your case: Syria. The US starved that country, seizing the food and oil, funding/arming terror groups - not just the kurds but also Al Nusra and other islamic terror groups, invading portions of the country and placing military bases there to give air support to terror operations and maintain control of the oil wells, blowing up pipelines, for over a decade. Finally after years of starvation and hyperinflation, the government collapsed as the generals were bribed by Qatar (or the Qataris were just intermediaries, we don't know) to lay down their arms and let the Jolani regime take over. When you are convinced your nation doesn't have a future, suitcases of cash and exit visas to mansions in London do wonders.

So yeah, you can punish a nation so much that it is easy to take over.

But, can the world survive 10 years of the straight of Hormuz being closed? I doubt it. Syria was a small country and it held out for a decade. Sure, it had help from Russia and China, but so does Iran now. When the US was strangling Syria, we already controlled the oil and food producing regions of the country. But there is no such arrangement in Iran, and Syria was not able to close off a major shipping lane like Iran can.

So I am skeptical that the US can outlast Iran and inflict enough misery on them to overthrow the region before this Iran adventure is brought to a close by world oil prices and US domestic political unrest.

[marcus_holmes]

You're suggesting that bombing civilian infrastructure will cause the Iranians to surrender (or to concede negotiating points in order to stop the bombing).

My point is that this doesn't work - the British under The Blitz famously had "Blitz Spirit" that was all about enduring the bombing and showing the Germans that they couldn't be beaten like this. The Vietnamese did not try to stop the bombing by surrendering or negotiating, and neither have the Ukrainians; again, if anything, they are more unified and more resolute because of the Russians attacks on their infrastructure.

Can you give me a single example where prolonged bombing of civilian infrastructure has brought a country to the negotiating table? Or made them surrender?

[johnsmith1840]

If US destroys Iran it will be the dominate energy supplier for the next 100 years. Iran will be in shambles for 50 years.

If Iran surrenders US will be the dominate energy supplier for the next 30 years. Iran will be in shambles for 10 years.

The former would cause a worldwide depression but the clear winner of that is the US by a very large margin. If Iran wants to destroy itself and its neighbors US would be happy with the untold billions that would flow into the country and its energy infra investments in venezuela. All the wealth of middle east would leave and not be reinvested as now it's risky to invest in the ME.

Iran has the choice of a deal US likes or to make the middle east a wasteland for Israel to dominate for generations while US grows to a power that is hard to comprehend.

The only thing that has to happen for US to win is not surrender to a country with no military whose only threat they can make is to harm everyone else in the world but the US.

[LastTrain]

It is almost like you think it is 1965.

[johnsmith1840]

Orange man seems to think so.