Matthew Hoh, a former Marine and State Department officer, laid the strategy out as three plans.
Plan A was toppling the government, and it didn't happen.
Plan B was destabilizing Iran into another Syria, and that failed too.
Plan C is the twelve years between 1991 and 2003, when America flew over 8,000 sorties a year over Iraq and bombing became so routine it stopped making the news.
CENTCOM's own phrase for it now is mowing the lawn.
The flaw is that 2026 Iran is not 1991 Iraq, and the shipping numbers show it.
Against claims of fifteen million barrels moving daily, the actual count is roughly 20 to 45 vessels over two days, against 120 to 150 a day before the war.
That's 15 to 20 percent of normal, and the conversation's read is that whatever does transit moves with Tehran's approval, because the ships that tried without it were hit, five to seven of them at $150 million apiece.
No underwriter accepts that math on Washington's assurance.
As for pipelines, they run the wrong way.
Nearly all Gulf oil goes east to Asia, so every proposed route sends it away from its buyers and through the Red Sea anyway, assuming Syria and Lebanon stay stable enough to build across.
And the bill arrives at home. American diesel hit a record $5.82 a gallon today, beating the 2022 peak, with farms failing at the fastest rate since Covid.
@MatthewPHoh @WeTheBrandon
