Subject: Re: Condi's take on Iran
To be fair, the U.S. military definitely has the ability to force the Strait back to normal.

True. But not without a large deployment of ground troops. I certainly didn't clarify that and should have. Most of these discussions take place in the context of our current approach to the war, which is to not have an Iraq 2.0 style full-on invasion with massive ground troops - so I didn't specify that. We absolutely could seize control of the Strait that way.

But we're not going to use ground troops. For exactly the reasons you mention. Within that (self-imposed) constraint, we cannot force the Strait back to normal. Which is why we haven't.