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Notes -
Judging the Iran War on its initial goals:
There has been so much talk about the Straight of Hormuz, that people are forgetting this was never an initial goal of the war. It's easy to forget that the Straight of Hormuz was open and not tolled by Iran before the war. So by definition, how could a war aim be to something that you already have. This would be like the US declaring War on Canada and saying one of the aims is to take New York.
So looking back, it's important to see what they initially said. This is straight from the White House itself [https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/04/president-trumps-clear-and-unchanging-objectives-drive-decisive-success-against-iranian-regime/](This is straight from the White House itself:)
Tonight, @POTUS will address the nation on Operation Epic Fury.
From day one, the objectives have been clear: obliterate Iran’s missiles and production, annihilate its navy, sever its support for terrorist proxies, and ensure it never acquires a nuclear weapon.
Trump:
President Trump (March 2): “Our objectives are clear. First, we’re destroying Iran’s missile capabilities… and their capacity to produce brand new ones — pretty good ones they make. Second, we’re annihilating their navy… Third, we’re ensuring that the world’s number one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon… And finally, we’re ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”
Vice President JD Vance (March 2): “Whatever happens with the regime in one form or another, it’s incidental to the President’s primary objective here — which is to make sure the Iranian terrorist regime does not build a nuclear bomb.”
Secretary Rubio (March 3): “Our objectives remain, as they’ve been identified from the beginning and the President laid out clearly yesterday. Iran can never have a nuclear weapon and we will not allow Iran to hide behind the immunity of a massive short-term ballistic missile inventory, or the ability to make them or launch them… As well as the destruction of their navy.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (March 4): “The mission is laser-focused: obliterate Iran’s missiles and drones and facilities that produce them, annihilate its navy and critical security infrastructure, and sever their pathway to nuclear weapons. Iran will never possess a nuclear bomb.”
It's obvious from these statements there were four goals:
The Straight of Hormuz is a red herring. The fact that we are even talking about it at all means we have gone backwards. The US has accomplished only one of its war aims and that was to destroy their Navy. The rest are not done and at best are TBD. If you had said 6 months ago that the war would still be ongoing that only one goal would be accomplished, what would you have said about the status of the war?
To me, and this is just my opinion, people would have said the war is not going well. Based on those four goals explicitly laid out by Trump, I don't see how you can say we are close to a victory.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ydld0gykpo](By the way, Trump himself says that the war will continue until at least November.)
Here he again explicitly mentions the nuclear weapons as a warm aim (that is not accomplished yet). Personally, I don't see this war ending any time soon. At this point, the Iran government has shown it is resilient and it is in a literal fight for its life. They can't back down now. Meanwhile, I don't see any way the US can accomplish its war aims without staying until the regime collapses. How long that takes I think is anyone's guess.
Meanwhile, stocks of crude oil in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell to 285 million barrels last week, the lowest level since November 1982, according to data from the Department of Energy.
In other news open satellite footage has shown that daytime transit of the strait in the southern route has resumed for the first time since the mou end.
There are multiple ways to interpret this, but I suspect that Iran only has the capability to blow up one or two ships per week - irregardless of if the transit is happening during the day or if the ships are being sneaky or not. If so, and a couple ships are going to get blown up anyways every week, the logical strategy is to yolo as many ships as possible through and accept the losses. Same losses, more throughput compared to the sneaky option.
If this is indeed true, it represents a major loss of leverage for Iran. They may continue to cause economic damage in the losses of ships and cargo, but the previous total shutdown of traffic will not continue. Previously ship owners feared an overwhelming chance of getting blown up for crossing, but if the chance is only 5%, then yoloing it makes economic sense. And there is a collective action problem but the more ships that yolo it the lower the chance of getting blown up (if the interpretation is true).
For Iran to regain disruption, they would have to show they have the ability to blow up an entire convoy or most of it, but it's likely they are not being restrained, but instead lack this capability.
Actual conditions in the Strait are unknown. Everyone's lying (except maybe CENTCOM, and they don't say much) and always has been. Gas prices are going up despite the summer demand peak being passed. The Houthis have the mandate of heaven and are pretty much rolling up government and Saudi forces and could stop traffic in the Bab-al-Mandeb at any time; they can also continue to threaten the entire Red Sea. The East-West pipeline was hit and is shut down. Iran is cut off from oil sales, but they're fanatics who don't care about the well-being of their population, so they have 90 million people to basically feed into its war machine to survive until the US can't take it any more (2029 at the latest). Not really looking good at the moment.
The East West pipeline should be bigger news. It is like 6-7 million barrels a day. I don't know much about pipelines so I don't know how serious the damage is. I'd believe anything from "months to repair" to "we've already restored most of the capacity". If I was going to make any predictions about oil in the short term, I'd want boots on the ground there.
Edit: Looks like half the capacity will be restored shortly and it was running below peak capacity anyway as Persian Gulf has become viable again.
Nevertheless, that pipeline was a big part of the reason the doomer bears were wrong about oil.
If you can build a pipeline, you can also fix one -- "however long it would have taken to build however many feet of pipeline got blown up + time overhead for general setup" would be a good first guess. Of course if a pumping station gets hit or something it will take a little longer to get everything in place, but I'd think "days not weeks" when shipping fees on 6-7 MBpD are on the line...
At least one pumping station was hit.
https://archive.is/mwyPR
In the immediate aftermath AP cited an official (no mention of Saudi or US) indicated 3 to 5 weeks for a full repair.
https://apnews.com/article/yemen-houthis-saudi-shipping-mandeb-8c18d82c109a8ea91347ce53c0096c53
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The US also recently announced that they can no longer support all-night operations in the strait and will be limiting support to predetermined windows.
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