War is simply the continuation of politics by other means; to win a war, you have to ‘shatter the enemy’s will to resist, when the enemy is no longer able or willing to fight’. Clausewitz adds: the simplest way to win is to disarm the opponent so that he cannot prevent you from imposing your will (you can see the dialectical thinking and even though Clausewitz was an idealist there is clearly a material reality here).

If Iran can achieve the above, they can win anything. It depends who gets their will ‘shattered’ first and to what extent. When it comes to disarming I think the US is well on its way there with the interceptor shortage and the fact that invading Iran is complete nonsense from the get-go. Saddam tried and he had a full land border with it! I do want them to try invading though lol, just for them to taste the absolute defeat. Kharg is probably a misdirection, and they’re going to land way before the Strait in a relatively flat area, Chabahar. However then they will be confronted by harsh deserts - Iran is either mountains or flat deserts. They won’t make it 20 kilometers inland and I suspect if we do see an invasion, Iran will let them land relatively unchallenged so they can trap them there more easily. We shall see.

But anyway. There is precedence in Vietnam, for example. Not only through the two principles outlined above but also through Clausewitz’s point that war progresses dialectically. Both parties don’t immediately commit the totality of their forces, they gradually mount them up and it snowballs as both need to commit more and more to outdo the adversary.

In Vietnam the war became costly. It might be the typical liberal analysis of it but it’s the one I have lol. It was costly both in terms of money and equipment drained, but also in loss of life. I don’t know how much protests in the US participated, I think it’s often used as white savior reasoning i.e. “even when Vietnam won it was because we let them win”. When Vietnam won they forced the US to withdraw fully within 60 days, and then seized the comprador southern state shortly after unopposed.

But right now will to fight is very high in the US. It’s going to be difficult to knock them down from their pedestal. But when that happens Iran can firstly very easily end the sanctions against it, at least for a time, and pursue nuclear freely in the way they want. We both know the UN is a tool of imperialism and will just go along with whatever the US wants.

The bases around the Gulf are completely destroyed and keep being pummeled, so it’s entirely possible the US won’t even want to build them back up. It will take 10+ years by some estimates to rebuild some of the radars alone. They might want to rebuild them partially, with a scaled back presence. But the damage is done.

With that I think it will be possible for them to charge a toll through the Strait. Who would oppose them? the other gulf states are refusing to get involved beyond harshly-worded letters, they know they don’t have any defenses left if Iran decided to go after them.

“Israel” is a tougher case for me to analyze. I know that Iran is heavily shelling the entity, especially with cluster munition - these are more for soft (ie fleshy) targets. They do pack a punch but you also don’t really control where they fall, so their utility is in saturating an area and preventing congregation or passage there. But Iran has shown they can easily target whatever they want, especially with cheap Shaheds, so at this time I think their usage is more psychological on the settlers. But if you didn’t keep up with the clusters, there’s a ton of them being used. Every day I see new videos.

Having a toll booth at Hormuz in any capacity would be the goal for Iran that would made any other points kinda moot in the long term. Here is a short list of some of the impacts:

• Erode the power of the petrodollar collapsing the US empire economy
• Allow Iran to basically circumvent any sanctions place on them since they can just take that back as toll
• De-legitimized the gulf monarchies and allow Iran to build up friendly group inside those states
• Place other gulf nations economic control in the hand of Iran and thus boost their ability to build up friendly forces there
• Threaten the US and any hostile states intervention in the gulf states since those states will have tons of people depending on Iran

With that kinda power in hand even if the US and occupied Palestine want to keep their bases and vassals in the gulf, it would just be a losing battle since the population will be hostile and cost of maintenance will be lopsidedly expensive.

Iran’s ability to externalize the consequences of this war (i.e. cause a global oil and economic crisis) is a point of leverage that the other countries invaded by the US lacked. This means that the war isn’t likely to settle into the kind of stagnant forever war that characterized Afghanistan, bur rather force the US to either keep escalating or back down. I believe the US would keep escalating until they suffer significant casualties, which might create enough domestic and international pressure for them to formally offer genuine concessions.

Alternatively, they (or the Israelis), may decide to go for the nuclear option instead. The same justification that the US used to nuke Japan, that they are fanatics in highly defensible terrain that and thus too costly to defeat conventionally, can easily be repackaged and sold to the public for Iran. In that case, I can’t really make any predictions beyond that point. I really, really hope that doesn’t happen, but I can’t dismiss this possibility.