Iran ATTACKS Ships in the Strait of Hormuz… What U.S. Did Next Was BRUTAL

Iran just used the one piece of leverage that  it has.

Control over the Strait of Hormuz has   been the Iranian regime’s trump card, and it  just played that card in devastating fashion.

What Iran did was unforgivable.

Three big ships  were attacked.

But Iran made a massive mistake.

The US revenge for Iran’s Hormuz hubris  was instant and brutal.

Let’s start with   Iran’s strikes and come to the revenge later.

On  March 11, The Guardian reported that a trio of merchant ships had been struck in and around the  Strait of Hormuz.

One of these carriers absorbed   the bulk of the strike, as the Thai-registered  Mayuree Naree was hit by what has been reported as “two projectiles of unknown origin.

” That’s a  polite way of saying that Iran attacked the bulk   carrier in a strike that left the ship in flames  soon after it departed from a port in the United Arab Emirates.

This strike, which occurred about  11 nautical miles north of Oman, signaled an end to a four-day lull in Iran’s attacks against  commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

The Mayuree Naree’s crew members were forced to  evacuate their ship in the wake of the attack.

So far, it looks like there were no casualties.

The Guardian reports that 20 crew members were   evacuated immediately by the Omani navy, with  three more staying behind to serve as a skeleton crew on the stricken ship as they awaited a later  rescue.

That attack seemed to spark a small spate   of follow-ups, as more “unknown projectiles”  struck ships in and around the strait.

The Japanese container ship ONE Majesty was hit with  a projectile as it sailed about 45 kilometers, or 28 miles, northwest of Ras Al Khaimah, which is in  the United Arab Emirates.

This attack was far less damaging than the one against the Mayuree Naree,  as the Japanese vessel sustained only minor damage   above the waterline.

Still, it’s a clear signal  of intent from Iran that it is going to follow through on its threats to attack any commercial  vessel that attempts to pass through the Strait   of Hormuz.

Another bulk carrier, the Star Gwyneth,  flying under the flag of the Marshall Islands, was also struck about 50 kilometers, or 30 miles,  northwest of Dubai.

Damage was caused to the hull   in the ship’s hold area while it was at anchor,  but no injuries were reported.

This is Iran’s wartime strategy.

It’s the only one that the  country has because the Strait of Hormuz provides   Iran with the sole piece of leverage that it has  in its war with the US and Israel.

These three attacks add to at least 11 more that have occurred  in the Strait of Hormuz or nearby regions since   the war began, Reuters reports, and Iran has made  it very clear what its goal is with these strikes.

“Get ready for oil to be $200 a barrel, because  the oil price depends on regional security,   which you have destabilized,” blared Ebrahim  Zolfaqari, who is a spokesperson for what’s left of the Iranian military command.

Indeed, the price  of a barrel of oil had previously shot up to $120, though it stabilized to somewhere in the $90  range as hopes that the Iran war could end   sometime soon.

That end may not come as soon as  many would like.

We’ll get into why later.

Iran may have another motivation for attacking these  civilian tankers, as Max Afterburner points out   in his assessment of what just happened in  the Strait of Hormuz.

“This screams Iranian IRGC payback,” Afterburner declares when speaking  about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which essentially acts as a second military for Iran’s  regime.

And the reason that revenge is being meted   out is “for the nonstop pounding that they’ve been  getting from the US military.

” That may be the case.

But really, this is all about Iran leaning  more heavily into the one thing that it might be   able to use to convince the US and Israel to  end their massive bombing campaigns on the Iranian mainland.

As Bloomberg notes, Iran’s strategy in  the Strait of Hormuz is intended to lead to one of two scenarios, both of which benefit the remnants  of the Iranian regime.

Of the two, the ideal scenario, perhaps for the US as much as Iran, is  that these strikes will lead to peace negotiations   prompted by the US wanting to avoid the pressure  that comes with essentially closing a waterway that around 20% of the world’s seaborne oil passes  through each year.

The other scenario is that   the chaos continues, leading to the price rises  that Iran claims will happen as commercial ships avoid the strait entirely and have to take far  longer and costlier routes to their destinations.

This is what we mean when we call the Strait  of Hormuz Iran’s only piece of leverage.

Forbes   goes a step further in a March 9 article that was  published just a couple of days before the three attacks, calling Iran’s strategy in the Strait  of Hormuz the country’s “Real Nuclear Option.

”   The US doesn’t have to worry about a nuclear  weapons program that hasn’t reached maturity, Forbes argues.

The real concern, and the one that  Iran is trying to create right now, is that Iran   pulls the strategic lever on the Strait of Hormuz  by making it impassable for an extended period of time.

Iran might even be able to follow through.

“At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is about 21 miles wide.

That may sound spacious, but  tanker traffic does not spread across the entire   waterway,” Forbes says.

It adds that shipping  traffic through the strait doesn’t have free rein to sail wherever it wants.

The Strait of  Hormuz is divided roughly into shipping lanes,   one in and one out, that are each about two miles  wide and separated by a two-mile buffer zone.

That takes what is already a small 21-mile chokepoint  and narrows it down to just six miles that Iran’s fast boats can patrol, and its drones can strike.

The March 11 trio of strikes proves that Iran can indeed cause major problems in the Strait of  Hormuz.

But the US has a little something   to say about that.

Iran’s attacks on commercial  ships couldn’t go unanswered, and the revenge that the US unleashed was fast, furious, and  sent a brutal message to Iran’s military command that it will be hit hard every time it tries to  pull its nonsense in the Strait of Hormuz.

US President Donald Trump warned that this revenge  was coming.

On March 10, he took to Truth Social   to tell Iran’s regime that it would be wise not to  try to turn the Strait of Hormuz into a deathtrap for commercial vessels.

Trump focused on Iran’s  second strategy of laying mines, as he declared,   “If Iran has put out any mines in the Hormuz  Strait, and we have no reports of them doing so, we want them removed, IMMEDIATELY! If for  any reason mines were placed, and they are   not removed forthwith, the Military consequences  to Iran will be at a level never seen before.

” Trump even dangled a carrot on the end of a stick  by telling Iran’s regime that it “will be a giant   step in the right direction” if Iran pulls back on  the mines and stops striking ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran didn’t listen.

And its defiance  cost the country in a major way.

But before we go deeper into that, this is a quick reminder that  you’re watching The Military Show.

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So, despite the warning, Iran struck anyway.

It may not have taken out any commercial  vessels with mines, but it did use projectiles,   likely aerial drones such as Shaheds, to attack  commercial shipping.

And true to Trump’s words, the US meted out a punishment that left Iran’s  military regime reeling.

How? The US destroyed 16 of Iran’s mine-laying ships, along with several  other naval vessels, in a devastating series of attacks.

That news was confirmed by US Central  Command on March 11, with the first 10 being reported on by Trump himself a mere 13 minutes  after he delivered his initial March 10 warning to   Iran.

“I am pleased to report that within the last  few hours, we have hit, and completely destroyed, 10 inactive mine laying boats and/or ships,  with more to follow!” Trump said.

We told you   that the revenge was instant.

We’re assuming that  as soon as the US received word about the first of the three strikes we’ve discussed, the finger  that was already on the trigger was pulled.

Iran   will be feeling the pain as its plan to use mines  to control the Strait of Hormuz has fallen apart in a heartbeat.

The inactive vessels that Trump  mentioned were likely to soon become active.

Now,   they’re gone, along with six more since Trump  made his announcement.

And if Iran thought that this was the worst of it all, then it had another  thing coming.

The US hit much harder than taking   out some mine layers.

Entire classes of Iranian  warships have been taken out in response to Iran’s actions in the Strait of Hormuz.

That’s according  to Afterburner, who provides a roundup of the   devastation caused to Iran’s navy.

He shares  footage from US Central Command that reveals that March 10 saw the US launch sweeping strike  waves against the country on an almost hourly   basis, all in different locations and directions  in Iran.

Among the casualties of these massive and sweeping revenge strikes were the last four of  the Shahid Soleimani-class corvettes that Iran   had in its fleet, which means an entire class  of warships has been wiped off the map.

The US is aiming to be “unpredictable, dynamic, and  decisive” with these strikes, and it’s working.

Iran has no answers.

At least, the bulk of its  warships aren’t able to defend themselves against   America’s superior firepower.

And though Iran  will be reeling from the US revenge strikes, it does still have options in the Strait of Hormuz  that it is going to try to use.

Stick with us,   because we’ll be revealing what those options  are in just a few minutes.

But before we do, it’s worth exploring the sheer scale of the US  strikes since the Iran war began.

After the dust   had settled on America’s brutal retaliation to  Iran’s Strait of Hormuz attacks, the numbers started rolling in.

The US now claims to  have struck over 5,500 targets since it began Operation Epic Fury in late February, with more  than 60 of those targets being Iranian warships.

A little clarification is needed here.

When the  US says it has hit more than 5,500 targets,   that doesn’t mean it has rattled off 5,500 bombs  and missiles.

The amount of munitions used will be even higher, especially when it comes to Iran’s  hardened targets, such as its underground bunkers,   which need to be hit several times over  before they’re taken out of the picture.

What we’re seeing here is an overwhelming amount  of precision strikes being carried out by the   US, and hundreds of these strikes were added  to the list after Iran’s regime failed to heed Trump’s warning about the Strait of Hormuz.

Losing its mine-laying ships was already bad   enough for Iran.

But to have the US hitting it  all over, practically on the hour every hour, has shown Iran’s regime that for every commercial ship  that it manages to damage with a drone, the US   will utterly destroy key military nodes, vessels,  and anything else that its missiles and bombs can target inside Iran.

And by “anything else,” we  literally mean that the US can pick and choose   its targets because Iran isn’t able to stop any  of this.

The one thing that the US has to be wary of is that 5,500 targets struck and far more  munitions than that used isn’t sustainable over the long term.

Preston Stewart raises this point  in his analysis of Iran’s Strait of Hormuz strikes and the immense retaliation that came from the  US He notes that 5,500 targets struck would average out to about 500 targets per day, and that  could become a problem in the long term.

“…Those   cannot all be done with standoff munitions,”  Stewart says when talking about maintaining a 500-per-day strike rate.

He adds, “We do have  a lot of Tomahawks.

We do have a lot of ATACMS.

We do have a lot of long-range cruise missiles.

We  don’t have enough to be carrying out 500 attacks a   day, every day, for the foreseeable future.

” The  odds are that the US is switching toward using guided bombs in its campaign of aerial devastation  against Iran, which is how it’s going to sustain   what we’re seeing right now in Iran for as long as  is needed to achieve the goal of forcing Iran to give up its leverage in the Strait of Hormuz.

That  sustainment is going to be needed.

Even though the   US has made Iran pay for what it did to the  three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, it would be foolish to believe that the fighting  over this waterway is all over.

The strait is   just too important, as we mentioned earlier when  telling you about Iran’s strategy of forcing the price of oil up to $200 per barrel.

There is  a real threat here, as the Strauss Center for   International Security and Law points out, because  about 17 million barrels transit through this one strait every single day, accounting for about 20%  to 30% of the entire world’s oil consumption.

The Gulf region, in particular, relies on the Strait  of Hormuz because pipeline options are limited.

All told, 88% of the oil that leaves the Persian  Gulf goes by way of the Strait of Hormuz, so Iran isn’t going to be giving up its ability to control  passage through the strait without a real fight.

America’s challenge is that this fight isn’t  going to be coming from Iran’s large warships, or even the mine-laying vessels that the US  destroyed.

Instead, Iran is going to be leaning   on the other option it has, which we touched  on a moment ago: Fast attack boats.

Even as its warships sink and its mine-laying strategy gets  sent the way of the dodo, Iran still has a lot of   fast attack boats that it can use to zip toward a  target, launch a drone or rocket, and then get out of dodge before anybody can do anything about  them.

Afterburner highlights this, noting that   these fast boats don’t even have to be crewed,  in some cases.

Iran has access to small and rapid vessels that it can pack with explosives and  control remotely, somewhat similar to the seaborne   drones that Ukraine has used to such devastating  effect against Russia’s warships in the Black Sea.

That’s the big worry for the US right now as it  shifts into a new phase of its Strait of Hormuz   strategy after taking out the mine layers.

And  these fast boats are having an impact.

Even though the US followed through on Trump’s threats of  retaliation, it still hasn’t been able to reopen   the Strait of Hormuz for commercial shipping.

At  least, not anything like the volume of shipping that would indicate that commercial vessel owners  believe that they will be able to move their ships   through without the possibility of them being  struck.

And on March 12, a pair of ships, namely the Safesea Vishnu and the Zefyroswere, both  flying under the flag of the Marshall Islands,   were struck in attacks that make the three we  covered earlier pale in comparison.

Both were hit at about 1:30 a.

m.

local time off the coast  of Iraq, again by “unknown projectiles,” and both burst into flames.

Authorities managed to rescue  38 crew members, though, sadly, one person died, per Iraqi news outlets.

These fast boats are  an ever-present threat in the Strait of Hormuz.

The question now is, how is the US going to be  able to handle them from here on out? Maintaining its rate of attacks on the Iranian mainland  using guided bombs, as Stewart suggests that the   US is doing, will play a large role.

This is a pressure versus pressure game, and the US can deliver a lot more pressure  than Iran.

However, the US also has a duty to   keep the ships that want to transit the Strait of  Hormuz safe.

Afterburner suggests that this could be achieved through the deployment of fighter  jets that are no longer needed in Iran itself now   that the campaign has switched to aerial bombing.

“If we’re going to control the Strait of Hormuz, you got to have fighters up and airborne, just  like this,” Afterburner says of images of fighter jets being released by US Central Command.

He  adds, “F-22s, F-18s, F-35s, F-16s – have as many of those up there as possible.

” He references  footage of an F-16 destroying Shahed drones   in Dubai as an example of why this could work.

Presumably, the plan would be to maintain constant sorties over the Strait of Hormuz, perhaps with  some tankers being accompanied by fighter jets,   so that anything that attempts to attack by air  or sea will be taken out before it manages to strike.

It’s a solution.

A costly one, given that  America’s jets and the weapons they fire are more   expensive than the drones that Iran is using.

However, the US may get some support in this endeavor very soon.

As The Times reports, France  has announced plans to deploy an “unprecedented” fleet of warships to the Strait of Hormuz, as  well as the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.

According to President Emmanuel Macron, this force  will include a pair of helicopter carriers, eight frigates, and the Charles de Gaulle, which is  France’s flagship aircraft carrier.

Those vessels   are going to be working alongside those provided  by other allies, likely including the US, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

So, maybe the  US doesn’t have to do it all alone.

With France   helping out, the protection offered to ships  sailing through the Strait of Hormuz is magnified enormously.

Escorts become possible.

Warships  can sail alongside commercial vessels, utilizing   electronic warfare and their vast array of  weaponry to take out Iran’s fast boats and other projectiles.

It may not be a perfect solution.

But  what this does is strip away the bulk of the last   bit of leverage that Iran has against the US and  the rest of the world.

If Iran’s plan is to make oil cost $200 per barrel, the allies arriving in  the Strait of Hormuz is the counterplan.

And as   more of the French ships arrive, the US can  continue its focus on applying pressure to the Iranian regime with its aerial campaign on the  mainland.

That pressure may just be enough to   cause Iran’s regime to collapse, which will have  a ripple effect all over the world.

One man who’ll feel the impact, perhaps more than anybody outside  of Iran itself, is Vladimir Putin.

The collapse of   Iran’s regime puts an end to Putin’s Middle East  ambitions, and you can find out why if you watch our video.

And if you enjoyed this video, make  sure you’re subscribed to The Military Show so   you get more analysis of everything that  is happening during Operation Epic Fury.