International politics is weird. The US and Israel clearly escalated the situation (whether you think it was justified or not or the right thing to do or not is not relevant -- Iran wasn't launching missiles at anyone...well, except for the ones last year when they were shooting at Israel...what a mess). But, since Iran can't actually hit the US, they shoot at everybody nearby. And then China says this:
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called on Iran to pay attention to the “reasonable concerns” of its neighbors, after Tehran’s retaliation against US and Israeli attacks included strikes on other Gulf nations.
Wang at the same time reaffirmed China’s support for Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, according to state-run Xinhua News Agency.
I wonder how much time they had to put into crafting these statements:
“China values the traditional friendship between China and Iran and supports Iran in safeguarding its sovereignty, security, territorial integrity and national dignity,” Wang was quoted as saying in the report.
In a separate phone call with Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, Wang said the urgent priority is to immediately stop military operations and prevent the conflict from further spilling over. He added that any expansion of the war wouldn’t serve the fundamental and long-term interests of Gulf countries, according to Xinhua.
It's a 40+ year old situation, nothing is clear, except the deep state ousted Nixon who would have avoided much of the mess from genesis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thMVMkVtUf8
The strait has been a constant issue with missiles out of Yemen, also rockets out of Lebanon, both Iran proxies
CONUS.
US bases in the region are US soil, US cargo ships, etc. Infrastructure of partners are mainly a EU problem given its largely imports their that get effected, but just last year or so they literally asked for help from the US since they lack capabilities to keep the strait open. Defense compacts with the Saudi's go back 80 years.
Smuggled-in dirty bombs or container launched missiles/drones could hit the CONUS, which is why this dove-tailed with VZ/Cuba operations.
Probably 10 years give or take, when they made a deal to not move on Taiwan until the US gets TSMC fabs running domestically so we can just let them have it and save both side a ton of blood and treasure.