This war seems more than likely to drive up oil prices not only in the near term, but in the medium and long terms too! In addition, petroleum usage seems likely to become dependant on sucking Iran's proverbial dick, a notion that very few people in The West will find palatable.
Optimistically then, perhaps this will finally light a fire under everyone's asses to switch to renewable energy sources! Wether it's wind, solar or hydro, a underappreciated property of renewable energy is the energy sovereignty they provide. Once deployed, international trade can stop completely, and you'll still have electricity to heat your homes, cook your food, and drive your car.
No more being dependant on dubious regimes like Iran for your day-to-day.
Admittedly this is true for coal, too, but I think we've already established that it cannot economically compete, so that should play out in favour of renewables in the long run.
And that's just energy. What about pharmaceuticals? Financial markets? Who protects your shipping lanes? Who builds your semiconductors? Where do those factories get their energy from?
I support the diversity of energy sources because they all have strengths and weaknesses. We've got to figure out climate change. But we also can't have, even if you want to somehow "move off of oil" a single country run by lunatics who can decide whenever they don't get their way that they get to seize 20% of the global oil supply. We can't have China dominating rare earth processing either. For some others it may be a reliance on American military technology.
Sure China. But unless they send in an army to retreive previously sold panels, or block the sun they can only harm future increases to supply.
When Russia invades Ukraine or Iran cuts the straight of Ormuz energy prize go up instantly, chocking the entire world economy in the course of a few weeks. Even if China stops exporting rare earths, it would take years before it affects the energy market.
It's absolutely incomparable.
Cuba is a good example by the way: a country can survive for decades while being cut from most technology import due to sanctions, but if you cut its access to oil, it becomes dirty real quick. And because Cuba has been stuck in the middle of the 20th century, it's actually much less dependent on energy than most developed or even developing countries.
The key would be to simply not ignore all the other dimensions of dependency.
If your sovereign territory happens to support them geographically. This is true for many, but not all countries.
Also, without large storage capacity, you might end up being self-sufficient during sunny, windy days, but find yourself very dependent on your neighbor countries for imports on overcast days or at night without wind.
The combination of all of this is especially unfortunate for hydro, where you're pretty much fully dependent on the geography you've been handed.
So I'd say the self-sufficiency story of renewables doesn't fully hold. They benefit from regional cooperation and trade just as much as fossil fuels, if not more. (In my view, that's not really a counterargument, but it does raise the importance of having a well-integrated, cross-border grid even more.)
Similarly, if a country can use 80% less oil or imported fuel than they would have without renewable energy, I think they're pretty self-sufficient. They don't have to be isolated from trade, it's okay to import some things and export others. Energy sources can be one of those things. But if they rely on energy imports, then when something disrupts their supply then they are in trouble. However if they get 80% of their energy from renewable sources, then they have significantly less of a problem.
If you’re 95% self sufficient it will stay at headlines in the local press.
Going for the worst possible option, only because the better options are not 100% perfect, is to be considered irrational behaviour.
I'm fulling expecting someone will reply to me and say that making plastic wastes 75% of the oil or something during production, and that it's just as wasteful amortized across the lifespan of a wind turbine. I'm tired, man.
I expect that batteries will eventually solve the day-night cycle for solar, but for seasonal storage, natural gas is much easier to store, so this still looks to me like a mix of energy technologies, with renewables getting a larger share.
We can probably stand to use a lot less plastics too. Outside of medicine it's mostly replaceable, and reducing our usage to less than 80% of current usage would be trivial if we didn't burn it for energy.
In that scenario Iran can keep their strait. We won't need them.
In the fantasy imagination of some people, they really think you can take out some military targets of another country and then the oppressed masses will magically revolt, as they completely ignore the failed revolution just a month prior. Surround yourself with enough of these people while excluding and firing those who don't and this is what you get.
Normally this would have been the end of it, lessons would be learned, and strategic directions adjusted. Instead the game was reset and the Iranian side was handicapped to prevent them from doing various things, effectively imposing a scripted result. This led to the US winning by an overwhelming margin and somehow the results of this rigged game were used to align strategic initiatives moving forward.
In modern times we increasingly seem to have entered into an era where people are willing to believe what they want to believe, rather than what they know to be true. And while it's easy to mock politicians and the military for this, this is also a mainstay of contemporary political discourse among regular people, including those who fancy themselves as well educated, on a variety of controversial issues.
I don't know what started this trend, but it should die. At least in terms of war it's self correcting. The US can't handle many more botched invasions or interventions, and I suspect we're already beyond the point of no return in terms of consequences of these errors.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
> Normally this would have been the end of it, lessons would be learned, and strategic directions adjusted. Instead the game was reset and the Iranian side was handicapped to prevent them from doing various things, effectively imposing a scripted result. This led to the US winning by an overwhelming margin and somehow the results of this rigged game were used to align strategic initiatives moving forward.
Wargames aren't like laser tag matches where one side wins and then it's over, the point of them is to be a training exercise. It's supposed to be closer to D&D than anything, where the person playing the opposing forces plays a similar role to the DM. If you look at interviews from other MC2002 participants, essentially what happened was that the Navy wanted to practice for an amphibious landing. Due to how they moved their ships, the computer running the simulation thought that the entire naval fleet had been instantly teleported right next to a massive armada of small boats that Van Riper had set up, without simulating what would have happened if the naval fleet had seen the enemy ships in the distance. Additionally, in real life Van Riper's fleet could not have held the missiles that he had told the computer they were carrying and now firing at point blank range at the Navy. The simulator that ran the US naval ships' defenses was also not functioning due to the engagement happening in an unexpected area, so it was turned off. Van Riper was able to sink the ships and defeat the navy within the bounds of the simulation, but not in a way that could have happened in real life.
This is basically like if I found an obscure sequence of chess moves that caused the Lichess server to crash and declare me the winner, then used it to beat a bunch of grandmasters, then went on a media tour saying that this proves that there's some massive flaw with how chess strategy is being taught.
Gen. Van Riper's tactics were apparently discredited in 2002 because they were unfair, but Iran seems not to have received the memo since their moves bear more than a passing resemblance to his.
But the US seems to be committed on repeating the Russian experience.
“So, it’s it’s uh little unfair. You know, you win a war, but they have no right to be doing what they’re doing.”
This is not what Wikipedia's summary describes. Now, maybe Wikipedia has the wrong summary, but according to it the challenge wasn't "discredited". By that point the exercise was over, but 13 more days were budgeted for, so the analysts requested their forces to be resurrected so they could play out the rest of the days, with artificial restrictions so that the rest of the challenge was effectively scripted and left no room for the OPFOR to try novel tactics.
One of the generals (of the blue team) is quoted as saying: "You kill me in the first day and I sit there for the next 13 days doing nothing, or you put me back to life and you get 13 more days' worth of experiment out of me. Which is a better way to do it?"
Also:
> The postmortem JFCOM report on MC02 would say "As the exercise progressed, the OPFOR free-play was eventually constrained to the point where the end state was scripted. This scripting ensured a blue team operational victory and established conditions in the exercise for transition operations."
Wikipedia has a lot wrong...
Of course this means learning the lesson of how the first defeat happened. You reset so that you can learn more lessons. If they ignored the lesson of the first defeat, that's stupid. But the reset itself makes sense.
Are you saying that Iran is capably fighting and killing US personnel, aircraft, and invading infantry?
I am a little confused about the universe you live in. The IRGC and Basij effectively do not have a chain of command and are effectively moving and acting by momentum, essentially no different than a dead man walking.
Do you know the names of any alive people in the IRGC chain of command? Have you seen videos or evidence of IRGC doing anything to harm US forces other than lob some stuff and hope it hits? Where are the Islamic Iranian armies and navies you imply to exist?
This was by design via the mosaic defense tactic.
They know the US prides itself on decapitation strikes, "taking out the leader of x" was a monthly headline during our time in Iraq, Afghanistan, and during the events of ISIS/syrian civil war. It's how the special forces operated, taking out a "leader", collecting all the names they could find in their possession, and taking those guys out. In the later days of Afghanistan, they stopped even trying to find out who the names were. If you were some mid-level Taliban member's dentist, you'd be fair game.
So Iran built a defense for that, a military that does not need a central command to continue fighting. They have their orders and they'll continue to carry them out. Completely bypass the benefits of highly accurate munitions, cyber intelligence, etc.
That's the same reason the first round of the Millennium challenge won outright. The red-team leadership knew to not expect last year's war today, and used their brains to exploit the weaknesses of a highly mechanized and sophisticated military.
There is no reason to believe that
They have been training for decades for exactly this sort of war, and have experienced veterans at all levels
Iran isn't "randomly lobbing" stuff. They are accurately hitting many targets in Israel, the Gulf States and US bases across the region. Including destroying many high value radar and early warning systems and forcing the complete evacuation of US bases.
The US has turned into a Wall-e society just getting off on entertainment and bored with civilized, thoughtful politicians. This is the end result of TOO MUCH prosperity for the average American.
They haven't experienced true hardship in generations and we (the rest of the world) is paying the price of their hubris.
https://www.onthewing.org/user/Bonhoeffer%20-%20Theory%20of%...
>Israel could force the United States into a war with Iran at any time.
>It should go without saying that creating the conditions where the sometimes unpredictable junior partner in a security relationship can unilaterally bring the senior partner into a major conflict is an enormous strategic error, precisely because it means you end up in a war when it is in the junior partner’s interests to do so even if it is not in the senior partner’s interests to do so.
This situation is not just because we elected a clown, these people donated hundreds of millions to Trump's campaign (Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson, Larry Elison, etc). The same lobby (the Israel lobby) has contributed hundreds of millions more to almost every US senator, to the point that both political parties are pretty much aligned when it comes to serving Israel. There are plenty of politicians in the Democrat party who are quietly supporting this war because at the end of the day they've been bought by the same lobby.
Kamala (the alternative candidate in the 2024 election) has her own ties to Israel, and publicly said "all options are on the table" to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Which means had she won the election she likely would have also invaded Iran.
It goes beyond just who we elected, it's huge sums of money flowing through our political system and effectively buying our politicians.
> So Iran would now have to assume that an Israeli air attack was also likely an American air attack. It was hardly an insane assumption – evidently according to the Secretary of State, American intelligence made the exact same assessment. But the result was that by bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities in June of 2025, the Trump administration created a situation where merely by launching a renewed air campaign on Iran, Israel could force the United States into a war with Iran at any time.
No president has ever been this fucking stupid.
And I'm not sure most of those realise how delusional they were, even now. They will probably rewire their memory to forget what they believed 3 weeks ago, compress the time they were wrong.
I initially thought the 'manufacturing consent' part of the war was botched, unlike Irak, but now to me it seems that people are much more susceptible to propaganda disguised as 'almost true' information on social media, and I am afraid I might be in the same boat.
A few more sceptical voices brought this up, and were told repeatedly that it didn't matter because the Kurds in Syria and Turkey are very different from those in Iraq & Iran.
And there's certainly something in that - but it ignored the clunkingly obvious point that, if America had been thinking at all strategically, a bit more support of Rojava and would have demonstrated to all Kurds that "looking west" would be rewarded.
It has to be hard for Americans to realise that their government has pissed so much of the world off so badly. I suspect we'll see further such errors in analysis and response before the new reality fully sinks in.
This resulted in the Turks moving in, massacring all the Kurds they could find, and a few thousand ISIS prisoners (including 60 'high value targets') escaping as the Kurds guarding them fled for their lives.
However Trump said this didn't pose any threat to the US because "They’re going to be escaping to Europe.”
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/trumps-syria-withdrawal-i...
And to make matters worse, Trump didn't even make an attempt to let them down gently - saying "the Kurds were paid tremendous amounts of money, were given oil and other things. So they were doing it for themselves more so than they were doing it for us"...
...and then, 4 weeks later, expected their Iraqi and Iranian cousins to ride to the USA's aid!
I must have missed those, but I would expect HN to be able to count. There really are not a lot of Kurds.
It is not hard, at all, for roughly 1/3 of Americans to understand this. Another 1/3 don't think it, or anything past their TikTok feed, matters. The last 1/3 thought Team America was a documentary.
Sorry, but I don't think they do understand.
America has managed to piss off Canada FFS. And lets be honest, you've got to work really hard to piss off the Canadians.
Frankly, Americans (former) allies have seen the American people VOTE for Trump. Twice. Even if Trump goes tomorrow, the (former) allies know what a significant proportion of the US people want in a leader, and so may be in store at the next election.
Having elected Donald Trump twice - atop all our other failings - is a giant screaming proclamation that the United States is unfit for, and undeserving of, continued existence as a state or government. The responsible thing to do is to hold a Constitutional Convention and dissolve the damned thing, and then the individual states can figure out how they ought to go forward from there. (I don't think current U.S. States are anything like perfect but they're what we have left once the United States government is gone.)
[0]https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/21/cq-brown-trump-fire...
Why waste time convincing anybody of anything, when support for the war will just converge on the president's approval rating anyway?
(Tucker Carlson is weirdly intelligent and thoughtful in that interview in a way i did not expect, but Joe said the most eye opening stuff... I have a lot of respect for him)
The left, not liberals but actual antiwar/antizionist left has been warning about Zionism and the Iran war for decades, nothing Tucker is saying is new, it's just nobody ever listens to those voices they have no platform are completely ignored in liberal media which is exclusively Zionist and pro-war. So when Tucker talks about it it's the first time most people ever hear this stuff, that's what makes Tucker so dangerous he is a white supremacists with a large platform who reads the room and recognizes the historic unpopularity of Israel, who has built a viable independent media platform for himself. Tucker is what an intelligent fascist Trump 2.0 would look like make no mistake.
Good thing that that's not at all true. What you are referring to was an (intentional) mistranslation of a public comment by an Israeli minister, who said that Turkey was their greatest threat after Iran.
He says constantly that he is against blood guilt, the killing of innocents no matter their heritage, and even went so far as to say that he doesn't even necessarily think the large scale replacement of white people in their home countries is a bad thing. I don't know how you could consider that to be white supremacy.
Tell us more about this white replacement theory, do you agree with Tucker?
Mitch McConnell (adherent of the great replacement theory) accusing Joe Kent of anti semitism gave the accusation the same gravitas it would have if Strom Thurmond or the Grand wizard of the KKK did it.
i.e. it only serves to underscore the accuser's racism.
I suggest a significant cause is Trump's arrogance and only listening to the advice he wants to hear.
The alternative is recognizing that you can effectively cow large populations of people into submission, no matter how much it sucks, and that the people who do this (in this case, the Islamic theocrats of Iran) can and will forever be a part of the geopolitical landscape with thrall over tens of millions of lives, and seek to influence even more. That there will always - ALWAYS - be a segment of humanity that has no real chance to think differently, to improve their lot, and to peacefully see the changes they want made to their society.
The hope in the immediate post-Soviet era of the early 1990s is that liberalized representative government would spread around the world, and that rules-based order would allow for peaceful resolution of problems through democratic processes and markets. And for a while, this seemed to be the route. Then it became apparent by the late 90s that there were still parties who didn't like the general direction that this was taking, particularly Russia, China, and at least some of the Middle East.
Now that China and the Middle East have become engines of global economic growth, there seems to be a tacit agreement, at least among the people who matter, than authoritarianism is fine so long as the right people get paid and that line continue to go up. In fact, it's more than fine; it's perceived by these people as more efficient at creating economic growth than that messy back-and-forth of representative government. And God forbid you have to set up that representative government after getting rid of an authoritarian one like in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Is it a harbinger of dystopia? Absolutely. But that's the reality that we inhabit.
Total War involves an understanding and exploitation of high ground, rivers, and choke points. Like just about any war gamer, with a glance at the map of Iran one arrives at The Pentagons stated wisdom on the matter for decades. Geography says you invade all of it, or cede the straight.
We have this issue many paces in the world and people just don’t get it. North Korean nukes are a threat, but the unstoppable artillery barrage that would kill tens of millions in the first minutes of the war is The Issue. You can’t have snipers on a mountain ridge over your house and feel safe.
Dick Cheney and the Bush family spelled it out over and over. They like money and oil.
I get that people like me have no pull because we're already designated losers, but it would be nice if y'all would just take our word for it.
America is isolating itself in so many ways. You could rewrite that scene and reach the same conclusion.
It's after the ramp up in production of weapons used in the shooting war started.
The US could not participate in that because we had moved assets to south america to fuck with Venezuela. The war in Iran wasn't started until the USS Ford had been re-positioned back to the middle east.
This operation was cobbled together between Trump, Hegseth, Rubio and Vance without consulting anyone outside that circle. The way they have been selling it, espwcially the strait stuff, smells of unplanned developements all around.
but what I did NOT expect, is how Iran regime would choose strategically suicidal options just to "feel good"
missile-rambo even on non-combatant countries? that'll trigger self-defense attacks...
$2M per voyage? woah... the stait-users don't have a choice, but "make an example out of" iran...
I mean, iran should have just shot israel with all its missiles (select and focus), and bring that "missle interception rate" down to 40%.
Now what did iran gain from shooting everyone? making more enemies, and showing your weaknesses (96% missile interception rate, even from UAE? wtf...)
don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying Trump was right on starting the war. I actually think what the fk was he thinking back then...
I'm just saying even if you're angry and desperate, there are wise choices and dumb choices
Raising the overall costs to the US and its allies is a pretty coherent theory of victory for Iran. Obviously they aren't going to win a conventional fight, but they might be able to inflict enough havoc on energy and commodity markets to the point that it really hurts the US and its allies economically; perhaps enough that they bail out of the war in order to stabilize the global economy.
Trump clearly wanted a quick easy win here and does not want to see massive inflation at home. Sure he personally doesn't give a shit about Americans but the rest of the politicians who enable him do and he's at risk of absolutely torching his own party for years if the war drags on and costs really get out of hand.
All the Iranian regime has to do to win is not lose for enough weeks. If the regime holds out Trump will have to either give up and try to pretend this disaster was a Great Victory, or he'll launch a ground invasion that will almost certainly turn into a quagmire. Bombing civilians makes a popular uprising much less likely, so the US is doing them quite a favor on that front.
They are easier to hit and harder to defend then Israel. That is depleting defense forces more.
1) Every authority figure is telling the Iranian people to stay inside and wait.
2) Revolutions don't happen overnight, the same way that businesses don't succeed overnight, even though from far away it might seem that way.
3) Official Israeli statements estimate it could take up to a year after the war is over for a successful overthrow, even if everything is going according to plan.
The truth is there's a lot of people who want this war to fail, because it will align with their political convictions and hopes.
It is working on making itself larger cleansing whole areas around it and settling it.
If by that you mean Iranians in Iran chanting "better our a-hole than yours", I'm not so sure that's radicalization.
At least Roman emperors got assassinated by their own bodyguards.
The implication is that, the US's military failures in the past have been caused by lefty bedwetters wringing their hands about casualties and restricting the military. More generally, caused by "woke" policies that are about political correctness instead of about military success.
I would bet at least $10 that the top people in the administration are baffled that they haven't won the war yet. They're saying, we did everything right. We got rid of the trans people in the military. We fired the worst women and black people in leadership roles. We put a real tough guy in charge of the military. We told our troops to stop worrying about rules of war and let them off their leash. So why is Iran still able to fight?
That's one of the problems with bigotry and toxic masculinity and that sort of thing. Not only does it lead you to harm people, but it also hurts your ability to actually get things done. Thinking that gay people are destroying society is bad if you're in a position to hurt gay people, but it's also bad if your job involves preventing the destruction of society, because it means that you're going to look at idiotic "solutions" to the problem. And because it's not coming from a place of rationality in the first place, you're not going to eventually say, wait a minute, this isn't working, maybe gay people aren't the problem. You're just going to keep pushing at it harder because you know it's right, and if it's not working then it's just because you haven't done it enough.
When dealing with the Middle East we keep underestimating the amount of hardship the people I these countries can endure or be forced to endure.
The article is in large parts about how that's not true. It makes the point that the very existence of the Iranian regime hinges on its opposition to the US, to capitulate would mean for the leaders to lose all support, be overthrown and likely die: so there's no level of suffering that it "can't take anymore". And similar in the US, the leadership cannot survive politically to a capitulation. Hence endless escalation on both sides.
Translation: "The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so”
Worth reflecting on this sentence. What is "reasonable" supposed to entail here?
ETA: "Become secular" is a wild demand from theocratic regime that wants to "Kill Amalek and Build the Third Temple".
Edit: Sometimes the only answer to the weaker side claiming that something is impossible is Vae Victis. I am sure that there are enough powerful people in Iran that wouldn't mind secular state if they are the one to lead it. It is not as if their kids are not wild partying in europe anyway.
TFA explains why this is impossible for Iran.
The most important aspect of the "toll" is that Iran prefers payment in yuan, not dollars.
If Iran succeeds in nationalizing the Straight and is successful in enforcing the toll, it represents a very serious threat to the dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the world's reserve currency for trading energy.
The straight is not physically closed by Iran. It's closed by insurance companies which asking a very high war risk insurance premiums. Even if you pay $2M it unlikely will reduce the cost of insurance. That's why very few ships are choosing this option (and some of them are shadow fleet tankers which probably have no insurance).
And why should them? It appears that the Iranian armed forces started acted quite autonomously, by design. They know that communications are not secure, so local commanders have a very high latitude in what actions they deem correct to take. If such a commander deems that asking and collecting $2 MM per vessel is a good idea, they'll do it. But if another commander thinks that sinking a passing vessel is what their standing orders are, they'll do it too, not being aware that the toll was paid. So, if you are the captain of such a vessel, what do you do? Do you complain to Iran for not holding their end of the bargain?
Remind me again, which country started this whole mess?
> what choice do the gulf nations, or even all the asian+european (strait users) nations have?
They can go "yeah, you know, the US has been less than reliable as an ally recently, what with absurd tariffs, saber rattling around greenland, belitteling NATO, etc., and they seem unwilling to change, so we're just gonna pay the piper, and get oil, and make arrangements with the Chinese (aka. the worlds most powerful industry), and if they US doesn't like it, that sounds like a them-problem..."
What's very likely not gonna happen, is other countries fighting the US's war for them. NATO already told trump no, other countries won't give different answers.
And anyone who wants to actually invade Iran...well, let's put it this way: Iran is 3-4 times the size of Afghanistan, with even more difficult terrain, and has a standing army of 600,000 men, with over 300,000 in reserve. They have an air force, are proficient in the manufacture of drones, have a working intelligence network. And they've had 4 decades to dig into defensive positions.
In short, it's not gonna happen.
what has already started, is already started -- I agree on Trump being dick, but does that make iran's "making new enemies" a wise move?
> NATO already told trump no, other countries won't give different answers.
of course it said no BEFORE IRAN started the $2M toll (and other countries don't like trump due to tariff-for-everyone)
if the current iran regime was strategically wise, iran should have fired everything it got to Israel, and make the missile interception rate down to 40%. That would have actually showed it's power.
now, with even UAE's missile interception rate of 96%, iran actually showed its missiles are nuisances, not some existential threat.
600,000 men and 300,000 in reserve -- well that would have mattered a lot in medieval wars... "they have an airforce" -- well do they actually have planes? "have a working intelligence network" -- hmm...
no you're way way way over-estimating iran
the only strategic move for iran was selecting one specific target (israel) and focusing all its might, not becoming a rambo
There is no downside on making the Gulf states enemies. Quite to the contrary: they might lobby the USA to end this madness. It's a serious damage to the importance of the USA in the region if it can't or doesn't want to open the strait again, either by force or by making a deal.
well, that's secondary thing right now
what's dumb is dumb
what's the least thing you should do when fighting a war? making more enemies.
even on moral side... if someone in walmart bullies you, and you bully back to your classmates, does that make you morally justified?
plus, if you showed your cards ("decades-old deterrence threats"), you're out of options
Iran is targeting direct US/Israeli interests, which includes military facilities, military personnel, and energy facilities with substantial US/Israeli partnerships. That latter part is particularly key here, and what pro-Israeli propaganda is anxious to suppress.
> plus, if you showed your cards ("decades-old deterrence threats"), you're out of options
Yes, it is a desperation move after undeterred US-Israeli terrorism and brazen violations of international law. But it's also working.
Whether your little black heart wishes concentration camps or you’re just hoping your paycheck goes a bit further, voting for a con man is a terrible idea.
"Oh he's just trolling", "it's a negotiation tactic, didn't you read his book?", "chill out, it's just a joke", "but what about OBAMA!?"
I mean, even before the $2M toll, if you're kuwait/UAE/saudi/etc, what choice do you have? form a coalition against iran
now.. with that $2M toll, iran just learnt it can just toll the ships...
so what choice do all those strait-using countries have? pay $2M or more, even after US leaves?
nope... they'll form a coalition against iran
it's highly unfortunate that trump started the war, but iran's way of things are just making more enemies -- it'll pay with regime change within few months
But the strait has two sides and Iran only controls one side. The UAE/Oman on the other side could equally threaten to attack Iranian ships unless Iran pays them a toll.
the strait-using countries are surely going to "make a lesson out of" iran exactly for that reason
They are also not neutral - they have been paying in to the US protection racket, and are discovering that their payments haven't bought much.
it's not just gulf states -- look at who are the customers of those gulf states are. the whole asia, europe, and america -- the whole world is their customer.
Even if it's "extremely hard", those countries have no choice but "make a lesson out of" iran -- just like what we did with pirates
why would those "customers of gulf" just leave iran? after US leaves, will iran regime suddenly become nice and stop forcing that $2M-per-voyage bill?
no, and even if iran regime promises "I'll never bill those ships", how could you trust on that promise? the only way to ensure free-ship-passing would be obliterating Iran as an example, even if US backs away.
> They are also not neutral - they have been paying in to the US protection racket
hmm so were they "helping" US bomb iran? "being neutral" means it didn't participate on attacking iran, not whether it paid or not.
2 Million a ship seems like a pretty cheap price to pay for the damage the us and Israel have inflicted on Iran - they cannot be made to pay it though, so I suppose the rest of us will have to (through marginally higher oil prices in the long term - much less than the spectacularly high oil prices the US war will cause in the short term)
Worth noting that at the time of invasion of Iraq they had about 25 million people per gemeni. They now have about 46 mil people per wikipedia. All else equal, we are comparing 25 mil to 93 mil and not half of 93 mil to 93 mil.
I also used this as an opportunity to reference the now archived[0] CIA Factbook[1] which does put the 2003 Iraq population at 25 million.
This review of the data & papers has some grim numbers, but nothing remotely that dramatic.
https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/2/e004166
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277304922...
But of course, it depends who you ask. American institutions cannot be trusted, obviously.
Nothing in any of the links seems to support the assertion that “Even still today mothers in Baghdad lose half of their babies to deformities caused by the US' criminal use of depleted uranium”
I have no doubt that what happened, and is still happening, is tragic. I do doubt that statement.
This is too complacent for my liking. Every rusty trawler is a viable launch platform for Shahed type drones (operational range ~2500 km per Wikipedia). Nearly every US oil refinery and LNG terminal are on the coast. And then there are floating oil platforms (e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdido_(oil_platform))
The article then says:
>One can never know how well prepared an enemy is for something.
And:
>And if I can reason this out, Iran – which has been planning for this exact thing for forty years certainly can.
I'll leave it here for y'all to ponder.
And where exactly are you planning to operate that trawler out of? Or are you going to send it across the Atlantic on its own (well, with a couple of tankers accompanying it, but never mind that) and hope no-one pays attention?
> operational range ~2500 km per Wikipedia
I think you either added an extra zero or were looking at the hyped prototypes rather than the models in actual use. The Shaheds have ranges in the hundreds of miles, not thousands.
[1] https://news.sky.com/story/four-arrested-on-suspicion-of-syp...
[2] https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-890851
I thought I was clear where I was looking - here, you may check for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136.
You presented the absolute maximum estimate as if it were the conventionally accepted value. That's incredibly misleading.
China operates fishing fleets all around the globe but Iran is not known for this so Iranian fishing vessel in western Atlantics will rise suspicions. An ordinary cargo vessel heading to the Central America on other hand may sail unnoticed.
It's a couple of hundred miles from the frontlines in Kharkiv, and the Russian border to the North is even closer.
The fuel tank is heavily segmented, so they are difficult to shoot down. When shot, they lose fuel but continue to the target. They get to the target with less fuel, but still get there. The HE them detonates the remaining fuel load.
A Shahid could do a 2500km mission, and arrive with a very small fuel load. That will be effective against targets that already have enough fuel to burn there, such as apartment buildings, petroleum energy infrastructure, office buildings, etc. Less so against places with little flammable material concentration such as hospitals, military installations (other than fuel and munitions depots), roads and runways, etc.
I think the furthest hits Ukraine has been able to achieve with drones were on a refinery about 1300km from Ukraine controlled land.
Now the US is not dependent on Middle Eastern Oil, but Japan, China and other countries are. So controlling the region will mean a lever of power over those regions.
The U.S. is dependent on oil and the oil market is global. Even if the U.S. is a net exporter of oil, Americans still pay increased prices for pretty much everything as a result and the economy suffers. The only way around this would be a scheme in which domestic oil producers are forced to sell to American refiners at pre-war prices, similar to the "National Energy Program" that was tried in Canada during the '80's. (Spoiler: It didn't turn out well.)
Yes, the U.S. is less likely to see its pumps run dry and U.S. oil companies are going to be very happy with the increased prices. However, unless it goes the NEP route, U.S. companies are going to export more oil creating shorter supply at home. Americans will pay the same high prices everyone else will be paying. As we're seeing now, the U.S. might actually see even higher price increases than countries like China.
If everyone had electric cars charging from solar then Iran's strait gambit would be much less effective.
First, observe the top 10 oil reserve countries:
1. Venezuela: ~303–304 billion barrels (mostly heavy crude) 2. Saudi Arabia: ~267 billion barrels 3. Iran: ~208–209 billion barrels 4. Canada: ~163–170 billion barrels (mostly oil sands) 5. Iraq: ~145–147 billion barrels 6. United Arab Emirates (UAE): ~111–113 billion barrels 7. Kuwait: ~101 billion barrels 8. Russia: ~80–110 billion barrels (estimates vary) 9. United States: ~40–70 billion barrels (reserves fluctuate with prices/technology) 10. Libya: ~48 billion barrels
China is the world's largest oil importer. Stats are hard, things get mislabeled due to sanctions, but somewhere between 15%-20% of China's oil is-or-was from Iran+Venezuela.
In my view, this partially explains the move in Iran, considering a 3-10 year strategic timeline.
"The entire region has exactly two strategic concerns of note: the Suez Canal (and connected Red Sea shipping system) and the oil production in the Persian Gulf and the shipping system used to export it. So long as these two arteries remained open the region does not matter very much to the United States."
On the other hand isn't this how the russian revolution happened? An economic crisis due to a prolonged war leading to a revolution? While i wouldn't bet money on it, it seems at least possible that something similar could happen to Iran.
It happened because Russian empire (and German empire) lacked state security apparatus adequate to the threat. It was fixed by most authoritarian states after that, so e.g. Soviet Union survived for 70 years despite many popular uprisings, which happened almost the whole time of its existence. It went down only when elites in Moscow destroyed it from within.
Fixed that for you.
My takeaway from the war in Ukraine is: it’s going to get worse and last longer than anyone ever imagined.
Can you elaborate a bit on what was unrealistic? (Maybe you have different posts or claims by him in mind?)
"If you are trying to follow the War in Ukraine, I strongly suggest watching the War on the Rocks podcasts for the times they bring in Michael Kofman."
I’ve been caught up in “guilt by association” here. Michael Kofman always struck me as a cheap propagandist. (but I should shut up now)
But I never saw him as a cheap propagandist. Not even an expensive one.
Despite his obvious allegiance, he regularly criticised UAs actions and never went for any of the hurrah-hurr-durr delusions you had anywhere else. During the siege of Bachmut he repeatedly and clearly said that UA has nothing to gain from holding out. I remember him openly critical of the sacking of the defence minister, candidly describing the problems in UAs recruitment, never hyped up drones, avoided predictions and after that first fiasco with Trump and Vance last year he did not hold back criticism towards Zelensky and not once can I remember him painting the Russians as morons. On the contrary, in one episode he dismisses any sort of essentialism and related chauvinism, this was when refuting the idea that broad parallels can be seen between Napoleonic and today's Russia.
Israel has little to fear from Iran in the air, the IRIAF has been destroyed and ballistic missile launches have tapered off.
In terms of Arab ground armies, only Egypt and Saudi pose much of a threat; the others are small, unintegrated and inexperienced and rely heavily on Western contractor support.
And if Israel, which has the most combat experienced air force in the World, somehow did struggle to defend against those forces, they always have the Samson Option of nuclear-tipped missiles from silos and submarines.
At which point Israel is over. I have no doubt about that.
It would be a black swan event if this didn't happen.
The GCC elites there are living well, with escape plans, but the people know they are viewed as subhuman "arabs" by the Israelis, and are in line for the Gaza Method (which is currently being deployed in the West Bank and Lebanon).
I assume/hope this was meant to say "the people in these countries are not [un]important"? (or just "are important")
As an entirely secular person, I believe every innocent human life is important.
Surely the resources required to build and maintain solar panels, turbines, dams, and nuclear reactors are logistically more stable than oil has proven to be.
I think this is understated in every analysis I've seen. I would bet good money this was part of the main selling point for the US. Just type in "China Oil" into any search engine or even filter the search to 2023 and earlier. China's oil consumption was surging significantly and they get a huge chunk of their oil through the Strait. It wasn't until 2024 I believe that they started reducing their dependence on oil; which I think suggests that they saw the writing on the wall and were worried about this exact scenario. China is America's number one adversary. If we're making large global moves, there's a high chance it's a strategic move against China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_oversea...
edit: typo
Trump has averaged something like 1 bombing run on Iranian leadership ever 2 years. Iranian provocations must be quite effective at making him see red.
Sure, it’s not hard to find. These started long before Trump. You should look beyond the last few months’ news cycles. Iranian government’s issues with Israel are of ideological nature (according to the regime) and their open support (financially and militarily) of a part of Palestinian resistance and Hezbollah. Iran has been active at Israel’s borders for years. Their heavy involvement (including sending troops) in Syria’s civil war is another one to name. All of these are the ones that Iran openly admits to. You can’t explain these away with Israel’s expansionist tendencies because that’s not been a threat to Iran. No serious analyst believes that Israel wants/can to expand into even Iraq, let alone Iran!
The hostilities towards US and vice versa are a whole different topic.
Now to be clear I’m not siding with Israel on this and not saying that caring for Palestinians is not right, just answering your question and naming a few examples. Now, it’s all happened during many decades and not sure if it matters anymore who started it because it’s become a total shit show that is very hard to reconcile.
You might find it surprising that during Iran-Iraq war, Israel was the only country in the region who helped Iran against Iraq (which had the backing of the Arab countries including Palestinians).
Opposition to the oppression of Palestinians is not ideological.
> Iranian government’s issues with Israel are of ideological nature
I think they're just good at threat assessment. There seem to be a lot of Iranians dying of Sudden Acute Missile Disease this month. Frankly I'm struggling to see what aspect of their actions aren't just common sense over the last decade, except for their charmingly simplicity in that they didn't make a break for a nuclear bomb when they first got within a year or two of being able to develop one. Israel and their supporters have done a very bad job of offering an explanation of why the repeated hits were justified or helpful.
If Hezbollah offered Israel a choice between: peace with Hezbollah OR occupy land in Lebanon, I think Israel would rationally choose peace.
But Hezbollah has never offered this. Their stated goal is complete destruction of Israel.
So if the options are: Hezbollah shoots at you from right across the border OR you occupy a buffer zone and Hezbollah still shoots at you but from further away:
Isn't it perfectly rational to choose the buffer zone?
It "ordered" wast places full of people to lead, destroyed bridges, created shoot at will area on other side and is getting ready to move settlers there.
Isreal is not defending itself. It is cleansing and expanding, feeling entitled to kill at will everyone not them.
Considering the results of this war so far and the one before, as well as Iran's military strategy, it doesn't seem plausible to think Iran sees (or ever saw) Israel as a threat to its borders' integrity. This may be the basis for Iran's strategy in the region in some version of the future, but to extend it to what they've done in the past would be hindsight bias.
IMO, the regime is not as much worried about Israel as it is about the US. Just compare the number of missiles and drones they shot at Gulf countries vs Israel.
But consider that Israel, rightfully or not, can make similar claims, which actually conform to the Iranian regime's long-stated goal of "destruction of Israel".
> Frankly, I'm struggling to see what aspect of their actions isn’t just common sense over the last decade.
That’s because it didn’t all start in the last decade. As you get closer to “present” in this timeline, it looks more like a one-sided affair. This is similar to the view which sees the whole Israel-Palestine issue only from October 7th onwards.
> Israel and their supporters have done a very bad job of offering an explanation of why the repeated hits were justified or helpful.
True, I’m also not sure if this is going to turn out as they wish it did. Although the jury's still out, but as the article points out, it seems unlikely.
edit: type
Israel has given back more contiguous land captured during (defensive) wars its won than probably any other country in history.
Pretending the current conflict is because Israel randomly wants to take over it's neighbors is silly.
Using the same extraordinarily broad definition of "provocation" required here, can you name a single war in history that was unprovoked? And if not, haven't we just neutralized all meaning from the phrase "provoked war" with our overly broad definition of "provocation"?
This war is only to benefit Israel, and right now indirectly Russia (due to the rising prices). Basically, the US is the main loser/sucker in this war, and we are all poorer for doing it.
The US is doing just fine from this war. The US is an oil and gas producer, the largest in the world. So they benefit from rising prices.
I'd say the biggest losers are countries like Europe, and neutral oil importing countries around the world.
I've been hearing that line, from the same person for thirty years:
https://www.news18.com/world/weeks-away-by-next-spring-video...
WMD 2.0 The Electric Boogaloo.
There are many countries that have used nuclear weapons.
If you're talking about the USofA they didn't try that hard at preventing Iran from enriching - they tore up a perfectly good and well functioning monitoring agreement at the start of Trump's first term.
1. The straight of Hormuz is crazy because of the sheer amount of options Iran has to threaten shipping. It's so narrow that they can even hit ships with artillery fire. No need for missiles or drones at all! Lobbing kinetic shells may sound primitive, but anti-missile defences are designed to deal with large projectiles with minutes or hours of warning, not shell-sized projectiles that hit within seconds. If a U.S. war-ship enters the straight, they could be struck by fire from artillery that's been concealed for decades before they know they're under fire. It's also worth noting that Shahad drones have a larger range than the size of Iran, and they're hidden all over the country. Any ship transiting Hormuz or any ground force trying to land in Iran could face drone attack from anywhere in Iran, or all of it simultaneously. A few drones are easy to intercept, but give Iran a juicy enough target and they could make the decision to simply overwhelm it. Drones are a heavily parallel capability.
2. There are only a couple of lanes deep enough for large ships in the straight. So far, no ships have been sunk outright, and that's probably a deliberate choice on Iran's part. If they sink a ship at the right spot, the straight could become barricaded. Clearing that barricade under threat of fire would be a far worse pickle than what we're seeing now.
3. The critical question to ask is, "How does the U.S. end this?" Just continuing to bomb Iran is phenomenally expensive and likely won't accomplish much. This is a regime that has been preparing for an American invasion since they overthrew the CIA-installed Shah 47 years ago. They probably never seriously expected to win an air-war against the U.S. and have obviously planned for an asymmetric conflict. The U.S. is not going to win this one without phenomenal amounts of blood, treasure, and will, but all of these are in short supply. A ground invasion of Iran would likely be worse than Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam rolled into one. The U.S. can't win this war because they simply can't pay the price. Unfortunately, the straight of Hormuz gives Iran the ability to prevent Trump from simply TACO'ing out and proceeding to invade Cuba. Iran could keep the straight closed even after the U.S. withdraws their forces, and likely will to make sure everybody knows they can control the world economy at will. They're going to expect a peace settlement, and it won't be cheap.
4. This conflict lights a fire under the behinds of all nascent nuclear states. Iran would not have been invaded if they'd managed to build nuclear weapons. Even Iran is more likely to develop nuclear weapons now. Contrary to what some think, Iran isn't going to give up their enriched uranium and end their program just because the U.S. promises not to attack them again. Something like the JCPOA only works if some level of trust is possible, but Trump personally burned that. The best the U.S. is likely to get in negotiations is a superficial promise not to develop nuclear weapons, backed up by absolutely nothing. If the U.S. decides to end the program by force, the result will also be uncertain. Say the U.S. locates and extracts Iran's HEU from those underground facilities. How will they ever be certain they got it all without occupying the whole country?
I'm not a military export but it doesn't look like a very good option. To get accurate targeting information Iran will have to use radars. Radars can be detected and destroyed given that the US has air dominance. Also as soon as artillery will start to fire their position will be calculated by counter-battery radars (and they will be destroyed again thanks to air dominance).
So drones (both UAV and unmanned USV) are likely more viable options for Iran.
(HMS Warspite, a WW1 era ship, managed a 24km hit on another moving ship!)
Replace "Iran" with "Ukraine", the difference being that the latter gave them away.
Just a minor point, but, the shipping routes are thin, but they are not that thin. It would take several ships to do that.
> Unfortunately, the straight of Hormuz gives Iran the ability to prevent Trump from simply TACO'ing out and proceeding to invade Cuba.
Iran already proposed a soft-victory condition that Trump could use to TACO-out. He can just claim it's Europe problem, so Europe deal with the toll.
It's Israel that won't allow TACO.
I hope things do get de-escalated soon, as this is not good for any party (apart Israel and Russia, which are the main gainers of all this mess).
Without NK's hard deterrence (and without being next door to its allies) Tehran is an easy target up until the last second. And even then what's going to happen if they detonate a nuclear bomb? Everyone will sit back and let them build as many more as they feel?
Iran seemingly is coming out of this mess stronger than it was before.
The regime remains unchanged, and is likely less willing to make concessions now. Hell, even sanctions on it being able to sell oil have been lifted, which is a boon to their economy.
They are in effective control of the strait, and justified in exercising it now. Yeah, other gulf countries may try to circumvent it with pipelines and whatnot, depending on how poorly they come out of this war - and it is not like you create a pipeline in a few days. Those are big engineering projects.
If I were a betting man, which I am not, I think they will just resume their nuclear weapons program unchallenged after this, and will likely achieve it. It is clear that no one can stop them doing so.
And frankly, they should. Every country that can have nuclear weapons should develop them, that much is very clear, as the last decade taught everyone.
This is a wild take. Their top leaders and generals have been killed, they have no control over their own airspace, have their military and civilian infrastructure completely at the mercy of their enemies, and have no navy/airforce any more.
Oh, and their currency collapsed.
But other than that they are doing great.
Facts have this annoying tendency of getting in the way of propaganda.
Unfortunately HN has no crayon functionality:
1. Regime still in power, legitimized by the defense against foreign agressors.
2. Internal unrest loses steam.
3. Effective control of the strait of Hormuz, being able to, for example, dictate who is allowed to pass through and/or demand tolls for safe passage.
4. Weakening of the US presence in the Gulf countries. In particular the destruction of radar systems. Those things are expensive.
5. Lifting of sanctions on Iranian oil, at a time where the resource is very expensive.
6. Likely will be able to pursue its nuclear ambitions undeterred.
2) That happened before the war, and the protesters have been told to hold off for now. Its completely irrelevant to this war.
3) They control it for now. We'll see how long they can continue threatening global trade. My money is not for long. [1]
4) Attacking radar systems is not weakening the US presence in gulf countries. What they have succeeded in doing is attacking almost every gulf country souring relations.
5) This makes no difference since they were selling to russia and china regardless
6) This makes no sense, as they had operational Nuclear facilities up until the moment Israel/US blew them up. There is no reason to think we wouldn't do it again.
[1] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/bahrain-uae-join-20-oth...
They are not afraid to spend money (and blood) on a problem, even if it turns out to be bigger than expected. How much? We'll see.
The neighbors are motivated to not live next to one more nuclear state. We'll see how much.
I agree, but it is unclear if "more money" is the answer here. Iran is a much tougher nut to crack than Afghanistan. Afghanistan is barely a country. Iran is an actual, functioning country, with a territory that is geographically very defensible. And on top of that, they have actually been preparing for this for decades.
The ironic bit is that I thought the Iranian regime was on an irreversible decline, as the unrest amongst the population was growing in recent years.
The analysis I have read point out that this attack actually further legitimizes the regime and takes steam away from internal unrest, especially if Iran comes out on top.
Every authoritarian government needs an enemy. The US-Israel axis provided a very real, tangible one.
Yes. Unfortunately both things can be true (irreversible decline) and solidified regime due to any external intervention.
Yes having the deterrent is strategically beneficial, but working toward it paints a huge target on your back, while you need to pay for development, endure sanctions, etc.
Any state considering such weapons development already knows this. So this war is not new information.
And it's far from over yet.
Iran could very well end up cut off from the strait as rival gulf states build pipelines, rail, and drone defenses. (Sure this kind of long term thinking is not characteristic of the actors involved, but politics change easier around Iran than inside it.)
(Side note: That... seems like a very high figure to me?) For comparison the US spent close to $1 trillion in 2024 on the military. It could have saved lives and spent that money on healthcare. But that's not how govts work. Iran didn't get a drawstring bag with 2T in it and chose to throw it all on nukes.
Additionally, you're trying to bring a (totally valid tbf) logical argument ("Desalination is critical and an excellent place to spend money that's not going into saving lives") to a government that behaves like a cornered wild animal. It will act to save itself first, even if attacking the aggressor hurts itself too in the process.
Of course, but as we see simply focusing on ground forces, drones, and anti-air defenses would be strictly better. (Because they wouldn't be this sanctioned, and they could even have a civilian nuclear energy program too.)
> 2T USD
It's a number coming from an Iranian trade official.
I heard it in this video: https://youtu.be/OJAcvqmWuv4?t=1084 and unfortunately there's no source cited, but I think it's this one: "As former Iranian diplomat Qasem Mohebali admitted on May 20, 2025, “uranium enrichment has cost the country close to two trillion dollars” and imposed massive sanctions yet continues largely as a matter of national pride rather than economic logic."
https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/nuclear/iaea-report-and-geo...
see also https://freeiransn.com/the-two-trillion-dollar-drain-irans-m...
The point is not "this guy is a genius" but rather "this war was so predictable, even this weird guy could pinpoint with frightening accuracy how this war would happen two years before it started".
I'm not an American so I'm not sure if the voting base actually believed him.
They (rich and well connected) did, but they won't have to suffer the consequences, everyone else will. The Pedo of the United States is now a billionaire that will walk away in 4 years shrugging his shoulders laughing all the way to the bank with them.
Not one person that could stop it, did stop it. Legislature is sitting on their thumbs pretending not to work for Israel and selling us out to big tech and defense spending.
All the Baby Boomers are in the south enjoying the sunshine and shrugging their shoulders.
That's it. That's the whole damn "Causus belli" for this so called "Special military operation." It isn't intended to accomplish any specific geo-strategic goals, it doesn't have a plan or purpose, it's just a convenient distraction and way for some already very rich folks to get even richer.
This is honestly my major issue with the whole "Geo-strategic analysis industrial blogger / YouTuber complex" in that I think they far too often ascribe deeper meaning and geo-strategic planning or purpose to state actions when they can far more easily be interpreted through the lens of the political capture of nations and institutions by the wealthy elites, their greed / self interest and their monological desire to preserve the status quo and thus their own political / economic power.
Nations very seldom do pretty much anything these days because it would be of benefit to their nation or people, they almost exclusively only do things that benefit the wealthy elites who control them.
This war, like all wars throughout human history, is a class war, in that the lives and livings of us regular folks are being sacrificed at the alters of power and profit, all so certain rich folks can get even richer and keep their boot on our necks.
US service members would be constantly getting killed, causing inevitable escalation and deeper and deeper incursions. It's a quagmire.
This stuff is the exact same reason Israel constantly feels the need to peel more territory off their neighbours after each war. "We're getting bombed near the borders, so we need to push our borders out to keep the border regions safe", which of course just creates a new, even bigger border region.
"It certainly did not help that the United States had stood idle while the regime slaughtered tens of thousands of its opponents, before making the attempt,"
"Now, before we go forward, I want to clarify a few things. First, none of this is a defense of the Iranian regime, which is odious. That said, there are many odious regimes in the world and we do not go to war with all of them. Second, this is a post fundamentally about American strategy or the lack thereof and thus not a post"
Let's look at a scenario. I'm a local policeman who jails everyone in my neighborhood who steals from others, except one person that I allow to steal anything they want, whenever they want. When a victim of their theft tries to take their property back from the thief, I stop the victim and jail them for theft, because they tried to take what is now the property of the original thief. Some people say that I had no right to jail the victim for trying to take back what was originally theirs from the thief. Other people cite that it is technically theft and that someone else constantly getting away with theft does not mean that the policeman shouldn't stop this current case of "theft". Whenever the victims tried to do it the proper way and report the thefts to me, I did nothing.
Should the society trust me to continue doing law enforcement? Of course not. They should immediately replace me, and if that's not possible, they should exile me and organize themselves into a militia and enforce the rule of law on their own.
Going back to the real topic, USA has no moral right to intervene on the basis of punishing "slaughter" when they themselves are in the business of slaughtering people worldwide if it's in the business interest of its elite, and supports other countries slaughtering if it's somehow to the perceived benefit of the USA's leaders. The rest of the world should never allow it given USA's historical record, even a recent one.
That the USA allowed Gaza to happen has put an end to the idea that Americans are the good guys and only do things that are good. The rest of the world sees this, even if heavily propagandized American citizens cannot, for whatever justifications they give.
And the USA's inability to reign its security partners in when they commit genocide has put an end to the idea that the USA has any actual weight in its diplomatic efforts.
The world is moving on from American hegemony - we will have to look to others for help in stopping America and its partners' slaughtering.
Taiwan has roughly 10 days left of gas supply.
Oil and gas are not only used for energy, but are the primary component of many, many materials and chemicals.
Some of the oil/gas plants that were hit will take months to fix. Pipelines have stopped.
We have a huge risk of a global supply chain destabilization for any sector. Think what happened with chip supply with covid, and make it much worse since the manufacturers never did stop during covid, while there is a risk they will have to stop now.
Not all machines and production can be stopped and started immediately, so even a short interruption can have lasting and cascading consequences.
Covid thought us that the world relies too much on just-in-time production, and we lack buffers in many, many fields. This has likely not changed.
That "nobody in their right mind" would bet this does not, in fact, contradict his assertion that somebody did!
The continuing slow collapse of the United States is extremely relevant to all things technology and business. The source of all our funding may be cut off. It's important to monitor what's going on there.
Time Traveler, rushing to a computer after seeing a Skyrim for Sale poster and seeing this post: "WHAT YEAR IS IT!!!??"
I suppose it is some right given to you from above, now where have I seen this before..
Judging by your comment history it seems to be the majority of what you discuss. Maybe you're not the best judge of what HN finds interesting or salient.
It's most of my comment history recently because I have family and friends in the region and I'm admittedly triggered by the callousness, heartlessness and sanctimony I see in these comments. It's not healthy, I know.
People are trying to preach good and honest values but are doing so through narrow, biased, misinformed and presupposed views of reality that are completely detached from what's actually going on on the ground, which you could tell by talking to anyone actually living there.
But that's beside the point. I was pointing out an objective observation: The Trump administration has said from day one that if regime change happens, it won't be by American hands, but by Iranian protesters' hands.
These protesters are being asked by all sides to stay home so the US and Israel can keep bombing Basij outposts without hurting them. They're doing just that. Where is the failure? All that's being demonstrated is this analyst's impatience.
It might work. It might not. But we'll only know in a few months.
If there was any serious preparation for a many months long campaign then why Kharg island is not occupied already?
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
Is this the winning condition? Killing Iranians, all else be damned?
Author's analysis, as critical as he is of American presidents breaking their promises, is completely absent of analysis of what would happen if American presidents broke their promises to never allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Never mind that JCPOA had a sunset clause that would allow Iran to resume nuclear enrichment to weapons-grade after the sunset clause.
The author's analysis pretty blatantly exposes reality: the West is losing because it does not have the political stomach to win. Instead of deciding that maybe society should try to develop that political stomach, instead of paying attention to a Trump who got elected in large part on mantras about how America was losing and it needed to start winning, no, Author says this was all a horrible idea and implicitly we should just sit back while our enemies progress along the road of putting nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists.
This does not happen even in the most insane examples like North Korea.
The more likely outcome would be that they would be able to avoid getting their schools/hospitals etc. bombed.
In your mind US should just nuke iran so there is regime change? Can you calculate how this would play out after that happens?
a. They have armed and financed their terrorist proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, and others), who used those arms and capital to commit acts of terrorism against their regime enemies (the US and Israel).
b. Witkoff literally offered them free nuclear fuel forever for civilian purposes and they turned him down, bragging that they had enough highly enriched nuclear fuel already for nuclear weapons
c. I can put 2 and 2 together
In what universe does having nuclear weapons protect you from getting schools and hospitals bombed? Israel very likely has nuclear weapons, but Israeli schools and hospitals are getting bombed by Iranian missiles. So what?
JCPOA was highly flawed, but it was a lot better than nothing, which is what Trump traded it for.
If Trump was serious about stopping Iran's nuclear program, he would have made taking Isfahan a top priority of the initial strikes.
Delaying the onset of war is not worthless, but it is not the same as arguing that war could have been avoided, which is what people who roll out that claim are really trying to argue. It's only true in a universe where Iran would have collapsed from within before the expiration of the sunset clause, and that clearly was not going to happen.
"highly flawed" implies that it's not very good at its primary goal
> it only delayed Iran getting nuclear weapons
That sounds better than no delay
That depends on what Iran does in the meantime, does it not? If Iran effectively turned their missile program into a true deterrent then negotiated delay is worse, because it would remove the ability to stunt the development through military means. Which is very much the argument being made for the “why now” of this war.
As to Trump's motivations, they don't change this calculus. Iran intended to nuke their neighbors, and Israel, not just before Trump came to power but literally before the first Bush became president. And the full situation is even worse: right after the mullah's came to power in a leftist revolution in 1979, they begged for US and Israel's help to stop Saddam Hussein from nuking them. They got that help ... and then figured that nukes are a great idea.
Here's what the mullahs are most afraid of btw. The biggest threat to their power, the biggest problem for their central-London villas:
https://x.com/NarimanGharib/status/2036761330359615897
This local opposition to them has systematically worsened over time, btw. So I wouldn't put it past the mullahs to nuke Iran itself, eventually. It also means that Iran's islamic regime is threatening everyone, for the simple reason that if they make a single concession loosening their grip on Iran, they'll be lynched, one by one, in the streets, by people they went to school with. That is how much Iran's regime is "winning".
But it's only Donald Trump that has used that as an excuse to make that danger greater.
And acoup has a great counter-point to your tweet in the article.
The Soviet Union dealt with massive internal protest quite successfully for pretty much every single one of its 70 years of existence. The Soviet Union only fell when insiders took it down.
Iran appears to be in absolutely no danger of that happening.
https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-25.pd...
(they preliminarily reported the same stance even in 2024, before any attacks)
TLDR: Iran, despite having signed a treaty allowing access, is hiding highly enriched uranium, enough to build 9, maybe 10 nuclear devices. It is also not complying with its other obligations under the NPT treaty.
And then Iran responded to this ... by boasting of making nuclear weapons grade uranium to make bombs, to American diplomats:
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/iran-eastern-stat...
Now I get that American diplomacy is a shitshow since ... a certain event. However, I fail to come up with a worse attitude that Iran could have had at the time. They are openly boasting of having "the divine right" to enriched uranium that can only be used for bombs in negotiations ...
I also get that Americans (and everyone else, for that matter) feel that it's entirely unfair that they have to care about nuclear weapons in Iran. But if nobody does ... Iran's leaders have made it clear that as soon as they have the weapons, nuclear war starts. What I find baffling is that nobody cares ...
Of course, now it turns out that UAE and Saudi Arabia have since been SCREAMING at the US to do something. But the people it will affect the most are of course in Europe and Asia (everyone except Russia, Norway and Ukraine), who are effectively going to see yet another 3-4% tariff, except this one applies even on goods they produce themselves, for themselves. The EU is burning massive amounts of political goodwill trying to get a few percent savings, and now they'll have to do tell their people they're saving at least double that, in a few months time, with no real warning.
And until they do that, and until they're let out again, no amount of arguments will ever make me agree that it's just not fair. In fact, if everyone even remotely involved with them gets shot THAT I will call fairness.
As an American who lives abroad and travels around the world, I've never had the slightest worry about "oh man what if Iran does something?" But I've had to adjust flight and travel plans several times, I've had cost of living surge, I've witness chaos causing terrorist splinter groups that attack countries around the world because Israel and America have started some stupid conflict and said "we had no choice bro we had to attack them because in 80 years they would've made a bomb that might've killed a civilian bro you have to trust me bro." And frankly, I'm done even taking those arguments in good faith. I simply refuse. The mess these two countries cause has caused far more death than even if Iran had a nuke, ten nukes, or one thousand nukes.
There’s this weird attitude I see where people claim “realpolitik” to give other nations colonial rights to their neighbors while denying the same to America. If you buy into “spheres of influence” as a concept it’s time to accept that the US, as the world’s preeminent military and economic power, has a sphere of influence that spans the globe.
Its sphere of influence includes Israel, Gaza (Hamas), Yemen (Houthis), Iraq (various Shia splinter groups), and Lebanon (where Hezbollah refuses to accept the sovereignty of the Lebanese government). You are being willfully ignorant.
And funny you mention Lebanon. Iran isn't the country bombing Lebanon every few years or seizing land there either. But right now another country is invading and seizing land and not accepting the sovereignty of the Lebanese government. [1] Always funny how accusations in 2026 really just are a way of confessing.
[1] https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-89105...
Proceeds to not mention the Epstein files at all. No comment here mentions it either.
All that mess and all those deep connections that were unraveling... I’m not a US citizen, but has that already been forgotten? Do people not consider that they might be relevant in some way to this situation? Or is raising that possibility now generally viewed as a conspiracy theory?
>But countries do not go to war simply to have a war – well, stupid fascist countries do, which is part of why they tend to be quite bad at war – they go to war to achieve specific goals and end-states.
>Again, it is not a ‘gain’ in war simply to bloody your enemy: you are supposed to achieve something in doing so.
There are a few other passages to similar effect, but for brevity, these two will do to illustrate the point: the author seems to be subtly implying that America is a "stupid fascist nation". Actually, the way he keeps clarifying the obvious, I think he expects a good amount of his readers to be "stupid fascists".
I cannot say I wholly disagree with his assessment!
He does nothing of the sort.
I can clarify for you: the mention of fascist countries being bad at war is a link to another article by the author, which explains that fascist countries such as Mussolini's Italy and Nazi Germany were very bad at a war even while they mythologized and romanticized it, and derived their "sense of nation" out of symbolic struggle and might. The article you linked to describes many fascist or fascist-like nations, like Putin's Russia, but does not mention liberal democracies such as the USA.
I recommend you read it.
So why did the author mention that article in this context? Because he wanted to explain that countries -- unless they are fascist countries -- have strategic goals for going to war, and so does the US in this case, and therefore it's warranted to look into those goals and whether they have a chance of being met.
Again, I recommend you read the article in question (the one about fascists being bad at war) before jumping to unwarranted conclusions.
And having a stated objective is quite different from having a real objective. Hitler had various stated objectives for all his wars (Lebensraum, fostering the Ubermensch, and rescuing Germans from the supposed oppressions of the Jews, which of course never existed and was purely a fiction to justify unspeakable horrors). If you take Hitler's words at face value, they were all motivated and not at all stupid wars. But you'd be very stupid to take Hitler's words at face value, especially with the benefit of hindsight!
I think the same arguments are applicable to trump. He has stated several goals, none of which are reasonably achievable. Take trumps words at face value and the war makes sense, but he has shown himself to be a pathological liar, so you'd be an idiot to believe him, especially when his statements lack any connection to the real world. Given how he tends to argue, it wouldn't surprise me at all if trump thinks that "bloodying your enemy" is a win in a war. That's how he works. That's how he handles trade. Doesn't matter if tariffs damage America, so long as they also damage other nations, it's a win. Of course he thinks that way about war too!
The end state trump is looking for is damage to Iran. He'll have it. But the rest of the world (including USA) will suffer tenfold. He doesn't care. Because he's a stupid fascist leader.
Thus, we end up with the conclusion that America had no real reason to start this war, and starting it anyway is an action historically only done by stupid fascist countries, therefore America is a stupid fascist country. It's a fourth order implication, which admittedly is not at all clear, and might not have been intentional.
I'm severely biased of course, I generally hold last week's turd in higher regard than I do trump (turds make great fertilizer!). So grain of salt and all that...
Well there are a lot of very stupid people in this world.
Region instability had ben regularly threatening freedom of navigation in the last five years
And USA may not consider the individual country strategic, but cares deeply about freedom of navigation, because the single market is basically the pillar for their hegemony.
Sarah Paine lectures give overall better lenses to look at this engagement.
They held the threat of closing it, as a deterrent of an attack, and once attacked, they did just that.
You either live in a parallel universe, or are just spewing here propaganda.
Lol there were routine attcaks every time things weren't going their way. Whos been in a parallel universe?
And never said closed. I said ransom.
The author is a military historian and professor with a PhD, so not an amateur.
If you think this isn't high grade, or that it is mistaken, please explain how and why.
Especially in the heavily jingoistic american context, where all of the focus is implicitly on the military means and technology and execution, but people have lost sight of, maybe can not even state plainly, what the point of a military is, what considerations are part of deciding to use it to accomplish a goal.
If you're going to accomplish a strategic goal with a military action, that goal had better be achievable through military action and this one plainly isn't. A historian can see it, a blogger can see it, a programmer can see it. Why wasn't it seen by people whose job is ostensibly to see it?
1. If US was to replace Iran as the one to control exports of oil through the strait, then thos would gain huge leverage on China via control of energy exports from Iran, Middle East more generally, as they have already done in Venezuela.
2. Making it clear that partnership with Russia and China will not provide security, which was shown to be worthless. This counters “The East is rising and the West is declining”, a go-to Xi Jinping line.
4. Securing South America for near-shoring production, decoupling of supply chains from China. Iran, China, and Russia have lots of
5. Disrupting Iranian ability to support Russia against Ukraine via manufacturing of drones in Iran and in Venezuela.
Whether these points are actually part of the strategy, I do not know, but they have been raised by others in the space, and seemed absent in the article.
The response is as applicable now as it was then. Time will tell.
Maybe the strategic balance creates a situation where it's advantageous for Iran to pull US in regardless of non-involvement. They don't do well against Israel alone (see rather low damage of 4 separate large scale attempts at attacking Israel directly), but US is so much easier to pressure via the Gulf. Indeed, this scenario doesn't quite need Israel.
So US risked getting pulled in not due to attacking in June 2025, but because the cheque given to the Gulf was starting to expire, the power balance was objectively swinging in favor of Iran at the location where Devereaux sees as the most important part of the Middle East. Now, say there are powerful states who feel they are in a decent position now but also that the strategic balance would slip away. What do they tend to do? Devereaux can consult his WW1 history.