So Iran decided to test whether President Trump’s naval blockade was just a suggestion. An Iranian cargo ship tried to blow past the U.S. Navy in the strait like it was running a toll booth on the Jersey Turnpike. The USS Spruance had other ideas — namely, a hole in their engine room.
Ouch! Turns out “maximum pressure” comes with actual, physical pressure. On your hull. From American munitions.
The video is something else. You’ve probably already seen it circulating everywhere — the Spruance lighting up the Iranian vessel, disabling it, and then U.S. forces boarding and seizing the whole ship. Trump announced the seizure himself, saying the encounter “did not go well for them.” That might be the understatement of the decade. It went about as well for them as a screen door on a submarine. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JRBDVSoQ9UM?feature=share
We need to take a moment to appreciate what just happened here. For eight years under Obama, Iran did whatever it wanted. They seized our sailors and paraded them on state television. They harassed our ships in the Persian Gulf on a weekly basis. They funded every terrorist organization with a mailing address in the Middle East. And what did we do? We gave them pallets of cash. Literally. Pallets. Of. Cash.
Remember Obama’s “red lines”? Those were about as intimidating as a parking ticket on a stolen car. Assad gassed his own people and Obama responded with a strongly worded frown. Iran watched all of that and concluded that America was a paper tiger with a “Please Don’t” sign taped to its chest.
Then Trump showed up.
The blockade went into effect and apparently someone in Tehran thought it was a bluff. “The Americans won’t actually shoot,” some Iranian admiral probably told his crew. “They’ll hail us on the radio and file a complaint with the United Nations.”
Wrong. So, so wrong.
The Spruance didn’t file a complaint. The Spruance filed a round into their engine room. And then U.S. forces boarded the vessel, seized it, and Trump went on camera to tell the world about it with the energy of a guy who just won a poker hand with a royal flush. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lw_TCCPYeMw?feature=share
This is what deterrence looks like when it’s not being run by people who think “soft power” is a real thing. Soft power is what got our sailors put on their knees with bags over their heads while John Kerry was busy negotiating a deal that let Iran build nuclear weapons on a payment plan.
Here’s what the foreign policy geniuses at CNN and MSNBC won’t tell you: this works. It actually works. When the other side knows you’re not bluffing — when they’ve seen the video of you blowing a hole in a ship that called your bluff — suddenly everyone at the negotiating table gets very polite and very reasonable.
Iran had been testing the waters (literally) for weeks, probing for weakness, looking for a crack in the blockade they could exploit. They found the USS Spruance instead. That’s like breaking into a house and finding out the homeowner is a retired Navy SEAL with insomnia and a bad attitude.
The timing here is perfect, too. This happened the same week Iran’s been scrambling to figure out its next move on the nuclear front. They’ve been stalling, posturing, making demands that read like a fantasy novel. And now one of their ships is sitting in U.S. custody with a ventilation upgrade it didn’t ask for.
We spent years watching America get pushed around by countries that couldn’t beat us in a pillow fight. Iran, China, Russia — they all took turns seeing how far they could go because they knew nobody in Washington had the spine to push back.
That era is over. The video of the Spruance engaging that Iranian vessel is the visual proof. Not a press release, not a “concerned statement” from the State Department, not a UN resolution that everyone ignores. A warship. Doing warship things. To a country that forgot who it was dealing with.
Trump said it best: “It did not go well for them.” Nope. It sure didn’t. And the next Iranian captain thinking about running the blockade might want to watch that video a few times before he makes any career-ending decisions.