Zamolxis 1488 (@zamolxis)

Strait of Hormuz + old fashioned Artillery Iranian islands + Soviet era artillery is enough to close the Strait of Hormuz indefinitely with the most basic low tech hardware. No electronics, no rare earths needed, just steel and cordite, little more than Napoleonic technology. Below are 1970’s era artillery guns, that can be fed with mass produced Russian or North Korean artillery shells. Oil and LNG tankers are not warships, they are not armoured. They are not designed to absorb any sort of hits. They will never sail into a bombardment, or even the threat of a bombardment. This is why Iranian steel mills were hit. Iran doesn’t need high tech drones, doesn’t need EW, doesn’t need rocket motors, or guidance systems, doesn’t need fibre optics or chips. Iran only needs a few old artillery pieces and they can dig artillery guns into mountain pill boxes. Even if you bombed all the artillery, Iran could tow new Artillery to its coastal positions faster than any tankers could escape the gulf. What does this mean? It means Iran has essentially taken the whole Middle East hostage, and can now collect a petroleum export tax on some 30% of the world oil production. It also means OPEC is dead. OPEC serves no purpose in a world where Iran has a geographical choke on the world’s oil supply. It means Iran can become wealthy unless someone intervenes to end this. If Iran collects $20/bbl on exports for clear passage, that’s $400m / day. That new revenue would be 1/3rd of Iran’s GDP. They are unlikely to give this up now that they have stumbled upon this new power. Iran’s military budget is $10bn / year, if they extort $20/bbl for free passage, that’s approx 15x their military budget. If the Iranian people start to benefit from this extortion revenue, it gets even harder to prevent it as there are 90 million people over there. Way too many people for any modern military to conquer. Therefore this could be a new paradigm for the world economy and its energy supplies. Maybe one morning everyone will wake up and just go back to how things were before all this started? But the more people are involved and the longer it goes on, the less likely that is. Just seems like a huge mess.