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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#181

Post by fogzen »

ardit33 wrote: post #74
johnohara wrote: post #72

The Straight of Hormuz is open to any country willing to pay $2M per voyage. Any country except the U.S. and Israel. 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.

No one in the US asked for this. Such a dumb move from the current administration.

Yeah who could have guessed electing a narcissistic moron surrounded by incompetent clowns would result in dumb moves?

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#182

Post by thewhitetulip »

johnohara wrote: post #72

The Straight of Hormuz is open to any country willing to pay $2M per voyage. Any country except the U.S. and Israel. 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.

But Iran let the International Maritime Org that anyone who is not US/Israel or not attacking or supporting attacks on them can pass through the strait of Hormuz. Is the $ 2M still a thing?

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#183

Post by jmye »

roryirvine wrote: post #164
orwin wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not all. I tried as much as I could not commenting on it, but the delusions of _a lot_ of hn users on the subject, even a few whose opinion I respect, were unreal. People who are not MAGA btw. 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 'manufa…

It was certainly notable that so many HNers seemed absolutely certain that the Kurds would come to the USA's aid, ignoring the fact that America had facilitated the one-sided ceasefire imposed on Rojava just weeks before. 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…

> It has to be hard for Americans to realise that their government has pissed so much of the world off so badly.

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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#184

Post by fogzen »

bawolff wrote: post #6

> And I do want to stress that. There is a frequent mistake, often from folks who deal in economics, to assume that countries will give up on wars when the economics turn bad. But countries are often very willing to throw good money after bad even on distant wars of choice. 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 woul…

> While i wouldn't bet money on it, it seems at least possible that something similar could happen to the USA.

Fixed that for you.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#185

Post by hersko »

roenxi wrote: post #137
geraneum wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is anyone going to mention what these provocations are? 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 yea…

Would it be fair to characterise these provocations as all involving Iran providing resistance to Israel aggressively expanding their borders? Because these cases seem to have a tendency to Israel controlling more land at the end of the day. It looks like a pretty classic situation where an aggressive power builds up in a series of "defensive" expansions. > Iranian government’s issues with Israel are of ideological n…

[flagged]

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#186

Post by klipt »

sysguest wrote: post #168
johnohara wrote: post #72

The Straight of Hormuz is open to any country willing to pay $2M per voyage. Any country except the U.S. and Israel. 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.

idk this move, along with firing missiles even to non-combatant countries, is going to fuk-up iran... 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 coali…

> now.. with that $2M toll, iran just learnt it can just toll the ships...

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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#187

Post by niemandhier »

A war continuous until one side has caused the other more suffering than it can take.

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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#188

Post by hersko »

surgical_fire wrote: post #113
pas wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it didn't really. Iran is poorer than it was before, even more of a problem than it was before. NK has two very special advantages (Seoul is within artillery range, and it is literally in the backyard of one or two relevant superpowers over the decades) whereas Tehran's "force projection" is mostly through proxies and affecting global commodity trade. Without NK's hard deterrence (and without being next door to i…

> Iran is poorer than it was before, even more of a problem than it was before. 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…

> Iran seemingly is coming out of this mess stronger than it was before.

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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#189

Post by scuff3d »

scott_w wrote: post #67
scuff3d wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also love that he goes right to how much America and Israel have been pummeling Iran when the article acknowledges that to be the case , but rightly points out that even with that being true, the US is still in a losing position.

Because knowing this would require him to read the article but reading and details are boring.

I doubt reading it would have helped. The MAGA folks and anyone adjacent to them on the political spectrum are so propagandized right now it's nearly impossible to have a rational conversation.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#190

Post by wat10000 »

csomar wrote: post #85
khhu2bnn wrote: post #26

The amazing part to me is just the perceived invincibility this small circle within the US administration has. You can find dozens of articles with a search limited to Feb 1~Feb 27, plenty of analysis warning of the risks that have now become reality, everything - the strait, no revolution, further radicalization, critically low US stockpiles, abandoning other US partners, gulf destabilization, etc. In the fantasy im…

Read on the martingale strategy. This is Donald Trump signature strategy. Basically, when something doesn't work, you double down; and it pays off. This strategy keeps working until it doesn't and completely bankrupt the player. Because the strategy has been always paying off for the them (djt & co), they thought they have some kind of a special skill/power that others don't; not realizing that they are just bad at m…

I think it's perfectly encapsulated by Hegseth's comment about not fighting "with stupid rules of engagement."

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.

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