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UAE to leave OPEC

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661–670 of 750 posts

Re: UAE to leave OPEC

#661
post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that event might mark the beginning of the end of their geopolitical ambitions. i hope so, they have been one of the biggest sources of discord in the Middle East, funding civil wars in Libya, Sudan, Yemen, funding a coup in Egypt.

Unfortunately, they're now in league with Israel and just left OPEC which was under the Saudi umbrella. While it's basically trading one devil for another, the Saudis are at least more pragmatic about regional stability unlike the UAE (the Saudis support the legitimate government, against the UAE, in literally every conflict in the region). I wouldn't be surprised if the UAE starts scheming to foment within Saudi Ara…

> I wouldn't be surprised if the UAE starts scheming to foment within Saudi Arabia next

i think next moves of us-israeli-uae axis will be against Turkey and Qatar. we are already seeing this rhetoric in democratic party and in israel.

Re: UAE to leave OPEC

#662
post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can that be if they all offer extensive lines of small and efficient cars that a good number of people drive? Besides, collusion doesn't seem likely given the amount of foreign competition. The majority of Americans have made it clear that they want bigger autos, at least with the usual gas prices. Sorry if that's corp propaganda. Separately I've heard emissions laws blamed for large sedans losing to small SUVs a…

Ford no longer makes traditional passenger cars. They now only sell SUVs, trucks, and sports cars. You can see this if you go to https://shop.ford.com/showroom/ and select sedan or hatchback in the left filters. No results.

It's a small exception that wasn't selling well before anyway. Even the police fleets switched to SUVs.

Re: UAE to leave OPEC

#663
post #540
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more complex than that. Saudi Arabia has the East-West Pipeline [1] that takes ~7Mbpd (million barrels per day) of oil to Red Sea ports to avoid the Strait of Hormuz. They were already using it so there's not a lot of extra capacity they can get out. If we continue up the escalation ladder, the next big risk is that the Houthis close Bab al-Mandab, which is a not-quite-as-narrow but still vulnerable chokepoint t…

> Asian countries in particular are going to burn They won't sit still, though. Eventually, if this were tried, we'd see Chinese-flagged tankers buying passage rights from Iran and being escorted by PLAN ships. No way does Commander TACO take that shot. The US interdiction threat in the gulf is empty, and everyone know it. Iran gets paid at the end of every story. The whole boondoggle has been a failure for the US in…

I think China can threaten to give Iran a few anti-carrier missiles. That could be the step to break the US blockade.

Re: UAE to leave OPEC

#664

"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, and my grandson is going to ride a camel". Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the former Emir of Dubai.

I get the sentiment but this is not a real quote https://factcheck.afp.com/sheikh-mohammed-did-not-say-great-... It would be quite out of character for him to say this

That fact check says Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum didn't say it, but does say it is also attributed to Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, and doesn't debunk that --- which is what the comment you are responding to claimed.

Re: UAE to leave OPEC

#665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US and Israel attacking Iran. Also with the Saudis heavily lobbying Trump to do it as well. The Saudi crown prince wants Trump to continue the war still. 1: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-israel-attack-iran-iran-i... 2: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/us/politics/saudi-prince-...

Finding myself in the awkward position of defending Saudi Arabia here, but this is not at all a consensus of the political analysis community. Relying on statements by the Trump administration as proof of this makes it even more spurious. That said, MBS has done worse and it's not impossible, but alignment with UAE is faltering more and more so it's possible even if they once favored that action by the US they no lon…

Sure, but the Saudi Crown prince comments seem reasonable, and don’t seem to have been denied by the Saudi’s

Regardless, my point was that people have a political axe to grind and call this “Israel’s war”.

They intentionally ignore the political realities that the Iranians have pissed off almost everyone in the region and the longstanding tension of the IRGC and the US and our new “Cold War” with China.

Re: UAE to leave OPEC

#666

The US has long sought to erode OPEC’s ability to dictate global oil prices. The US has made massive progress in being broadly energy independent to isolate it from challenges elsewhere. The US has been a net energy exporter since 2019. Global oil pricing was always an annoying thorn in that strategy. This is an initial but big crack in shaking up global oil markets in a way that meaningfully shifts global power dyna…

The US is a net energy exporter, but it is a net CRUDE OIL importer. Global crude markets are critically important for US energy.

Re: UAE to leave OPEC

#667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If gasoline is expensive because of carbon taxes, people will vote for a party that tells them that climate change is not a problem, and that, if they win, gasoline will be cheap again.

You can say the same about CAFE standards, or anything else government does? This is a silly argument.

It's not. If you actually talk to lobbyists and political experts they will tell you that people react very differently to policies that on paper have the same effect.

Mandating efficiency for new cars doesn't obviously hit you int the wallet every time you fill the tank.

I mean, this is obvious. Energy price increases caused by the Russian war contributed to dozens of governments to get voted out. Yet no one has even run an attack and based on a government supporting efficiency standards. Of all environmental policies, mandating efficiency standards must be the hardest to attack by your opponents.

The fact the fleet targets were implemented in Europe by the European Parliament against the wishes of member state governments, including the German one, tells you everything about the politics of this.

Re: UAE to leave OPEC

#668
post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Asian countries in particular are going to burn They won't sit still, though. Eventually, if this were tried, we'd see Chinese-flagged tankers buying passage rights from Iran and being escorted by PLAN ships. No way does Commander TACO take that shot. The US interdiction threat in the gulf is empty, and everyone know it. Iran gets paid at the end of every story. The whole boondoggle has been a failure for the US in…

I think China can threaten to give Iran a few anti-carrier missiles. That could be the step to break the US blockade.

Again, there's no need to "break" a blockade that is an empty threat. I mean, yes, they could try to open it with military force or the threat thereof, but literally just painting a red flag would do just as well. Trump won't fire on a Chinese vessel, period.

Re: UAE to leave OPEC

#669
post #340
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We aren't mindless zombies buying whatever we see on TV. But we are. I don't want to turn this into a political slap fight but it became apparent to me the extent in which people are swayed by advertising when I read an article that talked about how one party in the US was concerned that the other was going to win an important seat becase the other party had done a recent spending surge on ads in last few days befo…

Nah, it's not real. Your claim isn't supported by the data. Political advertising can help a bit at the margins but in the 2016 Presidential election the losing campaign spent about twice as much on advertising as the winner. Very few voters were swayed by last second radio ads. (I would support a Constitutional amendment to restrict campaign contributions and effectively overturn the Citizens United v. FEC decision.…

[deleted]

Re: UAE to leave OPEC

#670
post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Virtually all Arabs hate Israel This is true, but Emiratis are a notable exception. The UAE may be the only Arab country where Jews are not only allowed to live, but can do so safely without fearing either their neighbors or their government. For example, last year when a rabbi was murdered, the Emirati government reacted forcefully and made a point to sentence the perpetrators to death. Note, the perpetrators were…

> The UAE may be the only Arab country where Jews are not only allowed to live, but can do so safely without fearing either their neighbors or their government. That's not entirely true. Judaism is one of the legally recognised minority religions of Iran and Iran still retains an ancient Jewish community of 10,000 - 15,000 Iranian Jews that also have 30+ synagogues in Iran - Tehran’s embattled Jewish community endure…

There are a few layers to this:

1. As another commenter already pointed out, Iran is not an Arab country

2. It is very true that the Iranian people absolutely does not hate Jews. In most Arab capitals, simply to walk around while visibly Jewish is either risky or downright suicidal. The same is true in other Muslim countries such as Pakistan, and increasingly in majority Muslim neighborhoods in Western cities. Iran does not have this problem. In fact the Iranian and Jewish peoples share a deep bond that goes back to the time of Cyrus the great, who famously freed the Jews of Babylon in 538 BCE, and allowed them to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple. To this day, Iranians and Israelis tend to get along. For example, the Iranian diaspora is conspicuously absent from anti-Israel protests in the US, and you will often see Israeli and pre-revolutionary Iranian flags flying together in anti-IRGC "Free Iran" protests (to the dismay and confusion of pro-IRGC protesters).

3. The current islamic government of Iran - the IRGC - has historically persecuted and executed Iranian Jews, especially in the early days of the revolution. There is a reason so many Iranian Jews live in the US... It is true that they have not implemented a Nazi-style policy of total eradication of their Jewish population, even though their foreign policy is entirely built on total eradication of Jews abroad. But let's be clear: Jews in Iran live in a state of submission and fear. In theory the IRGC is "anti-zionist" and not "anti-Jewish"; in practice the difference is blurry and arbitrary: Jews are eternally suspected of duplicity and disloyalty, and must continuously prove that they are not secretly "zionists". When Iranian Jews make public statements criticizing Israel, they are doing so because of this pressure from a totalitarian regime, and their safety depends on it. A statement by the Jewish community in Iran only reflects what the IRGC wants them to say. A useful comparison is Soviet anti-zionism, which followed similar patterns: Soviet Jews often denounced zionism loudly and publicly, and from the outside it appeared that Jews were a "protected minority" living peacefully. But ask Jews who actually lived in the Soviet Union at the time, and you will hear a very different story...

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