Iranian Official Threatens Military Drill Sealing Off the Strait of Hormuz

Does MythBusters need to build a conveyor belt up in this bitch? :santa_angry:

Anc got person of the year!

It's a good thing that the Obama has encouraged American oil exploration and drilling so that our oil supply won't be interrupted if this happens.

Oh, wait!

Putting aside the silliness of shoulder fired anti-ship missiles your plan still wouldn't work. America has this thing called radar and we could pick up any boat of any size and sink it before it got into range of any US ship.

Like Demi said it would probably be mine-laying and that's assuming the Iranian subs survived. I think we've got a sub or two sitting in there just waiting for them to try and lay mines with their subs.

I think you are correct and the Muslim extremists might have gotten away with the USS Cole once, but I doubt they would be able to do it again.

The Cole was attacked in port, not maneuvering on the high seas. I don't recall any Iranian ships scoring hits on any US Navy ships in the Straits in the 80's.

Oh, agreed. My point was that type of attack probably won't work again for anybody.

Al-Qaeda attack is vastly, vastly different from an attack by the Iranian military. I can't believe you would ever compare the two. It's like an Arab saying that the French military could not attack an Arab nation because the IRA blew up Lord Moutbatten's fishing boat.

I think a lot of you seriously underestimate Iran's military capacity. That said, I'm still not convince they will attack. Like I've said many times, it's all about image projection for them.

Well, no shit, Dick Tracy.

Of course all this posturing by Iran would be like them pissing in the wind if we would simply abandon importing oil from the ME and drill here off the coast of the US where there are oceans of untapped oil. Let Iran and Saudi Arabia starve for all I care.

Fuck'em and the camel they rode in on.

I wonder in the USN will increase the Harpoon loadouts on ships in the Gulf. If the Iranian Navy does start shit they'll have a short exciting life followed by a long cooling off period in Davy Jones' locker.

They best be pulling the red plugs out of the B52s out in the desert and getting them ready to roll. If Iran blocks the straight, we should destroy the entire Iranian navy. Threat eliminated.

I feel like Iran threatening to block the straits is about as threatening as a kid threatening to hold his breath so he won't have to go to bed.

He either goes to bed or he passes out and gets PUT to bed by the parent.

I've read the entire thread and I can't find anything about this huge ass drill they're talking about.

In the future they'll be laughing at us in the present for being such soul-less minions of orthodoxy in our willing dependence on oil as a fuel source.

"Oil? An emergency? Ha! It's about time the people who run this planet of yours realised that to be dependent on a mineral slime just doesn't make sense."

The Doctor- Doctor Who, Terror of the Zygons.

Oil production reached an all time high here this year so your claim that he's stopping it is just dumb.

I think you'll find it is a little harder than that.

A great idea. Except of course that the B-52 would have no role to play in a naval engagement between Iranian and USN forces.

Oh and none of the boneyard B-52's could ever be returned to service.

Other than facts you've got it.

Got to disagree - the terms and the positioning give major advantages to Iran. They don't have to 'win' - they just have to prevent the US from winning, and that's a lot easier. The narrow straight itself is a force multiplier, and we'd be looking at serious losses from land based missiles.

Land based air in the Med in WWII dominated the theater, giving the Germans a much larger impact than their few U-boats supplementing the Italians would have expected. The Luftwaffe was a serious threat there, and the Brits took a beating between that and the subs, despite having an overwhelming superiority in naval vessels.

This is a much more enclosed space, and the destructive capacity of mines and missiles would be a test for even the US navy, which in any other capacity would completely overwhelm the Iranians.

The quality of our sailors and tech is superior to be sure, but I think we'd take loses, might even lose a frigate, and the mine clearing vessels would be very vulnerable. For a country used to winning without much effort, it would be a big political hit- and that would be multiplied by the major cost in oil and dip in the stock exchange.

And ultimately, it seems very unlikely we can stop the Iranians from developing their nukes. It would require invading Iran.

Going to get worse before it gets better.

Ultimately the will to win a war extends from the people. Practically speaking, it extends from the White House and the Halls of Congress.

When you say it would be a political hit, you're right - Obama would lose his base.

Link

So Iran is now openly calling the U.S. "the enemy" and threatening military action in international waters.

Oh yeah, this is going to end well.




On a side note, I got to tour the USS John C. Stennis when it was docked in San Diego. A friend of mine was stationed on her at the time. She is truly a magnificent ship.

This will be quite the YouTube video. If the dumb fuck Iranians decide to attack a US CVBG. There's gonna be a lot dead Iranians.

^ Stennis = "Johnny Reb"

When halftime is over, she's ours.

Small world! I just threatened Mike Tyson over the last Mountain Dew at the supermarket. I think Iran and myself might end up meeting the same fate....

In the meanwhile, Iran continues to have really bad luck in it's military - these days it's accidents in its missile production and logistics:

http://theweek.com/article/index/221991/why-do-irans-nuclear-and-missile-sites-keep-exploding

They've lost a lot of major guys to "accidents" in the last decade - including the head of the Revolutionary Guard and his entire staff several years back and now the head of their missile program, Gen. Moghaddam.

Someone is going to write a hell of a book on this some day.

Herman Caine used to work with missile engineering. He's got free time now, maybe Iran can hire him!

There are exactly two men who could do such a thing: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.