Earlier quoted context omitted.
The power wasn't there in the first place if the administration couldn't defend Hormuz. It's all the same capital and resources that prior administrations had. The actual blunder was exposing that weakness to the world. We could have done nothing and reputation would've carried the idea that we could.
> The actual blunder was exposing that weakness to the world. The world already knew. The real strength of the prior admins was in simply not needing the military force. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal is a relevant example here. It didn't cost the US anything .
Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait
411–420 of 737 posts
Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the Strait is international waters and always have been.
Wikipedia says it's been Iranian/Omani territorial waters for quite a while: > In 1959, Iran altered the legal status of the strait by expanding its territorial sea to 12 nmi (22 km) and declaring it would recognize only transit by innocent passage through the newly expanded area. In 1972, Oman also expanded its territorial sea to 12 nmi (22 km) by decree. Thus, by 1972, the Strait of Hormuz was completely "closed" b…
Claiming it does not make it so.
Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Iran/Iraq war is why I made the edit about US vs. Iraq. Just because Iran and Iraq fought for years does not mean Iran or Iraq are able to fight a super power. They can not. Iran does not think they are dealing with a madman. I don't believe for a second that they think that if all the demands made of them are met someone will harm them just for the fun of it. The maximalists demands. The problem is those maximal…
> Iran does not think they are dealing with a madman. No one knows but the Iranian leadership. The Iranian leadership has been famously bad at modeling the intentions and motivations of other nations leaderships. A bolt of the blue decapitation strike, followed by the US having plan if Iran closes the straits which is the obvious response by Iran, does at face value appear to be the work of a madman. Now in the US we…
Likewise the closing of the strait was no surprise. These sort of scenarios are planned for and there is zero doubt the closing of the strait was a scenario considered by the US and Israel military planners.
Not a ton we can say other than that. Maybe the US and Israel thought the blow would be so hard the regime would crumble. Maybe they thought Iran wouldn't dare. Maybe they thought that if Iran closed the strait they'd be able to reopen it by force. Indeed this could be where over-confidence, or incompetence, or inexperience, comes in on the US side. It's also that one can never fully predict how things would develop. There could have been over-optimism and under-estimation of the Iranians ability to withstand the air campaign or to effectively close the strait.
All that said, both sides are rationally pursuing their interests. Iran's regime wants to survive and it wants to keep building missiles and nuclear weapons and expand it's religious and political influence. The US and Israel want to put a stop to this before Iran has an arsenal of nuclear weapons mounted on long range ballistic missiles. Both sides will do their best to not tell you what they think or what their plans are (and the Iranians are definitely much better at this than the current US admin).
Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet national leaders do phenomenally unpopular things all the time when they decide it's necessary. In this particular case it's mostly moot because none of the other impacted countries really has the capability to act regardless of popularity or lack thereof. Like the UK chose to spend all of their money on nationalized healthcare instead of the military. I don't mean that in a critical or negative way, on balan…
"Like the UK chose to spend all of their money on nationalized healthcare instead of the military" I believe the equation is a bit more complex than that.
Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Iran has too many targets and the only thing that can stop them is the equivalent to an Israeli Iron Dome across the entirety of the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE, maybe more. Another key issue is Iran's regional neighbors haven't invested significantly enough becoming credible military threats against Iran. Instead they tried to play an in-between game of being tacit frenemies because Iran and its proxi…
Without going too far into the political weeds here, I'll say that the problem is less "Germany and UAE needs more guns" and more "maybe we shouldn't have pissed off Iran".
However, it can be simultaneously true that most countries in Western Europe and many in the Middle East have under-invested in their military readiness for so long, they've lost the ability to secure their own strategic interests. You're right to be annoyed other countries provoked a regional bully for their own misguided reasons. While Trump is our problem, relying on a bully like Iran not being a bully against the EU's global interests is Europe's problem.
Unfortunately, we live in a world of super powers including Russia, China and, yes, even the U.S. who at best have their own strategic interests which may not always align with yours and at worst will take from you whatever you can't defend. If you can't secure your own economic interests militarily, there will eventually be steep costs. Even if your own country carefully tiptoes around bullies for fear of provoking them, you can still be trampled under the feet of other countries fighting for stupid reasons which have nothing to do with you.
Note: I say this as an American who likes our European allies and who thinks Trump has been an idiot on almost everything. Even back when Trump was just a bad reality TV host, I could see the U.S. should stop trying to be "World Police." It was never going to be sustainable over decades and it was distorting the behavior of other countries, both enemies and allies. Since the end of the cold war the U.S. has subtly harmed our allies by enabling some of them to under-invest in their own military readiness.
Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait
#416Much of the post-WW2 American-led world order was founded partially on the United States using its military to keep international waters open. It would be quite stunning Iran defeated the united states in this sense. The military might is there, but this administration clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into and did not plan accordingly. (and does not have the will or public support to do so) The b…
The problem is that Israel bombed their entire leadership structure and there's seemingly nobody to deal with now. It's fragmented between people who want to make deals, people who can even facilitate any kinds of agreement and the radicals who simply want the world to burn and will throw any human in the way to die for that end.
We can absolutely continue destroying their capacity to do things, but the terrorists do not care about their own people or the world. They will use human shields and continue seeking nuclear weapons. They do not value human life or rules. This is why they can never have a nuclear weapon.
At the same time, showing the vulnerabilities in getting oil from that region means China is now buying more oil in USD and even directly from the US via the Pacific which helps further deter World War 3. In the case that something did still happen as part of a global strategy by China, Iran no longer exists as a lever that can be pulled to expand the chaos of a war with the aim of further diffusing the US military away from the Pacific.
If we wanted to fully end this mess, we would probably have to send the military in on the ground, which nobody wants except Iran. They are extremists in general and willing to die over this nuclear issue.
Barring that, we've largely neutered their capacity to make war and reorganized oil trade further in favor of the US. We will have to wait to see if Iran's leadership structure sorts itself out and they come to the table. Until then, if Iran wants to prevent their neighbors from benefiting from international shipping, Iran can be denied that too. Countries are developing workarounds to rely less on the strait, so the longer Iran sticks with this strategy the weaker it will get over the years.
It's popular to say the US lost this or the US lost that and it's a ridiculous country, but it's usually some kind of political gymnastics or financial judgement as it pertains to cost vs benefit. We always lose fewer soldiers and generally come out of it better than if we hadn't done anything at all. We almost always go into something for many more reasons than are publicly stated. A lot of the benefits of intervening in Iran seem to be paying off right now.
Sometimes doing the right thing is unpopular, but you should still do it.
Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
International Law now has no value when the America-Israel alliance has been skirting said laws to commit mass atrocities in recent history.
international law is an agreement between both parties.
Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait
#418[flagged]
Yes. The US is already increasing exports from the Gulf and UAE broke with OPEC to increase the throughput of Fujairah. If Gulf countries start exporting through Fujairah or other ports, it's eventually game over for Iran.
Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait
#419[flagged]
Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait
#420I’m not convinced that bitcoin is stable enough to use in insurance products. The currency volatility risk is too high to reasonably cover the covered losses which will need to be covered in some other currency to do things like replace boats etc.