U.S ships....Firing on U.S ships means end of Iran as it exists today.
U.S navy will easily take control of the straits and business will be as usual within a week. While Iranians will be getting bombed to hell for their attempt to close the straits...
Gambit is right---Iran does not have any thing to oppose U.S naval and air might. U.S will stream roll Iranian forces at sea and air. After that, Iranian land forces will be just sitting ducks unless they hide deep in Iranian mainland. At which point the whole "we will close strait of hormouz" mantra goes to sh!t as coastal waters and airspace around it will be under U.S domination.
Poor Iran, so powerless to stop the Big Bad Empire.
And yet....in last 20 years Iran has grown in immensely in power. In last 20 years, the US has not engaged an Iranian soldier outside of Iran’s borders or inside. In last 20 years, US has lost 3 wars (Afghan, Iraq, and Syria) to iran.
Make no mistake about it, after two of the biggest Neocon/Warhawk governments in the HISTORY of the US (George W Bush admin and Donald Trump adminstration) PASS on war with Iran then Iran will be left untouched for DECADES. Any adminstration after this period of time would be hard pressed to ever want war with iran. Iran knows this and is operating the long game.
The US Navy can not operate in a war time Persian Gulf: Iran has diesel submarines which the US Navy has a very hard time tracking. On top of that, hundreds of anti ship cruise missiles line a coast line that would be impossible to detect by air without setting up a beachhead and invading Iran’s southern shores. On top of that, there are hundreds of manned and unmanned patrol boats lined with cruise missiles/explosives. On top of that, Navy seals running night time sabatoge missions. List goes on and on...
No amount of AirPower would stop missiles from continuously being fired from Iran (see 60 day War, Houthi/Saudi War, Desert Storm as proof).
Thus US Navy would be forced to send in marines to invade Iranian coastline and set up a massive beachhead in order to push the threat of missiles further away from iranian coastline. This would be a costly disaster for the US as now it has boots on the ground in harms way to many different asymmetrical attacks. This option would be unlikely to succeed in stopping Iran from launching cruise missiles and denying access to PG.
Thus the threat of anti ship missiles is too great, all US Navy Destroyers would have to have their radars on ready to engage an numerous amount of anti ship missile threats. Thus they would light up like Christmas trees for Anti-radiation Ballistic missiles and one Persian Gulf missile would rip the biggest destroyer in half upon impact.
So the US fleet would have to pick their poison....turn off radars and emit no radiation and be helpless to a swarm of boats and anti ship missiles.... OR keep them on and get sunk by a Khajil fars Anti radiation missile fired from 250-500KM away.
If the US pulls back from PG and operates out of Indian Ocean then it’s nullfies the impact of air power as the distance becomes greater and the planes have less ability to stay in war theater before refueling. Thus the PG will remain closed or in a state of war which would cost the world economy dearly.
If things escalate it is easy for Iran to sink many US ships as they are highly vulernable. They weren’t designed to fend off waves of missiles.
Now I don’t see Iran making that decision lightly, Iran would likely be restrained until either a miscalculation happens or it is pushed against the wall to defend itself.
Iran would prefer to keep it to a small brief highly limited skirmish. Even if losses for Iran end up being greater than the US...that is okay. Once UN steps in and both sides end hostilities it ends up being a big win for Iran to go nuclear.
However, if the either side miscalculates what the other is willing to accept in terms of attack....then full on warfare would be devasting for both sides and very costly.
Furthermore, expect Russia/China to covertly provide Iran up to date intel and targeting data of all US military assets. After all, they would be more than glad to make the US bleed in a war.