This is just so incredibly embarrassing. We're now negotiating to end a war with a country we have claimed to have defeated like 500 times now, over terms that will not even just return the region to the pre-war status quo, but (most likely) giving them more power than they had when the first bombs were dropped. Not to mention shattering the illusion that the US can somehow protect the gulf states, along with most of our bases in the region and 13 US lives. Even if the US somehow recovers the enriched uranium they now claim was the motive, why would Iran not want to build nukes now? It would be suicidal not to.
(I say this with no sympathy to the Iranian government, just looking at reality.)
> Why would Iran not want to build nukes now? It would be suicidal not to.
I feel like we have enough examples to be clear on this now, would you rather your country be treated by the major powers like Libya, Ukraine, Iraq... Or like North Korea.
That's a great point. This is also going to be disastrous for the case against nuclear proliferation, not just in Iran or the middle east -- especially when the co-aggressor has an undeclared nuclear stockpile.
What makes Iran believe unilateral fees on subsea internet cables would be paid? If they start paying in this case, the rest of the world is going to start demanding unilateral fees from the operators.
If operators are going to pay up anyhow, they might prefer chipping in for NATO support than publically rewarding such behavior...
"chipping in" could range from symbolic to substantial, as the alternative would be facing a never-ending stream of unilateral fees worldwide, in fact even all unaffected operators of internet cables are hereby motivated to organize a collective crowd-funding for military support of these cables: the future affected party could otherwise be themselves!
They're just trolling the US. But if the US attacks and Iran again and Iran feels that the cables are vital to US military interests, they might destroy them. They have a right to: The cables cross the territory of the sovereign Iranian state.
I wasn't talking about rights, but about the incentive of network operators worldwide to prevent one another from paying unilateral fees. Of all sectors to weigh attacking, the networking sector seems like the worst sector to attack: they are well networked and a whole alliance of lucrative entities around the world becomes your enemy if you start applying unilateral fees.
Iran is in a vicious circle of generating self-fulfilling prophecies: persecution complex -> hostage politics -> more enemies -> persecution complex.
They show leadership on almost no front, they are not credible on a world stage. Try and picture some kind of future version of the current regime in Iran becoming a bigger and bigger world player, how will they start addressing real problems, like global warming? They only have experience in making their problems also someone else's problem. Suppose they continue and eventually achieve nuclear power status, will they blackmail the trees in the amazon rain forest to do photosynthesis faster, or else?
> The cables cross the territory of the sovereign Iranian state
The strait is not and has never been Iran's sovereign territory. Or should the UAE and Oman start trying to charge fees to ships trying to cross the strait too?
they can increase the fees until building infrastructure outside of their water/air/land becomes more economical, which means a long way to go. We will probably have a treaty at the end covering that strait too. And looks like it will have some fees in it. Until of course somebody delivers a crushing military defeat of Iran. And while technically i think US is capable of doing it, I wouldn't bet though that this pair of a pompous self-dealer and an incompetent alcoholic would be able to do it.
Indeed. Add them to the list that includes the instigators of the current conflict. In an admittedly cursory search, I don’t see any serious mention of similar threats to the subsea cables before the U.S. and Israel began attacking Iran. In a functioning government, these sorts of risks would be analyzed, risks/benefits weighed and carefully considered. I wonder if even the mafia itself has a better planning process than this.
They were not acquired, they were always there. Only fools didn't see them, and US 3 letter agencies are many things but usually not fools.
But what can they do when potus gets manipulated into war by netanyahu with quick win promises, despite many people around him telling him its a bad, bad idea. US has a weak president now and parts of the world are using it to the fullest.
Persians are and always were smart, not some sheep herders you can bomb into oblivion without a worry, rather educated engineers and similar level. I went there cca decade ago during more quiet times, and stroke random conversations about physics, chemistry or philosophy in parks. Not probably going to happen in say US.
"Esfandiary, of Bloomberg Economics, said Iran “theoretically knew” it had leverage over the strait but was uncertain how significant the impact would be if it acted on those threats.
Now, she added, Tehran “has discovered the impact.”
The thing that mystifies me is that U. S. war planners "theoretically knew" this, too; at least, I would assume. The whole war strikes me as the current administration finding out the hard way why previous administrations all the way back to Reagan didn't commit to warfare against Iran, even if they wanted to. "FAFO", as the kids say, I guess.
OTOH, I do have theory floating around in my head that someone got one of the letters wrong and confused Iran with Iraq: "we kicked their ass before, we'll do it again!"
"Uh, different and much better-armed country, sir."
Or, as has been famously said, "Don't confuse me with the facts." [0]
> The thing that mystifies me is that U. S. war planners "theoretically knew" this, too; at least, I would assume.
They would have, because this has been wargamed and written about for decades. It's playing out exactly as expected, which is why no US administration until this one was willing to go to an outright hot war with Iran. Unfortunately, this war dept and admin has a staggering amount of hubris, incompetency, and a strange devotion to carrying out every whim of a certain semi-allied state I won't name directly but can be inferred.
> They would have, because this has been wargamed and written about for decades.
From a think tank simulation from 2012:
> The simulation’s second move principally focused on the Iranian team and
how it would respond to the various American actions in the first move. The Iranian team chose to respond in several ways: […] It decided to create a threat to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz by ordering IRGC small boats to harass American naval ships passing through the strait, and—of far greater importance—laying a relatively small number of mines there. […]
I suspect they knew if oil can’t move out of the gulf, then US oil will gladly step in. Republicans have always had to be Oil company supported. Just look at the number of oil tankers leaving the Gulf of Mexico: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-86.3/cent...
The argument goes that, given the general disposition of Iran towards the US, its allies, and basically anyone who's not a Shiite Muslim, it wasn't a choice between war with Iran or no war with Iran. It was a choice between war with Iran now, or war with a stronger, possibly nuclear-armed Iran at some unspecified point in the future.
Personally I disagree war was inevitable; time can change a lot of things and it doesn't seem like there was any imminent threat, but I also don't see why you would find it so hard to believe others might disagree with that assessment.
It is, after all, well-documented that the current U.S. president ignores, or frankly is unable to pay attention to intelligence briefings. So it is almost irrelevant whether any analysis of risks and benefits took place. The U.S. president admits that his decision-making process is a seat-of-the-pants “feeling” about things.
- there is a concerted effort to target and topple oil producers which China relies on as a form of containment of the Chinese economy. Venezuela, Iran, eventually Russia in a more direct way. The current administration is willing to accept economic pain for just about everyone because they see the transition from petroleum to green energies as the death knell for US superiority. They see this as their last chance to derail China, so they are taking it. It provides incidental value (like giving pre-text for increasing domestic repression).
- they thought it would be easy after Venezuela and Trump was flattered by Netanyahu and pressured by evangelicals into doing it.
High oil prices only accelerate China's transition to renewables, and rewards them for all the investment they've made so far, both in national energy production and in selling panels and EVs to the world.
It hurts the US far more, especially with this admin's anti wind and solar policies.
China can't transition that fast. China has a lot of oil in storage but if the current situation continues or gets worse they are hurt. The US is a net exporter of oil so is okay though some areas use middle east oil and are hurt too.
This will take a long time to play out. Discount every short term prediction as both Iran and the US are forced to play a long game.
How does being a net exporter even help? There's a global market and prices rise globally. US companies and consumers will pay more no matter if we're importing or exporting.
This is where tariffs help actually, if they could be approved. You bring in money from tariffs, use that to subsidize things - gas tax is one way but it is small, but there could be others. Of course no tariff on gas exports since everyone wants it :) But it needs Trump world view with Obama's level execution :)
You can't do things like "make plastics" or "run entire industrial districts" off of them, at least not yet. Both are incredibly important to China for the time being.
You also can't run most blue-water naval ships off of them, but that's a bit less impactful.
> The thing that mystifies me is that U. S. war planners "theoretically knew" this, too; at least, I would assume.
The other administrations you mentioned operated on the principle that the President should listen to his advisors and was ultimately accountable to the American people should his decisions result in poor outcomes.
This administration operates on the principle that the executive branch of the US federal government is now the Trump Organization but with access to taxpayer funds and the state's monopoly on violence. Since DJT was the undisputed leader of the Trump Organization, he was never questioned there, and he's not questioned now, whether it be about decisions to bomb Iran or about anything else.
These people wanted to do things like "keep their jobs" and "be able to receive a pension", so they went through with the orders from a man who is almost 80 years old and shows both declining cognitive skills and personality disorders.
Ideally, you have a judicial and legislative branch that would punish this behavior, but those people also want to keep their careers/lives. So the majority party, his own, cows to him as well.
If anything, those were lost (I'd argue Iraq was a draw of sorts and Korea was more-or-less a victory) due to lack of raw military power.
This is a country with enough nuclear warheads to end intelligent life on this planet. It has bombers that, even with conventional payloads, could wipe most cities off the map once air superiority is achieved - and it almost always is.
Instead, there's a tendency to try and move the nation into the American sphere of influence and let it defend itself under its own power, and that's where things fail, because that requires lots of ground troops over a period of years while the local allies in the conflict get ready to do the fighting.
The interesting wrinkle with Iran is that The World's Best Negotiator(TM) has essentially painted himself into a corner. Could the US do more to break Iran? Of course. Would those things be politically popular in the US or receive the support of the international community? Hell no. So he has to keep puffing his chest up. It'll be interesting to see what happens post-midterms.
There's some truth here as well, there's a very large political asymmetry at play here.
On Iran's side, no death will really matter to the regime, it's a political hydra which is capable of doing and sustaining lots of damage to stay in power.
On the US side though, the war is highly unpopular, every single death and every single side effect of the war is politically painful.
But I don't agree about the first part, there's definitely a "we're the biggest military in the world, we will win no matter what" mindset in the US military, which is the reason why they lost so many wars.
Having a military so large is a blessing and a curse, they are too confident and then trip on strategy.
Israel talked him into it, just like he has no interest in anything until the last person in the room whispers ideas into his ear
Lindsey Graham is this term's Rudy Giuliani and he was flying back and forth to Israel briefing their version of the CIA on what to tell Trump to get him to do this
Personally I think another aspect is once he realized American oil companies became massively profitable overnight for months now at $100+ a barrel, he just took a cut somehow
Remember it took Obama's team YEARS to get Iran to sign something, this is not ending this year or next for any number of bombs killing their innocent civilians, Iran doesn't care, executions are at an all time weekly high there
It's death-cult vs death-cult at this point, we all lose
Trump has hated the Iranian regime since the hostage crisis. He called for Ronald Reagan to invade Iran in a 1987 TV interview. He's been remarkably consistent on this issue.
Let's call it what it is. Israel didn't just "talk him into it", they played trump like a fiddle and tricked him into doing their dirty work.
With the blackmail they have on him provided by Epstien and associates, trump is exactly the type of person that our enemies love. He is a useful idiot at best.
I don’t think this argument really makes sense tbh. When you own the justice department and congress, what matter does it make? Epstein stuff was going to to stale regardless, as much as I hate that fact.
Agreed. I think the Epstein angle was just a bonus to a decision made by an incompetent commander-in-chief of the military. It being the sole reason seems farcical even for this administration.
pretty sure people already had epstein fatigue and didn't really care anymore.
yes billioanires participated in crazy unethical parties with human traffiked hookers, water is wet.
to be a billionaire you have to have an inherit evil inside you, otherwise your concious would simply never allow you to build up wealth to that point without redistributing it to employees, people who helped you get where you are, improving your community and so on.
Iran still didn't get the memo that the closure is precisely what the U.S. wants. Get Japan, South Korean and others on U.S. natural resources to control them like the EU.
Why Russia goes along with it is debatable. Maybe they hope that the EU buys again from them, maybe that whole scenario was discussed in Alaska between orange man and Putin. Who knows. We only get lies and the real plans unfold years after.
The EU should however stop guessing what goes on between the dictators in secret and simply pursue its own interests.
While folks here are quick to jump to blaming the US for this, it's also worth noting that the US is the one that has been enforcing international order so far.
So it gives us a bit of a glimpse of what would the world would look like with a more isolationist US, or a multipolar world.
This might be outdated, but last I heard the US was only blocking ships going to/from Iran and ships which paid Iran's protection money, right? Not all traffic through the strait?
And for Iran it seems "countries it opposes" is basically everyone...
Iran was quite happy to let Chinese and Russian flagged ships to pass. Now, the US is blocking those as well as anything heading toward Iran. The US recently had a short lived Operation Dumb Name to have the US Navy escort ships out of the straight. It lasted less than 48 hours.
I stand corrected then. Blocking Russian ships makes sense perhaps given the separate ongoing conflict in Ukraine but I don't really see the point in the US blocking Chinese ships unless there's credible evidence China is giving direct aid to Iran. (Is there?) Otherwise, allowing them through seems like a pretty easy way to fix the oil shortage without much downside, at least until Iran starts blocking them again.
The chain of events did not start there. 20 years ago it was not blocked, although it well could have been. ie A car hits a pedestrian. Claiming the pedestrian did damage to the car's fender misses the context of the conflict.
The chain of events probably started something like 2000 years ago depending on how you count it. The fact remains that threatening the ships of peaceful commercial traffic by uninvolved nations is entirely Iran's doing.
Please, lets end this lie about the "international order". It's always been a lawless world where rich and powerful nations did whatever they wanted. Now they've just stopped bothering to hide it.
Both things can be true: A lot of countries may suffer if the US is not a guarantor of their safety or an enforcer of safe passage through waterways. The USA can also suffer economically from no longer being a trusted partner and responsible actor. As an American, the problem for me is people who got so little benefit from the previous status quo that they don't care. I think of it like the unemployed and the pensioners who voted for Brexit. They just didn't have a lot to lose.
>the US is the one that has been enforcing international order so far.
I'd be with you here if the US CIA wasn't the one who overthrown the democratically elected Mosaddegh and replaced him with their puppet Shah, triggering the Islamic revolution.
But I'll give you a pass since I heard they don't teach this part in american public school history curriculum.
The US has never been able to change a regime without a lot of help from insiders. I have read this history and it is a lot more complicated then "the US waived its magic wand." If the US could change regimes that easily don't you think we would have done it in Cuba, or contemporary Iran?
It's just as ignorant to cherry pick one event in the history of Iran as the source of all it's problems as it is to say Americans don't know their own history. It's not that simple.
C. Less of a revolution as Shah had always been around, they just supported him in kicking out his own prime minister (and exerting autocratic rule as a result)
"While folks here are quick to jump to blaming the arsonist for this, it's also worth noting that the arsonist is a firefighter and was responsible for putting out numerous other fires."
You can very specifically blame Trump for not understanding this at all. Possibly a symptom of being born rich, he acts as though America's standing in the world is a given and he has infinite political capital to spend any way he chooses and every other president was a moron for not doing it first. Obviously America has abused/misused their authority many times, but this is really the most humiliating in how quickly it unfolded and how very foreseeable the outcome was. We had a solid deal 12 years ago and instead we now have a mess and it's entirely due to one man's hubris.
(I say this with no sympathy to the Iranian government, just looking at reality.)
I feel like we have enough examples to be clear on this now, would you rather your country be treated by the major powers like Libya, Ukraine, Iraq... Or like North Korea.
If operators are going to pay up anyhow, they might prefer chipping in for NATO support than publically rewarding such behavior...
"chipping in" could range from symbolic to substantial, as the alternative would be facing a never-ending stream of unilateral fees worldwide, in fact even all unaffected operators of internet cables are hereby motivated to organize a collective crowd-funding for military support of these cables: the future affected party could otherwise be themselves!
Presumably because they will attempt to destroy them if the fees are not paid.
Iran is in a vicious circle of generating self-fulfilling prophecies: persecution complex -> hostage politics -> more enemies -> persecution complex.
They show leadership on almost no front, they are not credible on a world stage. Try and picture some kind of future version of the current regime in Iran becoming a bigger and bigger world player, how will they start addressing real problems, like global warming? They only have experience in making their problems also someone else's problem. Suppose they continue and eventually achieve nuclear power status, will they blackmail the trees in the amazon rain forest to do photosynthesis faster, or else?
The strait is not and has never been Iran's sovereign territory. Or should the UAE and Oman start trying to charge fees to ships trying to cross the strait too?
They’d simply tell whoever’s crying to start using dynamic routing protocols and accept the few more ms in latency.
The question for us is, do you side with the small bully, or the big bully?
Look, I’m all for the Iranian gov to cease. But don’t pretend that the US and it’s scoundrels aren’t the mafia and criminals in this matter.
But what can they do when potus gets manipulated into war by netanyahu with quick win promises, despite many people around him telling him its a bad, bad idea. US has a weak president now and parts of the world are using it to the fullest.
Persians are and always were smart, not some sheep herders you can bomb into oblivion without a worry, rather educated engineers and similar level. I went there cca decade ago during more quiet times, and stroke random conversations about physics, chemistry or philosophy in parks. Not probably going to happen in say US.
Now, she added, Tehran “has discovered the impact.”
The thing that mystifies me is that U. S. war planners "theoretically knew" this, too; at least, I would assume. The whole war strikes me as the current administration finding out the hard way why previous administrations all the way back to Reagan didn't commit to warfare against Iran, even if they wanted to. "FAFO", as the kids say, I guess.
OTOH, I do have theory floating around in my head that someone got one of the letters wrong and confused Iran with Iraq: "we kicked their ass before, we'll do it again!"
"Uh, different and much better-armed country, sir."
Or, as has been famously said, "Don't confuse me with the facts." [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Landgrebe
They would have, because this has been wargamed and written about for decades. It's playing out exactly as expected, which is why no US administration until this one was willing to go to an outright hot war with Iran. Unfortunately, this war dept and admin has a staggering amount of hubris, incompetency, and a strange devotion to carrying out every whim of a certain semi-allied state I won't name directly but can be inferred.
From a think tank simulation from 2012:
> The simulation’s second move principally focused on the Iranian team and how it would respond to the various American actions in the first move. The Iranian team chose to respond in several ways: […] It decided to create a threat to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz by ordering IRGC small boats to harass American naval ships passing through the strait, and—of far greater importance—laying a relatively small number of mines there. […]
* PDF: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/us-iran...
Interview at the time with the organizers:
* https://www.npr.org/2012/09/24/161706698/simulated-war-betwe...
Israel. The White House is willing to sacrifice American power and prestige for Israel. We have to stop tip-toeing around the elephant in the room.
Personally I disagree war was inevitable; time can change a lot of things and it doesn't seem like there was any imminent threat, but I also don't see why you would find it so hard to believe others might disagree with that assessment.
- there is a concerted effort to target and topple oil producers which China relies on as a form of containment of the Chinese economy. Venezuela, Iran, eventually Russia in a more direct way. The current administration is willing to accept economic pain for just about everyone because they see the transition from petroleum to green energies as the death knell for US superiority. They see this as their last chance to derail China, so they are taking it. It provides incidental value (like giving pre-text for increasing domestic repression).
- they thought it would be easy after Venezuela and Trump was flattered by Netanyahu and pressured by evangelicals into doing it.
High oil prices only accelerate China's transition to renewables, and rewards them for all the investment they've made so far, both in national energy production and in selling panels and EVs to the world.
It hurts the US far more, especially with this admin's anti wind and solar policies.
This will take a long time to play out. Discount every short term prediction as both Iran and the US are forced to play a long game.
You can't do things like "make plastics" or "run entire industrial districts" off of them, at least not yet. Both are incredibly important to China for the time being.
You also can't run most blue-water naval ships off of them, but that's a bit less impactful.
Nero had the decency to off himself after the Roman senate declared him a "public enemy".
Late stage Rome had more honor and virtue than current day US.
Netanyahu told Trump they wouldn't block the strait. The US military said they would. Trump went with Netanyahu.
American Foreign Policy Is Being Run by the Dumbest Motherfuckers Alive
(Daniel W. Drezner https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/american-foreign-policy...)
They knew.
But all it takes is Trump and Hegseth YOLOing past them and all that institutional, historical knowledge counts for nothing.
The other administrations you mentioned operated on the principle that the President should listen to his advisors and was ultimately accountable to the American people should his decisions result in poor outcomes.
This administration operates on the principle that the executive branch of the US federal government is now the Trump Organization but with access to taxpayer funds and the state's monopoly on violence. Since DJT was the undisputed leader of the Trump Organization, he was never questioned there, and he's not questioned now, whether it be about decisions to bomb Iran or about anything else.
These people wanted to do things like "keep their jobs" and "be able to receive a pension", so they went through with the orders from a man who is almost 80 years old and shows both declining cognitive skills and personality disorders.
Ideally, you have a judicial and legislative branch that would punish this behavior, but those people also want to keep their careers/lives. So the majority party, his own, cows to him as well.
All the previous wars got lost the exact same way.
Trump is losing the same way the US lost in Afghanistan, Irak, Vietnam, Korea... Just faster than any anybody else.
This is a country with enough nuclear warheads to end intelligent life on this planet. It has bombers that, even with conventional payloads, could wipe most cities off the map once air superiority is achieved - and it almost always is.
Instead, there's a tendency to try and move the nation into the American sphere of influence and let it defend itself under its own power, and that's where things fail, because that requires lots of ground troops over a period of years while the local allies in the conflict get ready to do the fighting.
The interesting wrinkle with Iran is that The World's Best Negotiator(TM) has essentially painted himself into a corner. Could the US do more to break Iran? Of course. Would those things be politically popular in the US or receive the support of the international community? Hell no. So he has to keep puffing his chest up. It'll be interesting to see what happens post-midterms.
On Iran's side, no death will really matter to the regime, it's a political hydra which is capable of doing and sustaining lots of damage to stay in power.
On the US side though, the war is highly unpopular, every single death and every single side effect of the war is politically painful.
But I don't agree about the first part, there's definitely a "we're the biggest military in the world, we will win no matter what" mindset in the US military, which is the reason why they lost so many wars.
Having a military so large is a blessing and a curse, they are too confident and then trip on strategy.
Israel talked him into it, just like he has no interest in anything until the last person in the room whispers ideas into his ear
Lindsey Graham is this term's Rudy Giuliani and he was flying back and forth to Israel briefing their version of the CIA on what to tell Trump to get him to do this
Personally I think another aspect is once he realized American oil companies became massively profitable overnight for months now at $100+ a barrel, he just took a cut somehow
Remember it took Obama's team YEARS to get Iran to sign something, this is not ending this year or next for any number of bombs killing their innocent civilians, Iran doesn't care, executions are at an all time weekly high there
It's death-cult vs death-cult at this point, we all lose
Trump has hated the Iranian regime since the hostage crisis. He called for Ronald Reagan to invade Iran in a 1987 TV interview. He's been remarkably consistent on this issue.
With the blackmail they have on him provided by Epstien and associates, trump is exactly the type of person that our enemies love. He is a useful idiot at best.
yes billioanires participated in crazy unethical parties with human traffiked hookers, water is wet.
to be a billionaire you have to have an inherit evil inside you, otherwise your concious would simply never allow you to build up wealth to that point without redistributing it to employees, people who helped you get where you are, improving your community and so on.
https://lite.cnn.com/2026/05/17/middleeast/iran-hormuz-under...
Why Russia goes along with it is debatable. Maybe they hope that the EU buys again from them, maybe that whole scenario was discussed in Alaska between orange man and Putin. Who knows. We only get lies and the real plans unfold years after.
The EU should however stop guessing what goes on between the dictators in secret and simply pursue its own interests.
So it gives us a bit of a glimpse of what would the world would look like with a more isolationist US, or a multipolar world.
And for Iran it seems "countries it opposes" is basically everyone...
The US has been forcing on Latin America whatever some US corporation wants for more than a century. We've had coups over bananas!
I'd be with you here if the US CIA wasn't the one who overthrown the democratically elected Mosaddegh and replaced him with their puppet Shah, triggering the Islamic revolution.
But I'll give you a pass since I heard they don't teach this part in american public school history curriculum.
It's just as ignorant to cherry pick one event in the history of Iran as the source of all it's problems as it is to say Americans don't know their own history. It's not that simple.
B. 25 years earlier and
C. Less of a revolution as Shah had always been around, they just supported him in kicking out his own prime minister (and exerting autocratic rule as a result)
I mean, yay?