Iran Cows US Navy into Submission in Hormuz Standoff
The biggest story of the day is that Iran has muscled its way into both cowing and overpowering the US Navy into submission in the Strait of Hormuz.
But first, let’s back up a little bit and acknowledge that the IRGC appears to have went fully “to the mattresses” in this war. They are no longer playing games, and no longer willing to compromise. They have gained momentum and achieved military, political, and propaganda initiative and are now pushing their advantage.
All day there have been various reports that it is now the US side secretly attempting to sway Iran—via intermediaries—toward coming back to the negotiations table, now that the US has recognized the disaster of its own making that is unfolding across the region.
According to these reports, Iran has brusquely blown off all such attempts to negotiate and has doubled down into all out conflict. Iran’s leaders appear to have recognized much the same thing as the Russians did during the course of the Ukraine war: that a ‘temporary’ ceasefire is a useless exercise for giving your enemy breathing room to restock and reload for Round 2 against you.
Iran says the United States is pleading for a ceasefire.
Ali Larijani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, stated:
“Tonight, we received messages from U.S. President Donald Trump through the Omani mediator, asking us to negotiate a ceasefire.
Our response is that we will not accept any negotiations as long as an entity called Israel exists.”
The whole region is now aflame, with US troops pulling out of bases, Arab oil economies being shut down, and no one seemingly able to figure out how to stop the Iranian juggernaut. All internal rumors point to neither the Israeli or US side having anticipated the Iranian “regime” surviving so intact.
One of the reasons for this is that in the wake of the last ‘12 Day War’ you may recall Iran carried out a massive purge of Mossad assets throughout the country, with hundreds of agents apprehended, thousands of pieces of sabotage equipment confiscated, etc. After the Mossad network was neutered, it seems the threat of color revolutions and destabilization of the leadership was no more.
But as stated in the opening, all focus has now turned on the Strait of Hormuz. It’s clear there is a kind of de facto blockade, wherein Iran is allowing some friendly assets to pass while blowing up the rest. Just today alone multiple hits were reported on various ships:
Satellite photos appear to show the strait empty of traffic, with lined up ships sitting on each opposing side of it, awaiting a resolution or building up courage:
Trump claims the Strait is “totally fine” and others have parroted his take while pointing to navigation data that appears to show ships passing through the straits.
But new analysis has shown that massive GPS jamming has created the illusion of a line of ‘ghost ships’ appearing to move through, when this is not actually the case.
Sailors from various countries in the region have become unwitting witnesses to Iran’s massive destruction of port facilities in UAE, Oman, Kuwait, and elsewhere. First video from Port Salalah, Oman, second from Fujairah oil storage facility in UAE, wherein you can clearly see Iranian ballistics bypassing the shoddy American-supplied air defenses:
Here’s the aftermath to the Salalah strike, by the way.
The biggest development revolves around Iran reportedly beginning to deploy naval mines in the strait, although there is some contention regarding this. The US appears to be trying to minimize the panic by claiming Iran has only deployed “10 mines” and that the US has been destroying Iranian minelayers. All the while, the IRGC has released videos showing they can lay mines via rockets fired from inland.
The US has even begun making up lies about escorting tankers through the strait, only for them to be humiliatingly retracted:
Granted there’s a lot of deception going on on both sides, for obvious reasons. Israel has been caught reusing strike footage from the 2025 war:
There is a kind of fog of war over the straits at the moment, which is designed to benefit both sides for different reasons. For Trump, it’s obvious, he wants to maintain the illusion that the US is in control. Iran, on the other hand, wants to pretend it has not fully committed to its highest escalatory levers just yet, despite it already ‘testing the waters’ of using them. That’s not to mention that for simple strategic reasons, it’s within Iran’s interests to not announce or telegraph its every intention, and keep the enemy in as much confusion as possible.
WSJ reports that Iran itself is exporting “more oil than ever before” through its own straits. This is obviously perplexing: how is the US allowing Iran to do that?
On one hand, one Iranian tanker was said to be hit, presumably by US forces. On the other hand, it’s clear there may be secret allowances at play because we know Kharg Island has not been taken out, and the obvious speculation is that US is afraid to ‘rock the boat’ economically, even if it means sparing Iranian oil and letting it flow.
This more than anything shows the limits of US military capability as the US is not capable of defeating its enemy swiftly enough to preclude the types of economic shocks now at danger of spilling out. They may have done it in Venezuela, but the Iran conflict more than anything else validates the Venezuelan operation was a fake with behind-the-scenes betrayal at play, rather than a determined force putting up a real fight.
In fact, while the US Navy continues to pretend it has the situation under control, it has openly declared that reopening the strait is beyond its mythical powers:
LONDON, March 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy has refused near-daily requests from the shipping industry for military escorts through the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the war on Iran, saying the risk of attacks is too high for now, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The Navy’s assessments spell continued disruption to Middle East oil exports and reflect a divergence from President Donald Trump’s statements that the U.S. is prepared to provide naval escorts whenever needed to restart regular shipments along the key waterway.
Let that sink in: the supposedly most powerful navy in history is admitting they cannot retain freedom of navigation through one of the most important maritime choke points in the world.
The reason is simple and was outlined in my recent paid piece about Iran’s ability to take out US carriers, though it applies to any US ship. Most Iranian anti-ship assets have a 300km max range. As long as US ships stay out of this range, they have relative safety. But the closer they move into the kill zone, the greater the risk becomes. At 200-300km range they risk anti-ship ballistics and longer range cruise missiles. At 25-50km they risk a much wider variety of smaller, cheaper anti-ship cruise missiles and drones. At 30km or so, they risk Iranian naval drones.
A report on these latter weapons was just published by social media’s best known naval expert. The report followed a newly-released video by the IRGC of their underground ‘mosquito boat’ storage facilities, which came as a rebuke to Trump’s boasts about having destroyed Iran’s navy.
IRGC Brigadier General Fadavi claims that no US ship is anywhere within 700km of Iran’s shores:
Iranian military commander General Fadavi:
Not a single American vessel is within 700 kilometers of Iran
The US Navy has fled because it knows we have a special plan for sinking their aircraft carrier.
Today he also boasted that Iran is only the second country on earth after Russia to possess “underwater missiles”, or high speed torpedoes, which he says go in excess of 100m/s. His description of it narrows it down to the Soviet Shkval torpedo, which reaches nearly 250mph using a highly advanced form of ‘supercavitation’.
Clearly, it’s meant as a threat to US naval interests in Hormuz.
As of this writing Brent crude has again spiked above $100. US assets all over the region are being blown to smithereens:
At least 17 American facilities in the Middle East were damaged due to Iran’s strikes, — NYT
▪️According to a Pentagon assessment presented to Congress, one of the most costly strikes was carried out on February 28 against the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain — the damage is estimated at approximately 200 million dollars.
▪️The US military notes that the scale of the retaliatory attacks shows that Iran was better prepared for the conflict than expected by Donald Trump’s administration.
▪️According to US officials, Iran has already launched thousands of missiles and drones at US military facilities and their allies in the region.
▪️Most of the targets, it is claimed, were intercepted, but at least 11 American bases and facilities were damaged — almost half of all US infrastructure in the region.
▪️One of the most costly losses was the elements of air defense systems: Iran is striking radars and communication nodes, including components of the THAAD missile defense system.
Trump continues to schizophrenically signal contradictory positions—both that he may soon pull out of the war due to already having “won”, and that the US is committed to a long term campaign. This translates most readily as Trump wanting to pull out as overwhelming domestic pressure mounts on him, but pressure from Israel continues edging him forward. So far, he’s letting Israeli pressure win.
This last video is a testament to the type of direction-less waffling he’s resigned to amidst a disastrous failure of a military campaign:
He may be onto something with this rare gift of juxtaposing complete opposites into semi-coherent word-salads. Taking after him, we can even say Trump is both the greatest and the worst president of all time, somehow the most American yet most un-American one as well, with his total blind allegiance to a hostile foreign power.
In some ways, Trump is the ultimate paradox: he’s wrested the country from the pernicious coils of the deep state, only to then bafflingly flush it all down so hard as to cause even the erstwhile-deep state itself to have misgivings.
A true, modern Janus in the flesh: He fashions the coming Golden Age on the trampled and ruined foundations it is meant to be laid on.