You should be thinking "Battle of Salamis." This is what the Iranians are attempting to do, IMO. Lure the large US blue water fleet close to the coast so that they can whack them with all manner of asymmetrical threats - everything from anti-ship missles, mines and agile speedboats.
The USN wargamed this a few years ago by putting a Marine general in charge of the Green Force (Iran). The USN lost by its own assessment of the wargame. Not saying that this will happen in real life. One of the reasons that you wargame is to expose holes in you own warplan. Evidently the Marine, thinking unconventionally, did just that.
if we have ships in the persian gulf, not outside but within air strike range, and if the iranians are willing to take severe losses just in the attack. it’s easy to sink a us naval vessel.
1. put a submarine in the area. doesn’t have to be close but a diesel boat in gulf waters is hard to detect so 1D has to be covered.
2. put some planes in the AO, just outside shipboard SAM range and carrying ASMs. 2D has to be covered.
3. attack from a 3rd, 4th, and 5th axis with multiple surface missile boats and suicide boghammers. 3D has to be covered.
4. wake up one morning and do it. no advanced warning, no threats.
5. go for the outriders and not the main target. sinking any us navy ship is a major coup.
6. screw any geopolitical consequences or loss of iranian civilians.
one ship or even a couple of ships without air cover cannot cover all 3 sectors adequately if attacked on multiple axis simultaneously. even a 90% success rate will have leakers.
this is basically how the PLAN (chinese navy) pland to attack our carrier battle groups. even eliminating a couple of escorts seriously weakens the overal defense plan.