If you are a neocon warmonger, and you REALLY want to set off WW3, this would be a great way to do it. Send an old CVN [about to be scrapped anyway] and 5,000 Navy sailors to the bottom of the sea.
In the coming days or weeks, Iran, with its own oil industry very likely to be wrecked and its oil exports shut down by that point, may close the Strait of Hormuz. 20% of global oil shipping will stop when the strait is closed. The global economy will crash as the price of crude oil soars. Industry in China, Japan and South Korea will grind to a halt
The US Navy “will be forced to intervene,” in order to open the Strait of Hormuz and save the global economy. We will very likely lose ships in this effort. Does anybody remember the USS Stark? In 1987 during the “tanker war” in the Persian Gulf, one “accidentally fired” Iraqi Exocet missile almost sent her to the bottom, and 37 of her crew were killed.
But how can we stop hundreds or thousands of truck-launched mobile anti-ship missiles from being fired at ships attempting to sail through the Strait of Hormuz? Anti-ship missiles that are hidden in caves across thousands of square miles? Will the US Army and Marines put boots on the ground in Iran? Across an area a hundred times larger than Okinawa and Iwo Jima?
Well, it’s not as if great powers have not used this strategy before. The Lusitania was sent directly through “U-Boat Alley” below Ireland to generate enough anti-German outrage to bring the USA into WW1. This was even after the Germans had placed notices in American newspapers warning potential passengers heading across the Atlantic that a state of war existed between Germany and Great Britain, and that all ships heading to Britain were “fair game.”
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