rather, they'd just use oil money and pay gurkha mercenaries
Don't need a full-scale invasion. Just a land grab on the coasts. They can't do it alone. But they can provide troops (and mercenaries) as well as staying power where the U.S. cannot.
> there is no reliable way to remove threat of Iran striking oil infra
Barring invasion: mutualize the damage. Pot Iranian tankers. Seed their ports with mines. Israel locking up the Caspian and the UAE and Saudi Arabia locking up Hormuz to Iran changes the calculus of the war in Tehran and makes suing for peace–not with America and Israel, but with the Gulf–tenable.
As the article points out, this just makes the soldiers on the coast the targets of the drones and missiles.
And it is a very large coastline to secure. How many mercenaries can they feed into the grinder? They certainly can't keep it up like Russia.
There was a semi-stable equilibrium and the US ruined it. Now Iran controls the straight and it will be very very costly to go back.
Correct. That also reveals the locations of launchers, artillery pieces, et cetera. A winnable game if you have cheap bodies.
> it is a very large coastline to secure
To secure the Strait? Absolutely. To converge firepower onto a few beachheads? Not necessarily. And a Gulf land grab wouldn't be comprehensive. Just the islands (e.g. Larak, Hengam and East Qeshm) and maybe the land directly across from the Musandam Peninsula. (Probably not to hold. Just draw fire and trade back to Tehran. Hell, gift it to Trump.)
Kuwait and Iraq remain screwed. But if you're a Gulf exporter, that isn't necessarily a bad thing...
> There was a semi-stable equilibrium and the US ruined it. Now Iran controls the straight and it will be very very costly to go back
Sure. The point is how those costs will be borne. I don't think the emerging status quo is tenable for the Gulf.
they couldn't win this against much closer, smaller and weaker Yemen. They just don't have functional military.
> mutualize the damage. Pot Iranian tankers. Seed their ports with mines.
I don't believe they will do this because they love oil money too much, unlike Iranian regime, which is idiologically/religiously driven, and endured for many years of various attacks and sanctions.
KSA went it alone in Yemen. And from that–as well as various proxy wars in Africa–both it and the UAE have learned.
> don't believe they will do this because they love oil money too much
Loving oil money means wanting to export your oil. That said, I think the monarchies are more politically vulnerable. So it's harder for them to commit to this path. (It would also involve pissing off Trump.) But that doesn't mean it's strategically off the table, particularly for Saudi Arabia, which is less dependent on the Strait than the UAE.