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The Strait of Hormuz is a such a historical f-up. 1) It cuts the oil supply 2) It creates the demand and infrastructure for non-US backed Oil 3) It gives Iran a

• tjwebbnorfolk 5mo ago
  You're taking this claim way too seriously. Iran is at war. This part of the information war. Nobody is going to pay fees to Iran to use internet cables.
  • LurkandComment 5mo ago
    See in an information war, it doesn't have to be true to be dangerous, and never assume how stock prices might effect people's resileance. The greater point is there are cans of worms that are opening that weren't anticipated. This is just one example;].
  • csoups14 5mo ago
    This was all theory before the war. Now Iran knows they can blockade that Strait and makes these demands so they have much more leverage.
    • tjwebbnorfolk 5mo ago
      They can make all the demands they want. I can demand you give me a thousand bitcoin to not burn your house down. That doesn't mean it has any remote chance of happening.
      • sophacles 5mo ago
        You're going to burn down his house no matter what?
    • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
      > Now Iran knows they can blockade that Strait and makes these demands so they have much more leverage Tehran has more potential leverage inasmuch as they've credibly demonstrated they can block the Strait. Whether they have more actual leverage than before is uncertain–trade flows are routing around them. And their own shores remain blockaded. (Just because the U.S. has less leverage than it did before doesn't mean Iran necessarily has more.)
      • gmerc 5mo ago
        It’s not like they can shut down the main air corridor to Asia if they please, right?
        • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
          > not like they can shut down the main air corridor to Asia "Shut down" is not particularly accurate. America and Europe can route around. The only ones fucked are the Gulf carriers.
    • linhns 5mo ago
      I don't think they can blockade it for long anymore.
  • gowld 5mo ago
    What is nobody going to do if Iran military cuts cables? Or blocks repair ships after normal accidental damage?
    • tjwebbnorfolk 5mo ago
      I imagine they'll be able to cut exactly one cable before the US starts bombing them again. If my goal is to profit from subsea cables I don't own, getting bombed doesn't sound like a great strategy if I'm Iran. It's information war to scare US companies away from the middle east.
      • pessimizer 5mo ago
        Do you think the US was holding back on bombing Iran? It doesn't work; they have always prepared for an American attack, because they are a government that was formed by overthrowing the dictatorship that the US installed after destroying their democracy, and the US has been constantly threatening them ever since. This is the only fight they've been preparing for. They knew they were going to be facing an overwhelmingly superior navy and air force. That's why everything is dug in, buried and hidden. It's also why the propagandistic idea that they're a "terrorist state" is stupid, because a terrorist state would be prepared to do terrorist damage. The only terrorist arming and funding was from the US and Israel to people in Iran. I don't even see any heightened security at any level in the US - we're not even expecting anything. Don't believe that the US can eradicate all ability for Iran to do something as trivial as cutting an undersea cable anytime soon. They would still have the ability cut the cables as a last gasp after they were totally defeated at every level.
  • 10000truths 5mo ago
    What's to stop Iran from using the threat of cutting those cables as leverage? A speedboat and a depth charge are all it takes, and neither are particularly difficult to make.
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    • tjwebbnorfolk 5mo ago
      > What's to stop Iran What's to stop them? The enormous pile of ordnance floating in the gulf of oman that can be easily dropped on Tehran, for one...
      • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
        > The enormous pile of ordnance floating in the gulf of oman that can be easily dropped on Tehran, for one Probably not. The other comment is right: cutting cables means having its own cables cut. (Tehran is also probably weighing whether it wants to continue mobilising almost all of its neighbors against itself. Trashing e.g. Kuwait for shits and giggles isn't strategically productive.)
        • CamperBob2 5mo ago
          Tehran is also probably weighing whether it wants to continue mobilising almost all of its neighbors against itself Interesting point. It might be a good time for some good old-fashioned false-flag action.
          • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
            > might be a good time for some good old-fashioned false-flag action It's always "a good time for some good old-fashioned false-flag action" if you can pull it off. Given Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are already bombing Iran, and are now unaligned, there wouldn't be much for the U.S. to gain from something like this. (And if Israel were to pull off a false-flag operation against the U.S. now isn't better or worse than tomorrow or yesterday.)
• smallmancontrov 5mo ago
  Starting a war with Iran without filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserves at $60/bbl was truly special.
  • juvoly 5mo ago
    The Iran regime was obviously going to be a push over. Not the first forever war initiated as a Blitzkrieg. Not the last either.
    • TheGRS 5mo ago
      I always felt the implication of power was a lot more valuable to US interests than exercising it, cheaper too for that matter. And even very recent history revealed that with the greatest military strength ever seen, the US cannot achieve all of its desires through force.
      • juvoly 5mo ago
        What was the desire? Since the desire was a moving, ever changing, target it seems the force was primarily about showing force. Kind of meaningless. Indeed, power is about convincing others fear your force. Using force is, in a sense, admitting a lack of power.
        • TheGRS 5mo ago
          Also a great question that no one really has an answer to.
  • mindslight 5mo ago
    At what point can we just commonly agree that the goals of this "administration" are to do as much damage as possible to the United States? I'm sure there are some true believers (eg Trump himself would be just as much at home yelling racist abuse at nursing home staff), and many that are just in it to steal as much as they can. But the people whispering in ears and the overall support is driven by powers that want to destroy the United States - whether it's Russia, Israel, China, Big Tech who want to turn the place into a corporate authoritarian hellhole, or all of them together with their own pet projects. And that so many Americans continue to buy into this administration's nonsense narratives really illustrates an undercurrent of hate for this country that has been brewing for decades.
• krunck 5mo ago
  1) Oman and Iran both have territorial waters that extend into the center of the strait. See #3 2) What is "non-US backed oil? 3) Every country has the right to control their territorial waters. 4) Governments have worked hard to erode people's privacy rights such that crypto is not as untraceable as people still think. 5) ? 5) ? 6) Let it happen.
  • pessimizer 5mo ago
    These objections seem confused. The person you are replying to is not attacking Iran, but you seem to be defending Iran. They're saying that attacking Iran was a stupid idea, because it caused Iran to strangle the Strait of Hormuz, a thing they hadn't done and that there was no indication that they were considering doing before the attack. It's even stupider than the OP said. Aside from the strait, when you destroy Iran's oil facilities, you raise the price of oil for the foreseeable future. When Iran retaliates by destroying the oil facilities of local allies, it raises the price of oil for the foreseeable future. The only beneficiaries are oilmen in the US, Russia and South America, and the US is also supposed to be attacking Russia and South America.
• aaron695 5mo ago
  [dead]
• epistasis 5mo ago
  The US has never looked, or been, weaker than it is right now. It was Jimmy Carter that established that the Strait of Hormuz would stay open, through the strength of the US military threat. And now? The US is a paper tiger, making ridiculous threats via barely used social media platforms and then revoking them with just as little formality. The US has already done its worst, except for nukes, and the threats of nuking Iran are clear fakes. The US used to be a guarantor of safety on the seas. That appears to have been completely destroyed by the weak leadership in the US.
  • ericmay 5mo ago
    None of these things are true, it's just propaganda. > The US has never looked, or been, weaker than it is right now. Nothing has fundamentally changed with respect to American power. If this was true, that America has never been weaker than it is right now, why wouldn't China just go ahead and invade Taiwan? This is the perfect opportunity! Or is it that the US is so strong that even at its weakest point it can deter China from taking military action over Taiwan? Doesn't pass the smell test. > It was Jimmy Carter that established that the Strait of Hormuz would stay open, through the strength of the US military threat. And that worked for a long time. And things change. The world isn't static. And if the Strait is closed then it, as it is today, is also closed for the Iranians with the ultimate effect of making a cheeseburger cost a few dollars more and people coal-rolling their F-250s around having to spend more to do so. It screws over the rest of the world, but they also allowed this Iranian regime to fester and threaten until it was intolerable. It's too late now, but the rest of the world which so clearly depends on the Strait of Hormuz should have taken diplomatic and economic action earlier and/or more forcefully to prevent a group of religious cultists and fanatics from seizing control of Iran and then constantly threatening the US. At some point enough is enough and so the failure to act or stand up to these bullies leads to more pain down the road. It's a trap that Europe especially continues to fall in to because culturally they don't understand that bad people exist and you have to use force to stop them. They're learning that about Ukraine now too. > And now? The US is a paper tiger, making ridiculous threats via barely used social media platforms and then revoking them with just as little formality. The United States casually walked in and bombed the hell out of Iran's military and killed its leaders. Idk. If I was Iranian I sure wouldn't be looking at the US as a paper tiger when it can go park an aircraft carrier nearby and then bomb all my stuff and there's basically nothing I can do about it except to bomb defenseless oil tankers. > The US used to be a guarantor of safety on the seas. That appears to have been completely destroyed by the weak leadership in the US. It's a package deal. In order to be the guarantor of the seas you have to take actions like the on in Iran. All Iran had to do was double, triple, or quadruple its missile stockpile and then try to enact tolls on the Strait of Hormuz and the cost to stop it would be too great. US action today is exactly the role it is playing in guaranteeing safety on the seas. By the way, why is the US the one that has to do this? And if you don't like us doing it, maybe we should stop. I know that's what the far-left and MAGA want - they want isolationism.
• jmyeet 5mo ago
  It was clear from very early on that this war was (IMHO) the largest strategic blunder in US history and it's not even close. Prior to this, closing the Strait was an untested threat. This war forced Iran to prove they can in fact close the Strait and there's nothing the largest military on Earth can do about it. Well done, everybody, the system works. The one point I'll disagree with is that sanctions do prevent you paying Iran even with crypto. I mean, you can fund your own wallet and give money to Iran but you've technically committed a crime and a pretty serious one. It's also one that's fairly easy to document and prove that you did it. Oh, also the impact of cutting the world fertilizer supply hasn't hit yet. That'll come later in the year when the harvests are down, primarily in the Global South. This will also impact food prices in the West so look forward to that. Your last comment suggests weakening of the petrodollar. I don't know if you meant it this way but let me dispel that myth: the USD doesn't have strength and power because oil sales are denominated in dollars. You have it backwards. Oil trades are denominated in dollars because of the demand for dollars and the root of that is the US military.
  • pessimizer 5mo ago
    > I mean, you can fund your own wallet and give money to Iran but you've technically committed a crime and a pretty serious one. Other countries aren't subject to any US laws. The threat of US sanctions are a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
    • ceejayoz 5mo ago
      > The threat of US sanctions are a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement. The threat of arrest is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement. The threat of handcuffs is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement. The threat of tasering is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement. The threat of criminal charges is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement. The threat of drone strikes is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement. The threat of literally having your President helicoptered out of your capital by US special forces is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement. This is fun!
  • fuoqi 5mo ago
• dlev_pika 5mo ago
  When you put it like that I am starting to think this Trump guy might not be that good of a leader, this time neither.
• thefz 5mo ago
  > It creates the demand and infrastructure for non-US backed Oil Why should oil be US-backed :D :D Man, this forum sometimes.