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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#531

Post by anon84873628 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #506
andriy_koval wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That functionally cedes Emirati and Saudi sovereignty to Iran. Today it's $2mm. Tomorrow it's anything else Tehran requires. the point is besides full scale invasion which Saudi and UAE won't do, there is no reliable way to remove threat of Iran striking oil infra, they just don't have way to deal with the problem.

> full scale invasion which Saudi and UAE won't do Don't need a full-scale invasion. Just a land grab on the coasts. They can't do it alone. But they can provide troops (and mercenaries) as well as staying power where the U.S. cannot. > there is no reliable way to remove threat of Iran striking oil infra Barring invasion: mutualize the damage. Pot Iranian tankers. Seed their ports with mines. Israel locking up the Ca…

>Don't need a full-scale invasion. Just a land grab on the coasts.

As the article points out, this just makes the soldiers on the coast the targets of the drones and missiles.

And it is a very large coastline to secure. How many mercenaries can they feed into the grinder? They certainly can't keep it up like Russia.

There was a semi-stable equilibrium and the US ruined it. Now Iran controls the straight and it will be very very costly to go back.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#532

Post by lokar »

citrin_ru wrote: post #206
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.

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

It seems Iran sent a notice to the UN recently declaring the straight closed, which, uh, no. But sure.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#533

Post by anon84873628 »

epsters wrote: post #486

Joe Kent [1] offered a possible way out of this - however slim the odds might be. Trump's one quality that may save us all from this quagmire is his ability to do a complete 180 on his previous committed path - "TACO" as his detractors like to call it. Like he did with ICE in Minneapolis, or in Yemen last year when he quit his bombing campaign after one month. If he could be convinced to just declare victory over Ira…

Of course, find a way to blame Democrats. As if they're not trying to protect the scraps of everything else the Republicans have ruined.

The reality is that plenty of Democrats are "animated" about the war.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#534

Post by tolciho »

1minusp wrote: post #280
amarant wrote: post #278

A core trait of my personality can be summed up as "always look on the bright side of life". To that end: 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…

I'd love to believe this, but very recent history has shown (in the US at least) that we are moving backwards and trying to resist renewable energy.

It's a complicated picture. Some Americans did not like the advice to "turn down the thermostat, and wear a sweater", and the next president removed the solar panels from the White House. It may be amusing to learn the country some of those panels ended up at, and the propaganda value in having such. Other Americans have improved water conservation ("Cadillac Desert" is a short and relevant read here) and those horrid land whales now leak far less oil; it used to be every parking spot had huge stains of oil beneath them. And the leaded gasoline, yum! Still other Americans howl about the toilets that use less water, and hoard inefficient light bulbs that do not last too long. So there are folks moving both towards and against reneable energy and conservation. Granted maybe there has not been as much movement as should have happened between now and when "The Oil Crisis: This Time the Wolf Is Here" (1973) got published, but that's not saying nothing has happened. Trends may help rule out some of the noise, or one might try to model things like the "Limits to Growth" study did, though other folks really did not like that report, and so these things go on and around.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#535

Post by lokar »

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.

The list is longer than just the US and Israel, it includes all allies and nations supporting them, so, most of the gulf states.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#536

Post by throwup238 »

andriy_koval wrote: post #481
Pay08 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't mean they can't be useful, and they do already have a chip on their shoulder wrt Iran because of Iran's support for the Houthis.

Yemen situation is just good indication of how useful they could be, and answer is not much. They don't have good functioning military.

Their military is a paper tiger like Saddam’s was during the Iraq invasion. Modern gear but without the doctrine or officer corps to effectively use it.

My experience while working there years ago was that their armed forces were a weird mix of coup proofing and a nepotistic dumping ground for family members who couldn’t be trusted to help run the family business.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#537

Post by sysguest »

Pay08 wrote: post #441
andriy_koval wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they couldn't defeat much smaller and weaker Yemen.

That doesn't mean they can't be useful, and they do already have a chip on their shoulder wrt Iran because of Iran's support for the Houthis.

well with all the oil money, saudis and UAE don't even have to send their own citizens:

they can just pay gurkha mercenaries for the job

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#538

Post by JumpCrisscross »

anon84873628 wrote: post #531
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> full scale invasion which Saudi and UAE won't do Don't need a full-scale invasion. Just a land grab on the coasts. They can't do it alone. But they can provide troops (and mercenaries) as well as staying power where the U.S. cannot. > there is no reliable way to remove threat of Iran striking oil infra Barring invasion: mutualize the damage. Pot Iranian tankers. Seed their ports with mines. Israel locking up the Ca…

>Don't need a full-scale invasion. Just a land grab on the coasts. As the article points out, this just makes the soldiers on the coast the targets of the drones and missiles. And it is a very large coastline to secure. How many mercenaries can they feed into the grinder? They certainly can't keep it up like Russia. There was a semi-stable equilibrium and the US ruined it. Now Iran controls the straight and it will b…

> this just makes the soldiers on the coast the targets of the drones and missiles

Correct. That also reveals the locations of launchers, artillery pieces, et cetera. A winnable game if you have cheap bodies.

> it is a very large coastline to secure

To secure the Strait? Absolutely. To converge firepower onto a few beachheads? Not necessarily. And a Gulf land grab wouldn't be comprehensive. Just the islands (e.g. Larak, Hengam and East Qeshm) and maybe the land directly across from the Musandam Peninsula. (Probably not to hold. Just draw fire and trade back to Tehran. Hell, gift it to Trump.)

Kuwait and Iraq remain screwed. But if you're a Gulf exporter, that isn't necessarily a bad thing...

> There was a semi-stable equilibrium and the US ruined it. Now Iran controls the straight and it will be very very costly to go back

Sure. The point is how those costs will be borne. I don't think the emerging status quo is tenable for the Gulf.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#539

Post by sysguest »

andriy_koval wrote: post #495
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saudi and UAE has less air power than US+Israel Less plus some is still more. > whatever could be bombed already bombed This is plainly untrue. We're still bombing things. Missiles are still being fired. Power plants and refineries continue to run. > Saudi and UAE are ruled by rich regimes who benefit from oil revenue, and very vulnarable to Iran strikes, they more likely will pay those $2m That functionally cedes…

> That functionally cedes Emirati and Saudi sovereignty to Iran. Today it's $2mm. Tomorrow it's anything else Tehran requires. the point is besides full scale invasion which Saudi and UAE won't do, there is no reliable way to remove threat of Iran striking oil infra, they just don't have way to deal with the problem.

well I don't actually think Saudi & UAE will send their own countrymen...

rather, they'd just use oil money and pay gurkha mercenaries

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#540

Post by aucisson_masque »

nostrademons wrote: post #461
ericmay wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-sufficiency is a myth. Even if you wanted to try and be energy independent, for the short and medium term (and maybe longer, who knows?) you will be dependent on China and all the baggage that they bring because of their dominance of rare earth mineral processing. Need a new solar panel? Don't make a certain country mad (whether that's your local Ayatollah or CCP official). And that's just energy. What about pha…

There is a huge difference between buying a solar panel once and having it generate energy for the next 30 years vs. buying a barrel of oil now and consuming it by next week. It's the same difference as buying a house now and owning it until it collapses vs. renting a house and being at the mercy of your landlord, or buying a piece of shrink-wrapped software and using it for the next 18 years vs. renting a SaaS subsc…

Beside, on the rate earth materials, it just happen that China is able to exploit it cheaply but other countries also have access to them and could very well exploit.
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