@ScottLucas Unless they're planning for a long-term coastal occupation, none of this makes sense to do. If they destroy Kherg's Islands export facility or start seizing ships, such that Iran can no longer economically benefit from their own oil, then they leave Iran with nothing other than extracting tolls from the other Gulf States for use of the Strait.

@ScottLucas And if by some miracle, the US is able to stop such extortion and is willing to occupy at least coastal Iran and degrade Iran's capabilities long-term, then Iran no longer has any motivation to allow the other Gulf states to maintain an oil export capacity, and we will see greatly increased strikes on oil fields, production and export facilities, and the US cannot stop these.

@ScottLucas Shahed's are cheap, light, and can be launched from the back of a pickup truck. They fly long distances and it is difficult to interdict all of them. I read the reports coming out of Ukraine and even as good as they are at cheaply intercepting them, most reports talk about the launching of 400-500 drones at a time, with 10 to 20 getting through and striking 10 or so targets.

@ScottLucas Even if the Gulf States managed to replicate Ukraine's intercept rates, their oil and desalination infrastructure would soon be in tatters. Russia might just gleefully give drones to Ukraine as temporary or permanent elimination of the gulf's oil exports have driven oil prices to great highs and caused states to back off from their sanctions commitments. There's no victory to be had here, just horrifically consequential bad outcomes.