Normally I'd expect Iran would give in and Trump could TACO his way out of this - but there's two statistical anomalies that may have caused this future to already diverge into a total shitshow:
- Mojtaba Khamenei lost his Father, Mother, Wife, Brother and Sister - but survived.
- "Dave from Langley" misclicked on a satellite map - and killed 170 young girls.
Mojtaba is more hardline than his father, and has 6 good reasons to want to see the world burn. Those 170 young girls were at a elementary school in Minab. They were completely innocent in this war.
The thing is - Minab (as you probably didn't realise either) is directly on the Hormuz strait. Imagine how angry you would be if someone blew up 170 young children in your city. There will be hundreds of martyrs wiling to fire surface to surface missiles at crude tankers.
I can't see any ship owners being ok with running the Hormuz gauntlet, even if America carpet bombs the entire Hormozgan.