One of the goals of the American military has been to sink Iran’s navy, in order to make it very difficult, or even impossible, for the Islamic Republic to carry out its threat to block all sea traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The Americans have in the first four days of the war already blown to smithereens 17 Iranian ships in the Gulf, but one ship, then newest, biggest, and most powerful ship in Iran’s navy, had until now escaped being hit, because it had been on a joint training exercise far away — some 2,500 nautical miles from the Strait of Hormuz. Now that ship has been sunk by an American submarine off the coast of Sri Lanka, with 140 of its 180-man crew believed to have died.
More on this unexpected and most welcome development can be found here: “US submarine sinks Iranian warship off Sri Lanka,’” by Tom Cotterill, Telegraph, March 4, 2026:
How can the IRGC claim it has “complete control” of the Strait of Hormuz, when it no longer has a navy to enforce the blockade? Will it use planes to sink ships in the Strait, when almost all of its air force has been destroyed in the first five days of the war? How many ballistic missiles does Iran still possess to shoot at tankers traveling through the Gulf? President Trump has said the U.S. navy will escort oil and LNG tankers through the Strait. How does Iran plan to stop them?
Iran has targeted some tankers in the Gulf since the US-Israeli operation began on Saturday. However, its navy has also been heavily depleted, with its naval headquarters destroyed and several warships sunk.
Iran’s navy was “heavily depleted” by the third day of the war. Today, the fifth day of the war, with 18 of its ships, including one submarine, having been sunk, including the new and powerful warship, the IRS Dena sunk by an American submarine far from the Gulf, it is even closer to being eliminated as a credible threat.
The sinking of an Iranian ship located 2,500 nautical miles from the Strait of Hormuz must surely have startled and unsettled the Iranian leaders. It means that whatever handful of ships Iran still possesses can be hunted down and destroyed wherever they are in the world; there is no place that they can be safe. The long arm of the American navy provided the proof on March 4.
David Lakatos says
I like it. Sink more of them.
somehistory says
For some reason, Johnny Horton singing “Sink the Bismark” comes to mind.
David Lakatos says
If Abdul down the road isn’t acting Muslim enough, they kill him, and that’s how it starts.
Gene Currivan says
You gotta count on antiship missiles lining the shores of the Gulf.
Mosques were originally designed to be fortresses/armories… They are used in this fashion to this day. Destroy them all and the pedophile witch doctors that populate them
Taffy says
Reading Hugh’s blogposts is a vocabulary builder. Every so often, I have to look look up words that he uses and Exelauno Day is one of them. It seems that it’s a proclaimed day for study of the classics that started in Roxbury, Boston, MA. It is celebrated March 4th and Exelauno on Greek means March forth, and hence the play on words.
The Iranian ships are no match for a modern US navy sub. My guess is that our sub detected this ship’s sonar signature or pinged its presence from over 100 miles away. I’ll bet that those submariners were elated and looking forward to their one cold beer as soon as they are officially off duty.
Allah, Muhammad and the Ayatollahs would not approve.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I recommend reading Hugh’s essays from 2 decades ago, in the ’00s and the early
10s. They’d send you hurtling towards a dictionary, and not just any dictionary. It has been a hobbyhorse of his to use words that make people do that!
James Lincoln says
Yes, Infidel.
I think that I have a halfway decent vocabulary, but I still have to look things up occasionally while reading Hugh’s feature articles.
ploome says
me too
https://firstthings.com/exelauno-day/
࿗Infidel࿘ says
The sinking of a ship IRS Soleimani – where exactly did that happen? Sec Hegseth referred to that as getting Soleimani twice 😈
GE says
OAT—did anybody see the Reuters article that NATO defense systems took out an Iranian drone aimed for Turkey?
This after Erdogan praised and eulogized Khamenei.
Iran outsnaked him.
If I find the article again, I’ll post it.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
It’s hilarious that the military of a country that can bully neighbors like Armenia, Greece and Cyprus, while establishing a puppet regime in Damascus, can’t protect its own citizens from Iranian drones, and has to rely on its NATO membership
A part of me wishes that some Turkish islamists slam Erdogan for being on the same side as Israel in this war 😈 Despite his foreign minister being in constant contact w/ his counterpart in Iran
Billy Bones says
This is the Barbary wars all over again and with the same result.
James Lincoln says
Great job by the U.S. Navy!
Taffy says
From a ChatGPT synthesis of a New York Times article on federal judge Bruce M. Selya:
Judge Bruce M. Selya, who served on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, was renowned for using a highly sophisticated, polysyllabic, and recondite vocabulary in his decisions.
Key Details About Judge Selya’s Style:
“Selyaisms”: The National Law Journal and legal observers identified his unique, colorful, and sometimes obscure vocabulary as “Selyaisms”. Examples of his vocabulary include words like exiguous (meager), struthious (ostrich-like), neoteric (modern), and inconcinnate (unsuitable).
Literary Flair: He frequently utilized puns, metaphors, and archaic words, aiming to avoid the “bromidic” and “otiose” prose often found in legal writing.
Philosophical Approach: Judge Selya believed that “there are no such things as obscure words; there are just words that are temporarily abandoned” and that it was his responsibility to “resuscitate them”.
Legacy: He was considered one of the most quoted jurists in America and was described by his former law clerk, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, as a “brilliant, meticulous and scholarly practitioner of the law”.
The New York Times
The New York Times
+2
Note: Judge Selya passed away in March 2025 at age 90, but his writing style remains a well-known characteristic of his lengthy tenure on the First Circuit.
Hugh reminds me of this judge with respect to his choice of words.
STJOHNOFGRAFTON says
Some people think the sinking of that Iranian navy frigate was unwarranted and a war crime. But then those dimwits also think that after those exerciese off Sri Lanka the Iranians won’t use that frigate for harassing shipping in the Straits of Hormuz.
JustJim says
Raze every mosque, wherever you find it. An anti-religious doing…..I don’t think so. Islam is not a religion, it is an ideology, and a Satanic one at that. Their holy book calls for them to strike us infidels, wherever they find us, so sinking their sub is fair play. Why even play fair with the inbred, throat slitting, heathens. They are like a plague, that needs to be eradicated. Thank God that Bibi and Trump possess the ballz to do it!
OLD GUY says
I Salute the great men and women that make up Americas military. God bless them and protect them.
Captain Quirk says
Exelauno day: ‘Since the narrative [of the Anabasis, by Xenophon)]mainly concerns a marching army, a common term used in Anabasis is ἐξελαύνω (exelauno), meaning “march out, march forth”. Throughout the work, this term is used 23 times in the 3rd person singular present indicative active (ἐξελαύνει) and five additional times in other forms.[9] In the late 19th century, a tongue-in-cheek tradition arose among American students of Greek who were all too familiar with Xenophon’s usage of this vocabulary item: March 4 (a date phonetically similar to the phrase “march forth”) became known as “Exelauno Day”.[10] The origin of this niche holiday is connected with the Roxbury Latin School in Massachusetts.[11]