I didn’t expect the US to actually be stupid enough to start the war so I can’t predict what it will look like a week from now. As it stands, I see Iran as rationing its drone/missile stocks and sending out small attacks to prove it can. If they can fit six Shaheds on a cargo truck somewhere in the Middle East, they can hit a target that day which drastically undermines the GCC countries and Israel while keeping the NATO navies engaged but out-of-range. It’s already the worst oil crisis since 1973 if not worse and they haven’t even mined it extensively or used hypersonic shipkillers, both presumably still options in some tunnel system waiting to go. They haven’t even called Yemen into the war yet, the last force the US Navy couldn’t defeat and an entire other trade route they could shut down.

The UN can try to force it back open, but what does that mean to a country that already grew a siege economy under crippling sanctions? What landmark could UN peacekeepers invade that the US military isn’t afraid of invading? What moral or regulatory standing do those laws have after the UN allowed Gaza to happen? What’s to say that NATO won’t use the UN presence as an excuse to continue bombing like in Yugoslavia?

As long as they can fire anything into the Strait of Hormuz, and especially if they lock down Suez transit again, ship insurers are the ones with the last word on reopening the Strait. For all the threats of US and EU naval escorts, those countries know it would be the modern Gallipoli and the image of one sinking ship will be a whole new kind of lost war. I don’t see them risking that again like they did in the 1980s.

The UN and what army’s gonna remove that toll both on Hormuz? the UN is just a negotiation platform for the great powers. If China and Russia decide to keep out of this or just backing Iran under the table, the only army left would be whatever the US and their coalitions can muster, and that one is failing miserably for now. As for why can’t the toll booth won’t be gone ‘after’ the war, when will the war actually end? what if one side just go home and never announce the end of the conflict? what if a state no longer exist and a bunch of smaller states just continue fighting? what if both states cease fire indefinitely but never negotiate? Are we even at war yet when the USA haven’t officially announced that they are at war? The war only truly end only when the material difference in Iran or the West have been substantially difference and both side can negotiate some actual agreeable deals.