Jennifer Parker

So now it looks like if Iran tries to attack merchant shipping, they will now sink any of those Iranian vessels or shoot down those drones and missiles.

Okay, but it all sounds highly dangerous.

It is highly dangerous.

One of the concerns here is Iran has said that they control the strait.

Now, they don't own that strait.

It's an international strait.

Some of it goes through their territorial waters.

Iran has said that after this conflict is finished, they want to continue to exert control and toll, so charge any ships going through the strait.

That would fundamentally undermine global maritime trade.

Because the US have not really been interfering with Iranian ships harassing or shooting at vessels since the ceasefire began, in some ways they've allowed Iran to demonstrate control of the strait.

And this is why I think it's important that the US is now starting to defend those ships.

Yeah.

So the biggest advantage Iran has is it dominates the northern coast of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Amman.

What that means is even if it only has limited military capability left, so a few missiles, drones, small boats, et cetera, it can still enact a disproportionate impact on that strait by attacking ships because it's so easy because of the geographic dominance.

We don't know how much capability they have left.

Clearly, given the strikes on the UAE and some ships, they still have significant capability.

I think the question now is if the US is going to start taking out Iranian ships that are targeting shipping and defending those ships, will Iran get to the point where they say, well, it's actually not worth us exerting the effort here because we're diminishing our already diminished stocks?

So it could escalate further.

So clearly, Iran sees that its capability is not effective enough to really hurt the US, but it can hurt the US's capabilities by hurting the US's partner nations.

Now, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, etc., have not responded by attacking Iran in self-defense.