Yep !!

All the best to the crew.
How about the pressure vessel? They did the entire route back to UK with this? Is this real?

Okay a ferry flight of an aircraft damaged on the ground before and now brought to the UK. It had looked like new combat damage on a return from hot zones first.

No. Merely stopping or turning around a ship falls well short of piracy. Interdict seems the correct word.

Probably an opportune time for Iranians to practice "Duck and Cover."

- Ed

As some here will know, I have been watching the Persian Gulf quite a lot over the last few weeks, mainly in relation to the cruise ships that are stuck there. Now with Trump stating that he will blockade the Strait of Hormuz, I wonder if he realises that there are at least 3 ships that belong to the Chinese Navy in the Persian Gulf (spotted via AIS upto around 4 days ago before their AIS faded out after 24 hours). Wondering if trapping Chinese Naval ships might cause an escalation in diplomatic collapses, on top of the mess that already exists. They will still be there cos the Strait was essentially scuppered and there has been a Chinese Naval presence in the Persian Gulf for the last 4-5 years. They had Type 815A ships in the Persian Gulf watching the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last June.

Outside the Strait, in the Gulf of Oman there are several Naval ships of different nationality, including the UK, who are on anti-piracy duties (yes, that is still going on tween Salalah and Bab-el Mandeb Strait on the southern end of the Red Sea), all commercial ships also carry armed guards and LRAD in the area too.

I have been searching for any other nationality in regard to Navy ships within the Persian Gulf when the latest conflict began, I suspect there might be since it has always been a regular occurrence to have visiting Navies in the area (when there in 2007, 2010, 2015 and 2019 there were several different nationalities in and around the Persian Gulf and in the Gulf of Oman, including South and North Korea). Afterall until this mess kicked off, there was free passage for anyone and everyone without any concern for Iranians making a problem, it had been largely quiet and relatively safe after the Iran / Iraq and Iraq / Kuwait conflicts.

Two Chinese bulk carriers, Lai Zhou 66 and Brother Glory approaching the "toll booth" as I write. Let's see what happens.
MarineTraffic: Global Ship Tracking Intelligence | AIS Marine Traffic
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....a713fb62c6.jpg

The Indian navy is there as well.

There many nations who are desperate for their tankers to make it out of the Gulf as their reserves and petrol stations run dry and will be willing to send their navies to provide an escort. The dangers of a naval confrontation if the USN tries to board or stop them are far higher than they are/were off Venezuela.

https://www.marineinsight.com/indian...-persian-gulf/

Reports running around that the UK and 'other countries' Mine Sweepers are going to be deployed in the strait.

Trump said something like 'we have the latest and greatest mine sweepers, and there will be other traditional mine sweepers...
I guess that means every other country. :E

A few thoughts from what I've been listening to on geo-strategic analysis chat:

The aborted Pakistan peace talks were nothing but theatre. Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey are energy dependent, which is why Pakistan cobbled together a peace deal, but presented a different 'deal' to both sides (hence the confusion over wether Lebanon was included in it).

The real reason is firstly that the Americans are using the talks as a stalling tactic while they and the Gulf states rearm interceptors and position the George HW Bush, to carry on the war to the required conclusion. Interceptor stocks are reduced by about 60% so are being supplemented from Greece Taiwan and North Korea. About 800 Tomahawks have been used, another 600 are on their way for round 2. Round 2 will not be required if the show of strength suffices. The US has lost 17 MQ-9s. 18 more are on the way to replace them. The Iranian economy is about a month max from total collapse, even allowing for religious taxes collected from some Shia religious strands worldwide.

The second reason is to allow the Israeli Air Force to divert resources to finish off a 70% weapons restocked Hezbollah (who rearmed largely courtesy of chaos in Syria). The strikes there were to specific IP addresses of a Zoom meeting which was planning a Hezbollah-led coup of Lebanon. About 60 were attending a meeting online. The number of casualties was across the country and obviously many of them were civilians not involved. A price worth paying, it may be said, to avoid a coup which would have killed many, many more.

The third reason, it may be argued, was market manipulation. Cool the oil prices, so when hostilities recommence they will do so from a lower baseline. It also enables those with the clout to do so to profit from the bounce-back.

The USA will not cease hostilities until the regime gives up the nuclear material and ceases the enrichment programme peemenantly. In doing this, they are backed by the vulnerable Gulf states. USA and the Gulf States have had enough of the Islamist regime in Iran. European nations broadly believe in appeasement of the Islamic Republic, much as they did regarding the Nazis in the 1930s, despite all the evidence of many years of talks which were going nowhere - other than giving Iran the time that it needed to go nuclear.

Trump's frustration is that he's used to dealing with a muscular way of negotiating iaw real estate 'art of the deal' practice, and can't get his head around the Islamist apocalyptic ('Bring it on') POV.

If the US is forced to cease the war due to domestic opposition, the signal of the USA being defeated by a middle rate power will result in loss of confidence in the $ as the reserve currency and a crisis of confidence in global stability.

Thanks for the link, Dave Ed

The IRGC claims to have laid a few nasty tochmemurgh in the former international shipping route through the Strait, in order to force traffic through the “toll booth” in Iranian waters, and the USN claims to be looking for these and cracking them if found in order to reestablish normal shipping routes.

“if found” is the crunch, because it may be very hard to gain 100% assurance of clearance if sophisticated types were laid .... or even not laid in the first place.

Now - just supposin’ ! - the USAF were to respond in kind by laying ‘smart’ eggs ( which are very hard to crack ) in the ‘toll booth’ lanes, thus forcing all traffic - including that deemed ‘friendly’ by the IRGC! - back into the normal traffic lanes ... which might then be mine free.

Interesting times, and quite a complex scenario mix ..... discuss....

Hi LB, a naval blockade is classified as an act of war and an agressive act. You don’t need to sink the ships to have that status, impeding the right of innocent passage triggers the act of war condition, something that China seems to have a problem in translation with.

it is not often that I agree with something that agent orange does, but imposing a counter blockade was such an obvious move that it only took
a week for it to sink into the “a great brain” of the supreme leader, agent orange.

the effect of the counter blockade is to put Iran on a clock to collapse. The US can certainly wit them out, if they keep their public opinion onside once the 60 day clock for congressional approval has timex’d. to get congressional approval AO will likely need to set forth what the reason for the fracas was, not too hard, and to explain what the aim of the entertainment is, and how they intend to achieve that. Putting a filter on his tweets might save him from himself, he still retains the ability to pour gasoline on any matter and to hold a lot match above his glorious shock of hair.

Israel needs to state clearly what their objective is in Lebanon, on the surface of it, it appears to be a brutal attack on civilians. The truth may be different, and Lebanon has Hezbollah as a greater military power than the official Lebanese army, it is a messed up Iranian controlled vassal state. In recent times, the attack on the Israeli peace/music festival and the hostage taking would seem to have had rather unfortunate consequences.

Blockading the straits by the US denying any income to Iran is the fastest way to get a rational response from Iran. The demands for a ceasefire need some clarity, something that in itself is not a forte of Agent Orange, they might do better to get someone who has fewer signs of senility going on. This all then brings the point up, should the blockade involve other nations, despite the current “you broke it, you fix it” case, and given the conditions now, it may very well be the case that the best outcome is a coalition of naval forces to block Iran, this being the firmest message that Iran can receive.


the sad bit of this is, the behaviour of Israel and the US makes a compelling case for all nations to have nuclear munitions, the delivery systems can be simple, they don’t need ICBMs to give a bit of pause.

What I'm struggling to understand is how the US Navy could effectively blockade the Strait.
That north coast is a rabbit warren of buried military sites, drone launch sites, and mobile missile launchers.
Surely Iran could hit ships in the Strait from well inland as well.
Am I missing something here?

You summarized it, the insurance companies won’t risk it.

I imagine they'll keep an eye on who passes through the Straits, then approach them in the relative safety of the Gulf of Oman.

Interesting to know what happens to inbound vessels...

The international Navies that can be found within the Persian Gulf - usually around Abu Dhabi, Bandar Abbas, Dammam, Dubai and Doha - not only include those who are on official type visits but also they enjoy shore leave from their anti-piracy duties. Salalah and Muscat, on the Gulf of Oman are decent ports for shore leave but Muscat tends to get a little crowded, ship berthing wise, and Salalah is a bit more remote and is largely industrial (not to mention that the "eau de camel" can be a tad stronger there). Whereas the Persian Gulf ports offer much more to entertain people when on shore leave.

Bandar Abbas is always popular with Chinese, Russian and North Korean Navy ships. Barely a week goes by where those nations don't have at least one or two ships in port.

It seems that Hegseth and Trump might not have thought things through very well, if at all, again. Having a (putting it mildly) diplomatic incident tween "unfriendly" Navies really would not be advised, I would have thought anyway but you never know what is floating within the braincells of the US administration.

There are also rumours...only rumours...that China is busy replenishing and rebuilding Iran's air defence infrastructure, which if true could prove difficult for Trump / Hegseth should they decide to start kicking off again.

The potential for escalation is enormous, even if another Navy's ship is accidently targetted rather than purposely, it could all go very badly, very quickly.....in all aspects from lives lost, environmental disaster and financially.

CENTCOM press release: https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-...iranian-ports/

Indeed. Again, unless I'm missing something, there's no way the US Navy could escort ships through the Strait - it'd be a turkey shoot.
I assume the strategy is to stop anything at all exiting - thereby starving the regime of revenue.
Because to effectively open the Strait up, the US would presumably have to effectively carpet bomb the entire North coast, and inland, and then hold Iranian reinforcements at bay - just not doable even for the US forces in theatre now?

He also intends preventing any ships leaving that paid the toll. At least the US will be able to claim that they have closed the Strait, not Iran, so another victory.
While it is intended to put additional pressure on Iran, it does seem to be a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Another unintended consequence of surrounding yourself with yes-men that are not the sharpest pencils in the pack.

At least we have more cost increases and inflation to look forward to. That will go down well with the domestic and global public.

It will be interesting to see if the Iranians will try target the ships enforcing the blockade and those allegedly being sent to sweep for mines. If they manage to sink or damage one it would be very embarrassing for the administration.

I suspect it depends on what the "threat" actually is, post Epic Tantrum phase 1.

CENTCOM J2/J3 ought to have anticipated an attempt to close the strait and as a matter of course ought to have malleted every known storage location of sea mines, every small harbour (there are surprisingly few) with IRGC FIAC and of course the main naval bases, targeting the Kilos and Ghadirs. That leaves the missile threat, which - again - ought to have been targetted relatively early. There is nigh-on air supremacy, which means that persistent ISR with on-call strike should be achievable.

All of the above should - big if here - reduce the threat to relatively residual levels and each launch / disclosure further depletes the threat. Still significant risk, but some successful transits might actually shift the P&I market.

Note - the word "ought" above is doing some seriously heavy lifting.

I doubt it. The potential losses on a single ship are enormous in an industry with traditionally, relatively low risk.
There isn't likely to be any appetite to insure those vessels, or if they do, without a significant increase in cost and deductibles - paying the toll would be better financially.
It is unlikely any actuarial model would look favourably at the current risk of transiting the strait while hostilities continue.
It just takes one cheap drone hitting its target.

The US could follow through on a previous idea to insure vessels, after all, if you break it, you should fix it.