Brandon Weichert ran the enforcement math cold. A real blockade means sealing the waterway around the clock, then detaining every intercepted vessel while the cordon holds, and the fleet doesn't have the hulls. No European, Indian, or Japanese ships are volunteering.
And the first time American guns open on a merchant hull, insurance markets and volatility start doing Tehran's work for free.
The map kept widening as we spoke.
Two Adnoc tankers took cruise missiles on the Omani side, one crew member reported killed, eight injured, while the IRGC broadcast live on the emergency channel that it was firing.
Axios added the political bombshell: Trump gave MBS backing for military action against the Houthis before the Sana'a strike.
Brandon's warning on that one was immediate: provoke the Houthis and they go after Saudi Arabia's Red Sea ports, the alternative to the alternative Riyadh spent the whole war building.
His new Substack maps the next front: the Gulf of Aden, with forces staging toward Somaliland to suppress Yemen's missiles.
The war, in his phrase, is expanding geometrically.
And Iran's strategy, as he reads it, needs no invasion at all: their allies sit on every chokepoint, and they'll keep closing doors until the price of staying is a depression.
@WeTheBrandon
