Here\u2019s the thing.<\/p>\n
Nobody mentioned the Strait of Hormuz<\/a> at the start of the Iranian War<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now it is the only thing everybody is talking about.<\/p>\n The Battle of Iran has turned into the Battle of Hormuz.<\/p>\n And it may take longer to win the war with Hormuz than it did winning over the rest of Iran.<\/p>\n President Trump, in launching the U.S. attack on Iran, listed four objectives for his attack on Iran \u2014 destroy Iran\u2019s missile capabilities, annihilate Iran\u2019s navy, prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and end the Iranian regime\u2019s practice of arming terrorist proxies outside of its borders.<\/p>\n Mission accomplished. That much has been done in an amazing display of military power and ingenuity.<\/p>\n The awesome U.S. military has successfully wiped out Iran\u2019s nuclear development capacity and its ballistic missile and drone sites across the country to the extent that planes have run out of targets, except to keep on bombing to make the rubble bounce.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve won,\u201d Trump said a week into the bombing. \u201cYou never like to say that you\u2019ve won, but we\u2019ve won. In the first hour it was over.\u201d<\/p>\n The victory was so quick that Trump called for an unconditional surrender even though there is no one around to agree to it.<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s fanatic Islamic political leadership team, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were all killed.<\/p>\n His son Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader, may have been killed, too.<\/p>\n Still, nobody is surrendering, unconditional or otherwise, and the Iranian mullahs are almost taunting Trump to send in ground troops to face the fanatic Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, knowing full well that it is the last thing the American people want.<\/p>\n The IRGC is a fighting force made up of some one million soldiers dedicated to defending the ideological foundations of the Islamic Republic, which means fighting and dying to the last man for Allah.<\/p>\n The war may be won, but the militant Iranians still control the Strait of Hormuz which they have blocked with mines aimed at sinking tankers filled with crude oil<\/a> headed largely to China, Japan, South Korea, Europe and elsewhere.<\/p>\n Their goal is not only to prolong the war which the Democrats have criticized, but to make oil expensive<\/a> so that the U.S. is forced to raise the price of gasoline to the irritation of American consumers.<\/p>\n However, the dropping of 5,000-poud bunker-busting bombs on the shores of Iran to blow up entrenched mine and missile sites will make a big difference.<\/p>\n Still, while the U.S. military has sunk 24 Iranian mine-laying vessels; the country has many smaller boats offshore and on islands to fill the narrow strait with more mines, all of which must be cleared before ships carrying crude oil can make it through the narrow strait. Some 20% of the world\u2019s crude oil flows through Hormuz.<\/p>\n Which may partly be why Trump is sending a rapid response team of 2,500 Marines stationed in Japan to the region. They could be used in a variety of missions, like attacking shore-based mining operations, or seizing Kharg Island<\/a>, off the coast of Iran, that the U.S. bombed last week.<\/p>\n