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So, perhaps this too much of a war question, rather than a culture war one, but I'm having trouble understanding why Iran is launching attacks on random cargo ships in the Red Sea via proxies in Yemen, and now apparently directly https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-67811929 .
Ok, at least some of the vessels are Israeli linked, and they're hitting at US warships, but my confusion is what this hopes to achieve. Operation Preying Mantis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis seems an apt concern for the Iranians as a repeat: they cant hope to exert serious pressure on Israel's economy, and the moment they sink or damage a warship they're getting hit hard surely? And is it earning them any friends?
Meanwhile Hezbolah is Iranian backed and maybe directly controlled, and has done little in the current conflict. If you want to apply pressure to Israel, isnt that the way, especially given that Hezbolah has resources Hamas does not and could seriously threaten another front that would need actual Israeli resources. Iran isnt going all out with its assets, or the assets in cases are refusing to for self preservation.
So why hit ships? Is it really all they can do? Do they assume the US cant respond? Maybe it earns them some respect from the muslim world for standing up, but it just seems... odd. I'm not exactly Bismark, but I'm clearly missing something.
The Iranians and their allies know that the US Navy has other commitments, they really cannot afford another front opening up in Yemen. We should be looking at this as a global conflict. It's not just Iran and proxies vs Israel and US.
Raising oil prices is good for Iran and constraining Liberian (US) shipping is good for the whole Russia-Chinese-Iranian axis. I'm not saying there's a grand conspiracy where everyone is taking orders from Xi but they do have similar motivations and shared interests. We see Russian and Chinese tankers going untouched. Elements of the Chinese navy are hanging about nearby ignoring Israeli merchant ships that complain about being attacked. It also harms US prestige for its allies to be unable to use Suez.
Times have changed since the 1980s - Iranian anti-ship missiles and anti-access, area-denial weapons generally are more potent than they were, in comparative terms. The US is shooting down $2000 drones with $2 million dollar missiles that can't be resupplied at sea. This is not really sustainable.
What is the US supposed to do? Bombing Yemen has been tried and hasn't worked out for the US alliance group. Aircraft and armaments need to be conserved for the primary theater in Asia anyway. Invading Yemen is a disastrous proposition, second only to invading Iran.
What can Israel do? They're prepared to fight Hezbollah and Lebanon but their options for fighting Yemen are much less promising. If Hezbollah and Iran preserve their strength for if/when China and Russia fully enter the war, they have a greater chance of getting what they want. Plinking away at US merchant shipping and tying down forces in the Red Sea contributes to their group at relatively low risk.
Air defence wasn't really NATO's strong suit during the Cold War. NATO prioritized fighter jets over SAMs. Since then there has been 30 years of cut backs with the war in Afghanistan and Iraq costing an ungodly amount of money. SAM-systems had little use against taliban, and they cost a fortune to buy and operate. The cutbacks lead to a big drop in capacity, as cutting spending leads to a much bigger drop in deliveries. Half the budget and the unit cost increases due to diminishing production volumes.
Ukraine is currently consuming SAM systems at a much higher rate than they are produced. Nobody expected Russia to manufacture 3000 Geran drones in a year and almost none of them to be shot down by a fighter jet. Russia manufactures more missiles than expected and defending from Russian missiles wasn't the main priority during the forever wars in the middle east.
China is manufacturing missiles and drones at an industrial rate while Iran has managed to go from barely being able to fight in the skies to having thousands of flying systems. A war of attrition between American SAM systems and Iranian, Chinese and Russian drones and missiles is a big win for the latter. Especially if they are using 10 000 dollar drones built with parts ordered online.
Quite right. Also the lethality of surface to surface missiles has increased. Scuds in the 1960s, 70s and 80s were not very accurate, you could maybe target an airbase or some big target... nothing like the precision we have now. They were big, expensive and relatively easy to target on the ground, now there's a wide range of missiles that are smaller, harder to spot, cheaper to replace. I saw a Houthi military parade on youtube, where you'd expect to see columns of tanks they just had dozens of trucks with drones on them.
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