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Investors will need to learn about a bit about war to use critical thinking about investing. War is a physical game, like boxing, where routes, manufacturing and supply chains will be affected.
I will explain the reasons military experts have presented in different places. I did not invent it, so do not flame me. I am just putting all the pieces in a single place for discussion.
While Trump says "go take it", taking Hormuz problem works like this.
Iran is an unsinkable battleship, so sending naval power only creates target practice for Iran. What is a battleship? It is a platform to shoot projectiles. What kind of weapons can hit ships? Artillery, drones and missiles. Each one has an effective firing range.
So taking Kharg island, Qeshm island or any other island, or even the coast only, is useless, because taking the beach or an island is not enough. Anyone could shoot from the mainland and it will be a target practice exercise. Taking Hormuz is not about placing ships and control waters either for the same reason.
Taking Hormuz is a literal game of area control. In the map you can see a strip of land (in red) that needs to be controlled along the coast to prevent placing weapons that could fire at ships passing through Hormuz. That strip goes 50 miles deep into Iranian territory.
This strip is full of mountains, so it is like invading a castle. The Iranians literally have the high ground. Mountains are also ideal to hide stuff nearly anywhere. Ideal for ambushes and guerrilla war.
You have two problems to take that strip of land.
* Approach the strip.
* Keep control of the strip.
The only ways to approach are through the sea or aerial means. Ships are slow and they would be sitting ducks. Terrain does not allow vehicles to enter Iran easily, so you can only drop soldiers from the air, assuming they have no aerial defenses. The only way to evacuate is on foot if aerial rescue is not possible.
Iran's army is composed by one million soldiers who will be defending the homeland. To have an effective invasion force you need numeric superiority of 3 to 1. How many soldiers do you need to bring? What vehicles will you use to transport troops? How many will be lost?
Once you take the land, you need very good supply lines to deliver ammunition, food and water. Weather is so bad that you could die without water in a matter of hours. Imagine the supply lines to keep the 3 to 1 force resupplied. Where will these forces get the supplies, What routes will they use? Are they safe? Where will they refuel? What is the risk of running out of supplies?
Remember that Iran has cheap drones and missiles with pinpoint accuracy that can hit an E-3 Sentry AWACS plane where the radar was. This is a complete game changer in modern war.
Previously, in WWII and Iraq war you could bring a massive number of soldiers. But today with drone warfare, a gathering of soldiers only needs cheap FPV drones launching grenades over any gathering of soldiers, so soldier forces need to be spread out, and that means they need to communicate. But any emmitter of radio frequency can be spotted and attacked, so communication needs to be visual.
Even the darkness of the night does not offer protection, because night vision is cheap. So Iran can use it too.
Entering mountain terrain offer only a few paths to reach places, and that is where ambushes take place and booby traps could be located. Unlike Iraq war, which was fought on flat terrain, mountains are treacherous. Flat terrain offer infinite paths to access a nav point.
Unlike WWII or Iraq war, advancing without drone protection is suicide. So advancing is a slow process. If you advance faster than the drone coverage, you are dead. With mountain terrain that allows the enemy with the high ground a chance to spot you and relocate for attacks.
If the enemy has tunnel networks, collapsing the entrance of a tunnel is futile. And they probably have ways to neutralize thermobaric attacks (that work like flamethrowers) too.
Guerrilla warfare allows the enemy to ressupply stealing your supplies, and that adds a burden to the resupply efforts. And asking for supplies or reinforcements or evacuation makes you visible to the enemy, so they can attack you with artillery, drones or missiles.
When you change the rules of the game, that authorizes the enemy to do the same. If we add the change of rules of engagement of "no quarter" (taking no prisoners) and "negotiate with bombs" and if Iran decides do the same, war becomes even more complicated.
Iran has proven they have anti-aircraft capabilities after several weeks of war as US planes get into Iran. Ancient war wisdom says that when forces advance in one area and retreat in another, it is a lure. USA has not faced real anti-aircraft defenses since Vietnam war.
Hegseth and Trump know nothing about war. So they could be fed narratives of explosions and winning the war and they could not argue against. But Trump watches Fox News and sees bad news on planes being downed and then Hegseth fires generals. What went wrong? Who knows.
Iran is playing war of attrition. Neither Trump or Hegseth probably do not understand the rules of that advanced warfare game.
Will we see ground invasion and nuclear attacks? Given that they do not understand war, it is completely possible. Is it probable? Who knows. Probably they do not even know.
Notice I only heard this from western experts. Iran may have its own doctrine and may have thought something these experts have not considered.
Ancient strategy calls for allowing half of the enemy forces to cross the water, so they have water in their backs. It calls for not entering confined spaces. And that is what Iran is exactly.
Notice that harming people or seeing things blow does not equal winning. And Iranian ancient culture is very stubborn when it comes to war.
There are two possible outcomes. No middle options, no shades of grey. No pause, no ceasefire, a physical game that is decided in the battlefield, not in narratives.
* Trump completely conquers Iran, which is a castle with the size of Alaska.
* Middle east becomes void of any western military presence and US pays generous reparations to Iran.
While one of these conditions are not met, war will not end.
I must be missing any pieces of information because it is a lot of information. But here it is to discuss.
For investors, any reasons or narratives do not matter. Who is right or wrong will not matter. What matter is the physical reality. I suspect that investors will have to learn to bypass narratives and find ways to learn what the physical reality is by other means.