So we haven't actually made a run at forcing open the strait. Thanks for making that admission; for some reason the board doesn't want to ack that fact. Not sure why.

What are you talking about? No one has questioned that we haven't tried to open up the strait. I think we're all well aware of that.

The reason we haven't done it is, as we have discussed before, it would expose the U.S. to far greater likelihood of taking losses and possible service member casualties. That's why we kept asking other countries to do it, rather than to do it ourselves. A mix of sea drones, air drones, short-range missiles fired from the mountainous coast, and yes even the guys on the small speedboats make it hazardous to put our ships into the smaller-than-the-Black-Sea "lake" that is the Persian Gulf. Which is why we've almost entirely kept our vessels safely in the Gulf of Oman, and traversed the straits when there was a cease-fire in effect with Iran.