You’re familiar with Iranian aerial drones. The Shahed-136, the GARAN-2 — cheap to build at $20,000–$50,000 a unit, capable of delivering 50 kg or more of military payload, hard to detect, and laughably expensive to shoot down: we’re talking fighter jets worth tens of millions firing missiles at $100,000–$200,000 a pop. Or interceptors worth millions.
Now meet their underwater cousins. You’ll grasp why Trump’s claims that Iran has no Air Force nor Navy anymore do not matter.
Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Iran has been preparing for the day the U.S. decides to strike. Their chosen strategy is asymmetrical. They refuse to fight America where America dominates: air and sea.
Iran has thus built a formidable conventional ballistic strike force and, crucially, what it calls a drone belt — a layered system designed to make any ground invasion extraordinarily costly, and to choke off the Strait of Hormuz indefinitely.
The Strait of Hormuz, for context, is 23 nautical miles across — roughly 42 km. The actual area that needs to be controlled to halt shipping? About 12 square kilometers. A postage stamp of ocean with trillion-dollar consequences.
Iran already demonstrated it could seal that stamp during the Tanker War of 1984–1988, by mining it. The problem with mines: they’re indiscriminate. Friendly and neutral vessels get blown up too. So Iran upgraded.
