Strikes on GCC have not stopped and IAF aircraft are still over Iran.

You just know Nasrallah and Soleimani are cooking the shit out of Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld rn.

Learn to sit back and observe

Oman receiving revenue for doing nothing

It isn't even about the revenue or cost. It establishes one of the worst precedents one can have for any of the straits out there.

It is possible yeah. But $60-70B a year is country changing money. Not to mention this is would be equivalent to 35-40% of Saudi Oil revenues in 2024. Even half of this revenue + their regular export earnings would put Iran second only to the Saudis in revenue. It seems a bit much to me.

Sources:

Iranian oil revenues: www.eia.gov/internationa... (I used 2023 figures here as well)

Strait crossings: www.ons.gov.uk/businessindu... (used 2023 number, it was about 32k crossings per year)

This deal in a way reminds of the US-RUS deals on behalf of Ukraine and Europe where the US was trying to negotiate away things it doesn't control (frozen Russian assets).

The US will negotiate anything ofc, but OPEC countries and by extension their customers will be paying these costs (not the US to a large extent). The sanctions removal stuff will require broader coordination with the EU (good luck).

The Iranians earn about $45-55B in revenue from oil exports per year. Which was around 50-60% of the country's whole export revenue for that year. So I find it very unlikely that they will just walk away with this much and OPEC members will comply fully.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that there's no way any of the parties are fully agreeing to the Iranian 10-point deal without massive final changes. Just to start, $2M per ship to cross the Hormuz Strait would mean nearly $70-80B in revenue for the Iranians per year.

As I understand the situation,

1.) Trump says they agreed to his terms
2.) Iran said he agreed to their different set of terms
3.) Both sides are shameless liars whose self-preservation instincts and hardons for violence are constantly battling one another

so who knows?

The US/ISR just kind of lit the world economy on fire for shits and giggles. The nuclear question also remains unanswered.

The Israelis will want to keep doing their whole "bomb them every few months" thing but without US aerial tanking what they can do is severely limited as demonstrated by Rising Lion. I think everyone has just realized this shit ain't going anywhere.

For the US, the end goal is ???? Either way, without ground ops, they have reached the limit of what they can do from the air (what is next? Hunt down every IRGC member with a MANPAD one by one?)

unlimited China/Russian assistance. I also doubt that both the US or Israel will stop interdicting ships transporting dual-use stuff like mixers, casting, winding and other important equipment to restart solid-propellant missile production.

In addition to this have decapitated several layers of IRGC leaders and their replacements, they have targeted secondary and even tertiary industries and institutions. The IRGC military industrial base will take many years to rebuild even under the most optimistic scenarios where they get...

Granted launchers still exist, but the IRGC has fired over 1500 MRBMs at them, and in total more than 2700 BMs in the last 2.5 years, so their stocks are no doubt also running down. The blood thirsty GCC rulers are also not backing down into submission from these strikes.

As much as Netanyahu would want this shit to go on forever, there's little left for them. They have depleted their own munition stocks, they have ran their airframes and pilots into the ground in terms of maintenance and sent the Iranian BM infrastructure back to the dark ages.

Prior to all of this, regular traffic was 130-140 ships per day. It is currently 20-30. All parties involved here can deny the strait to one another. The US can't really do anything but bomb and that isn't exactly opening the strait nor is the timing right enough to get a complete regime change.

IMO everyone is tapped out. The Israelis won the most out of this. The strait being closed is a double-edged sword, the Iranians haven't had any of their ships cross in enough numbers to be relevant, same goes for the rest of the GCC. Iran doesn't have a choke hold on the strait anymore than the GCC

F-15QA being refueled mid-air with a red arrow pointing to a protrusion on the front of the aircraft housing a missile approach warning sensor.

F-15EX on ground taxing with protrusion on the front of the aircraft that is meant to house an missile approach warning sensor but is left empty.

-15EX on ground with protrusion on the rear of the aircraft that is meant to house a missile approach warning sensor but is left empty.

F-15QA on ground with a protrusion on the rear of the aircraft that houses a missile approach warning sensor.

MAWS? I hardly know her

Costs like this might seem big to other nations but it represents only 4% of the cost the USAF spends on tactical fighters this year and when adjusted to how much the USAF spends on aircraft it is less than 1% and when adjusted to total USAF budget it is less than 0.0015%.

F-15E was brought down by a regular MANPAD. We saw some of the IRGC guys in the area where it was shot down carrying Iranian MANPADs.

The C-130s went down a bit off the strip rather than on the strip itself. You conduct ops with assets you have not what would be most ideal.

Angry Kitten EW pod

There are air defenses but what remains now is largely short range and opportunistic targeting. There is no systematic IADS keeping the US away. We have enough footage from the ground of IAF/USAF/USN aircraft dropping JDAMs from medium altitudes.

This war is a strategic failure, but operationally the US/ISR are doing pretty okay against the Iranians.

NATO’s Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment RAND_MR1365

But having localized air superiority does not mean you won't take S2A fire. Despite the allies enjoying localized air superiority over Yugoslavia, the enemy fired 800+ SAMs.

But 3 aircraft lost to surface-to-air fires out of 700~ fighters and 24-25 bombers doing in excess of 750+ combined strike sorties a day is pretty amazing. The US enjoys localized air superiority and has been dropping JDAMs non-stop.

In addition to this, you might want to use weapons like JASSM/JSOW/TLAM because of the hard-target defeat capabilities these weapons have rather than solely stand-off.