Day 3: Hezbollah enters; tankers burn in Hormuz

President Trump stated that nine Iranian warships have been sunk by US forces. The claim came alongside the assertion that the US has struck more than 1,000 targets across Iran , including naval vessels, submarine pens, missile batteries, and IRGC command centres. The Pentagon has not independently confirmed the nine-vessel figure.

Iran's navy operates in two branches. The regular navy, the IRIN, fields approximately five frigates — three Alvand-class vessels dating to the Shah era, built by Vosper Thornycroft in the 1970s — along with several corvettes, three Russian-built Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines acquired in the 1990s, and assorted patrol craft. The IRGC Navy, a separate force, commands fast-attack boats, missile craft, and coastal defence systems. If the nine sunk vessels include major IRIN surface combatants, Iran's conventional blue-water capability has been functionally destroyed in 72 hours. During Operation Praying Mantis in April 1988 — the largest US naval engagement since the Second World War — the US Navy sank or disabled six Iranian vessels in a single day after the mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts. Trump had earlier threatened to "destroy Iran's navy" ; the nine-warship claim suggests an attempt to deliver on that rhetoric.

The strategic question is whether these losses affect the war Iran is actually fighting at sea. Iran's primary maritime threat has always been asymmetric: fast-attack craft operating from concealed coastal positions, shore-based anti-ship missiles like the Noor and Qader, and mine-laying capability that can be conducted from civilian dhows. The three commercial tankers struck near the Strait of Hormuz were attacked by these coastal assets, not by the frigates and corvettes Trump claims to have sunk.

Destroying Iran's conventional navy degrades its ability to project power in the open Gulf and eliminates the submarine threat to US carrier groups. It does little to reduce the guerrilla naval capability that has already driven vessel traffic through the strait down 70% and forced more than 150 tankers to anchor in open waters. The 1984–88 Tanker War demonstrated this asymmetry: Iraq and Iran struck 546 commercial vessels over four years, predominantly using aircraft, shore-based missiles, and small boats — not capital ships. Iran's ability to threaten Hormuz has never depended on the vessels Trump is counting.

President Trump stated the military campaign against Iran would last "four weeks or less." The claim was made as the conflict expanded from one active front to four in its first 72 hours, with ordnance falling on at least ten countries.

The four-week figure sits alongside two earlier administration statements: Trump's assertion to CNBC that the operation was "ahead of schedule" , and a US official's assessment to Al Jazeera that the war would last "weeks, not days" (ID:90). Read together, the administration envisions a bounded air and naval campaign — closer in conception to the 78-day NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 than to an open-ended commitment. Trump has explicitly ruled out ground troops and nation-building . The framing is of a punitive operation with a defined exit: degrade Iran's military infrastructure, destroy its nuclear programme, and withdraw.

The historical record of such predictions is dismal. In 2003, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested the Iraq campaign might last "five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that." The US remained in Iraq for eight years; combat troops returned in 2014. In 2011, the Obama administration described the Libya intervention as lasting "days, not weeks." NATO operations continued for seven months. Both conflicts shared a feature now present in Iran: the assumption that air power alone could produce defined political outcomes.

The specific difficulty with a four-week timeline is structural, not military. The US can sustain an air campaign indefinitely; the question is what "over" means. The killing of Khamenei , Defence Minister Nasirzadeh, IRGC Ground Forces Commander Pakpour, and Ali Shamkhani (ID:470) shattered Iran's command architecture. The three-person interim council holds constitutional authority but may lack operational links to the forces it nominally commands. Iran's foreign minister has stated that military units are acting outside central government direction. Hezbollah has entered the war independently. The Strait of Hormuz is a combat zone. A British base on European soil has taken fire. Four weeks of strikes can destroy infrastructure on a schedule. They cannot, on a schedule, produce an adversary capable of agreeing to stop — because the US-Israeli campaign has already killed the people who had the authority to do so.

US forces have struck more than 1,000 targets across Iran in 72 hours — naval vessels, submarine pens, missile batteries, communications infrastructure, and IRGC command centres. President Trump claimed nine Iranian warships have been sunk. Combined with Israel's 2,000-plus munitions dropped across 24 of 31 provinces (ID:88), the joint campaign is the most intensive aerial bombardment of a single country since the opening of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003.

The target categories reveal intent. Submarine pens and warships aim to eliminate Iran's ability to threaten Gulf shipping — the IRGC had broadcast a closure of the Strait of Hormuz on VHF Channel 16 . Missile batteries and communications nodes degrade the capacity for further retaliation after Iran fired at 27 US military installations across seven countries (ID:472). IRGC command centres sever the organisational link between Tehran and its network of regional proxies. This is a campaign to dismantle Iran's conventional force projection, not a punitive raid.

Trump stated the campaign would last "four weeks or less" and told CNBC it was "ahead of schedule" . For destroying fixed infrastructure, the timeline is plausible — the US achieved comparable destruction against Iraq in 2003, Serbia in 1999, and Libya in 2011. Each of those campaigns succeeded in eliminating its target's conventional military hardware.

But each also failed to produce a stable political outcome through air power alone. NATO's 78-day bombing of Serbia required negotiation with Slobodan Milošević to end the war. Iraq's military collapse was followed by a decade-long insurgency. Iran, with its senior leadership largely dead , ID:470), presents the same structural problem: the United States can clearly destroy 1,000 targets. What it cannot manufacture from the air is a political authority on the Iranian side capable of agreeing to stop.

Up to 40 senior Iranian officials have been killed in the US-Israeli strikes across 72 hours of operations. The confirmed dead include Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei , Defence Minister Nasirzadeh, IRGC Commander Pakpour (ID:470), military Artesh commander Abdul Rahim Mousavi (ID:89), and Supreme National Security Council chairman Ali Shamkhani (ID:68). Thousands of IRGC personnel are reported killed or wounded (ID:71). The Assembly of Experts building in Tehran — the constitutional body responsible for selecting a new Supreme Leader — was struck directly, destroying the physical and institutional infrastructure for succession.

The toll is the most thorough decapitation of a state's leadership since the US targeted Saddam Hussein's inner circle in 2003. Iraq offers the clearest warning about what follows. The destruction of Ba'athist command structures did not produce surrender — it produced fragmentation. Military units, severed from central authority, dispersed and reconstituted as an insurgency that killed over 4,400 US service members across eight years.

Iran's foreign minister has stated that military units are "acting independently" of central government direction. The three-person interim council appointed under Article 111 — Ayatollah Arafi, President Pezeshkian, and Chief Justice Mohseni-Ejei — holds constitutional authority. Whether it holds operational command over IRGC units armed with ballistic missiles, anti-ship weapons, and drone arsenals is a different question. The foreign minister's statement suggests the answer is no.

The campaign achieved its tactical objective: the destruction of Iran's senior command. In doing so, it removed the interlocutors needed to negotiate an end to the war it started. Any ceasefire requires someone with the authority to order a halt and the capacity to enforce compliance across Iran's dispersed military apparatus. Those people are dead.

Israeli warplanes struck Dahieh — Hezbollah's stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs — with at least 12 separate explosions in the early hours of 2 March. Lebanese health authorities reported 31 people killed and 149 wounded.

The strikes came hours after Hezbollah launched rockets and drones into northern Israel, framing the attacks as vengeance for Khamenei's assassination . On the conflict's opening day, Hezbollah's non-activation was one of the few stabilising signals amid the chaos . That restraint lasted approximately 48 hours before collapsing entirely.

Dahieh has absorbed Israeli bombardment before. In the 2006 war, Israeli air power flattened entire residential blocks, displacing an estimated one million Lebanese civilians. The November 2024 ceasefire — negotiated after Israel killed Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah and conducted a two-month air and limited ground campaign — was designed to prevent this recurrence. Its terms required Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River and the Lebanese Armed Forces to deploy in the south. Neither condition was fully met. The ceasefire held for three months.

Thirty-one dead and 149 wounded are first-night figures from a densely populated urban area with limited shelter infrastructure. If the 2006 or autumn 2024 patterns hold, these numbers will climb as rescue teams reach collapsed structures. Lebanon's medical system, hollowed out by the country's financial collapse since October 2019, operates with chronic shortages of blood supplies, surgical equipment, and generator fuel. The population of southern Beirut — overwhelmingly Shia, but also including Palestinian refugees and Syrian workers — faces a military escalation in a country that has no functioning government capable of organising a civil defence response.

Mohammad Raad, head of Hezbollah's Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc, was reportedly killed in the Israeli strikes on Dahieh, according to Al Jazeera citing Lebanese security sources. Hezbollah has not confirmed the report.

Raad led Hezbollah's parliamentary presence since the bloc's formation in 1992 — the year the organisation first entered Lebanese electoral politics under the framework established by the Ta'if Accord. He was not a military commander. His function was to translate Hezbollah's strategic imperatives into legislative influence within Lebanon's confessional power-sharing system. He chaired the bloc through every Israeli-Lebanese confrontation since 1992, including the 2006 war and the autumn 2024 conflict.

Israel has pursued systematic elimination of Hezbollah's leadership since September 2024, when an airstrike in Dahieh killed Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah's expected successor, was killed weeks later. Military commanders across southern Lebanon were targeted through the autumn. The reported killing of Raad would extend that campaign beyond the military chain of command into Hezbollah's political structure — the wing that interfaces with Lebanon's state institutions, its Sunni and Christian political counterparts, and international diplomatic channels.

The sourcing requires caution. Lebanese security sources have produced incorrect reports of senior kills during active hostilities before. But if confirmed, Raad's death would leave Hezbollah's 13-seat parliamentary bloc — the largest single bloc in Lebanon's 128-seat parliament — without the leader who managed its alliances and negotiations for over three decades. The organisation would retain fighters and rockets, but the political architecture that gave it a voice in Beirut's institutions would be leaderless at the moment of greatest pressure.

Israel formally characterised Hezbollah's overnight rocket and drone barrage as an "official declaration of war by Hezbollah." Within hours, senior Israeli military officials moved from background briefings to on-the-record discussion of a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

The speed of this escalation has its own logic. Hezbollah's decision to fire was the activation of the largest remaining node in Iran's alliance network after the destruction of its apex — the Supreme Leader himself . Iran's proxy architecture is not a loose coalition of independent actors; it is an integrated deterrence system built over four decades. Removing the figure who held it together forced Hezbollah into a binary choice: activate, or accept that the entire architecture's credibility had been destroyed. Hezbollah chose activation. Israel's "declaration of war" framing converts that choice into a casus belli for the ground campaign military planners have prepared for since the inconclusive 2006 invasion.

That 2006 precedent weighs on any invasion decision. The 34-day ground campaign cost 121 Israeli soldiers killed, failed to degrade Hezbollah's military capacity in any lasting way, and ended in UN Security Council Resolution 1701 — a ceasefire that left the organisation intact and rearming. The Winograd Commission, which investigated the war's conduct, concluded that Israel's political and military leadership entered the ground phase without defined objectives or a viable exit strategy. The commission's findings ended the career of Chief of Staff Dan Halutz and reshaped Israeli military doctrine for a generation.

A ground operation launched now would commit Israeli forces to two simultaneous major theatres. The IDF is already conducting air operations across 24 of Iran's 31 provinces (ID:88) while absorbing missile fire on its own territory (ID:80). Israel's active-duty forces number approximately 170,000, with 465,000 reservists — many already mobilised. Hezbollah's tunnel and bunker network in southern Lebanon, which the IDF's Northern Command assessed as more extensive and better fortified than the 2006 infrastructure, was constructed over 18 years with Iranian engineering support. The organisation's post-2006 doctrine explicitly anticipated an Israeli ground incursion. The question facing Israeli commanders is whether the rhetoric of "official war" will produce the same pressure to act that led to the 2006 ground phase — and whether the outcome would differ with the army already stretched across Iran.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated that the United States could use British military bases for operations against Iran. Roughly one hour later, a drone struck RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus — the category of installation Starmer had just offered. Whether the attack was a direct response or pre-planned is unknown, but the arithmetic suggests the latter: the Shahed-136's estimated flight time from Lebanon to Cyprus is 60–90 minutes, meaning the drone was likely airborne before or around the time Starmer spoke.

The decision broke with European consensus. The EU had described the US-Israeli strikes as "greatly concerning," with no member state backing Washington's action . France had called an emergency UN Security Council session . Secretary-General Guterres condemned the strikes as violations of international law . Starmer's offer placed Britain on the opposite side of that divide — the only European power actively facilitating a campaign the UN's chief legal voice has called unlawful. The UK's post-Brexit foreign policy has leaned toward close US alignment under successive prime ministers. Starmer, who had emphasised international law and multilateral institutions, now faces the question of how facilitating this campaign squares with that positioning.

RAF Akrotiri has served as a British power-projection platform for seven decades. Aircraft from the base flew sorties over Iraq, Libya, and ISIS-held territory in Syria. Offering its use to the US follows that pattern, but with a difference previous operations did not produce: Iran's alliance network has now demonstrated the capacity to strike the base directly. Permitting US operations from British sovereign territory transforms those installations from staging areas into active targets — a trade-off Whitehall will have calculated, but one whose cost arrived faster than anyone in London likely expected.

The oil tanker MV Skylight was struck off the coast of Oman in waters near the Strait of Hormuz, injuring four crew members. The attack is the first confirmed hit on a commercial vessel since the IRGC broadcast its "no ships may pass" closure on VHF Channel 16 at the conflict's outset . Two other vessels — MKD Vyom, which suffered an engine room fire from a projectile strike, and Sea La Donna, details still pending — were also attacked in the same period. In hours, the strait moved from a zone shipping companies were avoiding voluntarily to one where vessels were under direct fire.

The economic consequences arrived immediately. Vessel traffic through the strait fell 70%. More than 150 tankers sat at anchor in open Gulf waters. CMA CGM, Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, Nippon Yusen, Mitsui, and Kawasaki Kisen all halted transits. CMA CGM imposed an emergency surcharge of $2,000–$4,000 per container, effective immediately. Brent Crude stood at roughly $73 before the first strikes and opened Saturday at $82.37 (ID:108) — a price set before the tanker attacks. Goldman Sachs had forecast a peak of $110; JP Morgan projected $120–$130 for a prolonged conflict and raised its US recession probability to 35% (ID:111). With merchant vessels now absorbing hits, those figures look like floor estimates rather than worst-case scenarios.

The last sustained military campaign against commercial shipping in these waters was the 1984–88 Tanker War during the Iran-Iraq conflict. Over four years, 546 vessels were struck; insurance premiums tripled; Kuwait reflagged its tankers under the US flag to secure naval escorts. Three vessels have been hit here in 72 hours. The modern global economy is more exposed than it was in the 1980s — roughly 20% of the world's traded oil and a quarter of global LNG transits the strait daily. Alternative routes exist: the Saudi east-west pipeline, the UAE's Habshan-Fujairah bypass. Neither can handle more than a fraction of normal throughput. Mohsen Rezai, secretary of Iran's Expediency Council, had declared the strait "officially open" while simultaneously calling US warships "legitimate targets" . The four injured crew of the MV Skylight are the first evidence of what that contradiction looks like in practice.

A projectile struck the tanker MKD Vyom near the Strait of Hormuz, igniting an engine room fire. The vessel is the second commercial ship hit in the strait's approaches within 72 hours, following the MV Skylight, struck off Oman with four crew injured. The weapon has not been publicly attributed, but anti-ship missiles, rockets, and explosive-laden drones are all within the arsenal Iran deploys from its southern coast.

The IRGC had broadcast on VHF Channel 16 — the international maritime distress frequency — that "no ships may pass" through the strait . Mohsen Rezai simultaneously called the waterway "officially open" while designating US warships as "legitimate targets" . The MKD Vyom's burning engine room resolves that contradiction. Commercial operators do not parse diplomatic ambiguity; they read casualty reports and war-risk advisories.

An engine room hit on a loaded tanker is among the most dangerous casualties a commercial vessel can sustain — no armour, minimal damage-control capability, and cargo measured in hundreds of thousands of barrels of flammable hydrocarbons. During the 1984–88 Tanker War, similar strikes frequently led to total vessel losses. The US Navy eventually escorted tankers through the strait under Operation Earnest Will in 1987. No comparable escort has been announced; the US Fifth Fleet's assets are committed to offensive strikes against Iranian military targets, not to protecting commercial shipping.

The Sea La Donna was attacked near the Strait of Hormuz, the third commercial vessel struck in the waterway's approaches in 72 hours. Details of the weapon, damage extent, and crew casualties remain unconfirmed.

The information vacuum around the attack is itself a product of the combat environment now surrounding the strait. When tankers were attacked in the Gulf of Oman in June 2019 — the Kokuka Courageous and Front Altair incidents — satellite imagery, crew interviews, and US military footage were available within hours. Here, Iran's internet blackout has reduced connectivity to 1% of normal levels (ID:103), severing communications from its southern coast, and military operations have restricted civilian maritime monitoring.

Three vessels struck in 72 hours — one per day — already exceeds the overall rate of the 1984–88 Tanker War, when Iran and Iraq between them hit 546 ships across four years, averaging roughly one every 2.7 days. That conflict escalated gradually over months before sustained attacks on commercial shipping began. This one reached a comparable tempo in its opening weekend. For war-risk underwriters at Lloyd's of London, who designate listed conflict areas, the distinction between a one-off provocation and a sustained campaign is the difference between elevated premiums and withdrawal of cover entirely. Three attacks in three days leaves little room for the former reading.

Vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has fallen 70%. More than 150 tankers sit at anchor in open Gulf waters rather than attempting transit. CMA CGM, Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, Nippon Yusen, Mitsui, and Kawasaki Kisen have all suspended sailings. CMA CGM imposed an emergency surcharge of $2,000–4,000 per container, effective immediately — a cost that will propagate through global supply chains within weeks.

The strait carries roughly 20% of the world's traded oil and approximately a quarter of global liquefied natural gas. Brent Crude sat at $73 before the strikes ; it opened Saturday at $82.37 (ID:108), an 11% rise driven by risk pricing rather than physical shortage. If the 70% traffic reduction holds, markets will begin pricing actual supply loss. Goldman Sachs had forecast Brent at $110; JP Morgan projected $120–130 under prolonged disruption and raised its US recession probability to 35% (ID:111). With tankers under direct fire, those figures describe a midpoint, not a ceiling.

The alternative — routing around the Cape of Good Hope — adds roughly 15 sailing days per laden tanker voyage, with proportional increases in fuel, crew, and scheduling costs. Import-dependent economies in Asia absorb the worst of this: Japan, South Korea, and India source between 60% and 80% of their crude from Gulf producers, all of it transiting Hormuz.

The global economy has not experienced a sustained physical closure of the strait in the post-globalisation era. The closest precedent — the 1984–88 Tanker War — disrupted traffic but never stopped it; the US Navy's Operation Earnest Will ensured a minimum flow of escorted tankers. Here, the US Navy is engaged in offensive operations, not convoy protection, and Gulf States that might otherwise support escort missions are themselves under bombardment — the UAE alone has absorbed 137 missiles and 209 drones (ID:97). The chokepoint the global economy treated as permanently open is, for the first time since it became the world's primary oil artery, functionally shut.

CMA CGM, Maersk, Nippon Yusen, Mitsui, and Kawasaki Kisen have halted all transits through the Strait of Hormuz. They join Hapag-Lloyd, which suspended operations within hours of the IRGC's VHF Channel 16 broadcast declaring the strait closed to shipping . Six of the world's largest shipping companies — controlling roughly half of global container capacity — now refuse to send vessels through the passage that carries approximately 20% of the world's traded oil.

The suspensions followed three direct attacks on commercial tankers near the strait: the MV Skylight struck off Oman with four crew injured, the MKD Vyom hit by a projectile that ignited an engine room fire, and the Sea La Donna, details still pending. Oil tankers had already begun avoiding the strait after the opening strikes . The physical attacks converted commercial caution into a full shutdown. Vessel traffic has fallen 70%, with more than 150 tankers anchored in open Gulf waters.

The last sustained military campaign against commercial shipping in these waters was the 1984–88 Tanker War during the Iran-Iraq conflict, which struck 546 vessels over four years. Three have been hit here in 72 hours. When Houthi attacks disrupted Red Sea shipping in 2024, carriers rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope — costly, but viable. The Strait of Hormuz has no such bypass. Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline and the UAE's Habshan-Fujairah pipeline provide limited overland alternatives, but their combined capacity covers a fraction of normal seaborne Gulf exports.

Every day of closure tightens supply across refineries in Asia and Europe that depend on Gulf crude. Brent opened Saturday at $82.37 (ID:108), up from the pre-strike price of $73 . Goldman Sachs projected a peak of $110 per barrel; JP Morgan forecast $120–130 if the conflict is prolonged and raised its US recession probability to 35% (ID:111). With commercial vessels now under direct fire rather than merely pausing, the prolonged-conflict scenario is the one unfolding.

CMA CGM imposed an emergency surcharge of $2,000 to $4,000 per container on all Strait of Hormuz routes, effective immediately. The French shipping giant — the world's third-largest container line — is the first carrier to attach a specific price to the strait's conversion from commercial waterway to active combat zone. Other carriers that have halted transits will follow with their own surcharge structures; the question is speed, not whether.

The precedent is the 2024 Red Sea disruption. When Houthi attacks forced rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope, container surcharges reached comparable levels, and the European Central Bank identified measurable inflationary effects within months. The Hormuz disruption is worse by every relevant metric: the Red Sea carries roughly 12–15% of global trade by volume; Hormuz handles 20% of the world's oil and approximately a quarter of its liquefied natural gas. And unlike the Red Sea, there is no maritime detour.

The surcharge compounds on top of energy price increases already under way. Brent Crude has risen $9 per barrel since the strikes began (ID:108). 1,579 flights have been cancelled across the Middle East (ID:99). Dubai International Airport is operating at roughly 30% of normal capacity . The economic footprint extends well beyond hydrocarbons — Gulf States are major transhipment hubs, and the closure disrupts commerce in electronics, manufactured goods, and food that routes through the region regardless of origin.

For import-dependent economies — particularly in South and Southeast Asia — the price transmission is fastest and most damaging. Countries that import both energy and food through Gulf-adjacent routes face simultaneous increases in fuel costs and shipping costs. The IMF's standing estimates suggest a sustained $10-per-barrel increase in oil prices reduces global GDP growth by approximately 0.3 percentage points. With tankers under fire and no diplomatic process visible, the surcharge announced today is a floor, not a ceiling.

Iran's foreign minister stated that military units are operating outside central government direction. The claim — whether genuine or calculated — identifies the structural problem the US-Israeli decapitation campaign has created: the destruction of Iran's command architecture may have achieved its military objective while eliminating the political conditions required to end the war.

The leadership losses make the claim plausible. Khamenei was killed in the opening Israeli strike on his Tehran compound . Defence Minister Nasirzadeh, IRGC Ground Forces Commander Pakpour, and Security Council Chairman Shamkhani died in the same operation (ID:470). Military Artesh commander Mousavi was confirmed killed separately (ID:89). Up to 40 senior officials are dead across the political and military hierarchy. The three-person interim council formed under Article 111 holds constitutional authority, but constitutional authority and operational command over dispersed military units are different things. The IRGC's distributed command structure — designed to survive exactly this kind of strike — enables autonomous action at lower echelons. That resilience now works against any centralised order to stand down.

Two readings compete. The first: it is genuine. Iranian units possessing ballistic missiles, anti-ship weapons, and drone arsenals are firing on pre-set contingency plans, not real-time political orders. The strikes on Gulf airports , , commercial tankers, and RAF Akrotiri are the output of a war machine running on autopilot. The second: Tehran is constructing deniability for escalatory actions — hitting tankers, NATO installations, and civilian airports — while preserving room to negotiate later. States deploy the 'rogue elements' defence when they want to strike hard without owning the consequences.

Both readings produce the same operational problem. A ceasefire requires a counterpart who can order forces to stop firing and enforce compliance across the theatre. The Assembly of Experts is in disarray — its Tehran headquarters was struck directly (ID:470), no succession mechanism has been identified (ID:75). Oman, the traditional Washington-Tehran back-channel, shows no public sign of activation. The US and Israel designed an operation to destroy Iran's capacity to wage war. They may instead have destroyed its capacity to stop one.