Originally Posted by
Lonewolf_50
For those of you who think that the blockade isn't working...
well, here is a bit from Newsweek.... As with any blockade, one can expect a few blockade running attempts. Ops like this are a time, manpower, and resource drain over the long term.
Might want to sit back and watch it develop...at 15 knots.
Whether the blockade can be said to be "working" rather depends upon ones criterion for success.
In the trivial sense that the US Navy can turn around shipping that comes from, or is bound for, Iranian ports, of course the blockade is working, and I doubt many people expected otherwise - The US Navy is a fearsome adversary even for other navies, and certainly no lone commercial vessel is likely to challenge it.
But in the broader sense, the blockade is "working" only if the turning around of Iranian shipping is a step along a plausible path to the achievement of US strategic goals in the Gulf; And it remains unclear what those goals might be.
Regime Change seems an unlikely consequence of the blockade. Iran giving up her nuclear weapons program, and/or handing over her stocks of enriched uranium, likewise seems doubtful.
Even the re-opening of the Strait to all maritime traffic, seems to be in no obvious way made more likely by this blockade.
So, "is the blockade working?" is a tricky question, and the answer seems to be a superficial "yes", glossing over a more fundamental "no".
But again, it depends on what the strategic goals of the blockade are, and I am increasingly convinced that nobody in the Whitehouse knows. Which is something of an insult to the brave US sailors in theatre, who are doing a fine job of meeting their tactical objectives, and of carrying out their orders, despite a lack of strategic guidance from their CinC.