Mark Gagnon

Instead, it concluded that it needed a different strategy, one that didn't involve trying to match the U.S.

pound for pound in military power, but instead leveraged the geography of the Strait itself.

A strategy based on asymmetric warfare, mines, small, fast attack boats, shore based anti ship missiles and basically the ever present threat of simply making the strait too dangerous for commercial shipping.

If they know that America needs a strait to be open, just creating instability is a weapon in and of itself.

And that strategic shift would basically define the next four decades.

So after the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988, the Strait of Hormuz settled into a tense but mostly stable equilibrium.

The U.S.

Navy's Fifth Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain, maintained a permanent presence in the Gulf.

Iran rebuilt its military not to match the United States conventionally, but to develop what strategists call the anti-access area denial capability.

Basically,

saying that, hey, we are going to threaten shipping in the narrow confines of the Strait if you guys mess with us.

It's worth understanding Iran's logic here.

From Iran's perspective, this wasn't simply aggression for aggression's sake.

It is deterrence.

If Iran could credibly threaten or shut down the Strait, it has leverage.

And this is a way to just impose costs onto any country that tries to strangle its economy, either through sanctions or military pressure or any other means.

The Strait isn't just a weapon of last resort.

It is one of Iran's most powerful bargaining chips.

So the IRGC became the primary instrument of this strategy.

The IRGC Navy...