Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 220 posts

Re: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed

#111

Post by piva00 »

ahsillyme wrote: post #108
piva00 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no off ramp whatsoever for both Iran, and Israel and the USA. This will trigger a global recession, everything is about to get much more expensive. Absolute disaster, all to fill up the coffers of American oil companies...

I don't think any reasonable person would think this decision works to fill the coffers of anybody. Everyone is getting shafted.

Oil companies in the USA seeing a price hike from ~US$60 to over US$100? It definitely fills their coffers, lots of barely-profitable/non-profitable shale extraction becomes viable.

Of course, there's also the angle with Miriam Adelson who might have sweet talked Trump into going aboard with Israel on this disaster.

Re: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed

#112

Post by tpm »

lwansbrough wrote: post #101
carefree-bob wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I am fine standing idly by as Iran gets nukes, just as we did nothing when Israel got nukes, and we didn't really do much besides sanctions after North Korea got nukes. Of all these three examples of nuclear states, Israel is the only one that actually committed espionage against the US to obtain nuclear secrets, and we didn't bomb them. The USSR also committed espionage to steal nuclear secrets from the US and…

The USSR acquiring nuclear weapons was the closest humanity has come to complete annihilation. We were one bad day away from extinction during the Cold War. I'm not sure I would point to that as something we should do more of. Not to mention the potential for accidents and mistakes. I don't think bombing a country should be the first course of action. Diplomatic action should leave no stone unturned. But if all of th…

One of things the US could have done to stop proliferation was to actually honor its commitments it gave to Ukraine in the 1994 agreement in return to Ukraine agreeing to abandon their nukes. It didn't. Now a country sees that US is happy to bomb other non-nuclear countries, but not nuclear countries, and they doen't help even when they agreed to. There is exactly one lesson a country will learn from that.

Re: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed

#113

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

lwansbrough wrote: post #94
whycombigator wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always an alternative.

Take it to the final form. It's game theory. The US is promoting system that enables a Nash equilibrium. By playing by the US' rules you empower yourself and you empower those around you. And the US takes a service fee for operating the market. The alternative is trying to fight that, and if you're picking a fight with the strongest player, you're playing to lose.

> Take it to the final form. It's game theory. The US is promoting system that enables a Nash equilibrium. By playing by the US' rules you empower yourself and you empower those around you. And the US takes a service fee for operating the market.

This is what an empire, that is competently run, should do. The US is not an empire, and it is not competently run. It has no attributes in common with empires of history. It does not occupy foreign lands, it does not extract taxes, it does not (directly) control foreign governments. If anything, in this case, the US is under the control of a foreign government.

Re: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed

#114

Post by whycombigator »

lwansbrough wrote: post #105
whycombigator wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that's what the US used to do. Now it's threatening to invade NATO allies, and other allies are deploying troops to deter that; Which makes perfect sense because you cannot appease authoritarians. The US is in fairly rapid, self inflicted, decline at this point.

I have faith that the Americans will right the ship. "Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else."

They're just getting started on "everything else".

My sense is this is an inflection point, and it may take decades to play out. At that point, the world will have irreversibly changed.

Re: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed

#115

Post by ahsillyme »

piva00 wrote: post #111
ahsillyme wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any reasonable person would think this decision works to fill the coffers of anybody. Everyone is getting shafted.

Oil companies in the USA seeing a price hike from ~US$60 to over US$100? It definitely fills their coffers, lots of barely-profitable/non-profitable shale extraction becomes viable. Of course, there's also the angle with Miriam Adelson who might have sweet talked Trump into going aboard with Israel on this disaster.

Alright, it was my assumption that we'll be left with a totally dysfunctional economy, and in that sense whatever's in you bank account means very little. If I were an oil exec I wouldn't trade that world from what we had before even if money was my only objective.

Re: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed

#116

Post by lwansbrough »

carefree-bob wrote: post #106
lwansbrough wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USSR acquiring nuclear weapons was the closest humanity has come to complete annihilation. We were one bad day away from extinction during the Cold War. I'm not sure I would point to that as something we should do more of. Not to mention the potential for accidents and mistakes. I don't think bombing a country should be the first course of action. Diplomatic action should leave no stone unturned. But if all of th…

That is a very, uh, idiosyncratic reading of history. You are conflating the Cuban Missile crisis of October 1962 -- which was the USSR placing nuclear weapons close to the US in Cuba in early 1962, in response to the US placing nuclear weapons close to the USSR in Turkey in 1961, and in your mind you have blended that crisis, which was a close call in which both sides ultimately agreed to withdraw their nukes, with…

I never mentioned the Cuban Missile Crisis. You’ve misinterpreted what I said.

The USSR getting nukes in the first place lead to several incidents which were a judgment call away from armageddon. With the benefit of hindsight the correct call would have been to exhaust all options to prevent the soviets from acquiring nukes.

We just got lucky. Whether it was the Cuban Missile Crisis, the soviet early warning system malfunction in Sept 83, or Able Archer 83 in November, there was a lot of dumb luck.

Proliferation will bring the end of humanity. There will be too many actors, too many variables. You can get lucky with 2 actors. You can’t keep getting lucky. The only option is to ensure you don’t have to be lucky.

Re: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed

#117

Post by Hikikomori »

lwansbrough wrote: post #97
Hikikomori wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most counties have signed non proliferation agreements.

Iran themselves are an NPT signatory! And yet they pursue nuclear weapons while countries like Japan, Germany, Canada and Netherlands do not.

They probably should get started on that as it seems to be the only detterent for genocidal regimes like Russia, US and Israel from attacking you.

Re: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed

#118

Post by tgma »

keiferski wrote: post #46
Neil44 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty big assumption you're making, that you know what people voted for.

I’d be glad to see evidence that people voted for interventions in the Middle East, if you have any. My impression is that a key part of Trump’s campaign was ending excessive foreign wars. There are lots of clips going around with him saying this.

Trump also has said "I will bomb the shit out of them -- I don't care" on the campaign trail.

I think a relatively accurate model of the people's opinion towards intervention might be quite simple: it is good if we win relatively swiftly and bad if we lose and/or don't gain anything, and the opinion at the time is shaped (and over time altered) based on their estimate of the outcome, but no politician says it that way so it is always cast as black and white pro-war/anti-war.

In the current case, I think many Americans, even Democrats, recognize the regime in Iran as a threat that needs to be dealt with somehow (a deal or an intervention). Their worry is the cost and ramifications, not some ulterior principle. If Trump brings home a win and some oil to boot soon-ish, you're going to see positive sentiments more clearly. If this drags on, the backlash will be there, and will be phrased as "MAGA never wanted the war" and along your lines of isolationist promises not kept.

Re: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed

#119

Post by Gud »

throwaway132448 wrote: post #62

Why are threads on this topic (and its adjacents) always full of Americans blaming Israel for their own country’s actions? Is it a coping mechanism to not accept any moral accountability? Israel is minuscule in every way compared to the US.

Israel wields a lot of power over the US.

Re: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed

#120

Post by lwansbrough »

Hikikomori wrote: post #117
lwansbrough wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran themselves are an NPT signatory! And yet they pursue nuclear weapons while countries like Japan, Germany, Canada and Netherlands do not.

They probably should get started on that as it seems to be the only detterent for genocidal regimes like Russia, US and Israel from attacking you.

No. The greater deterrent is to make the world so complexly integrated that such actions carry an enormous cost.
Post reply on HN