alt.hn

3/8/2026 at 1:46:05 AM

What if the Hormuz closure will not be brief?

 https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1156532/They-all-said-Hormuz-closure-would-be-brief-What-if-they-were-wrong

by everybodyknows

3/8/2026 at 5:24:55 AM

I think the real threat is that if you tip the Iranian conflict over into asymmetrical warfare, then nobody can stop it - ever. It seems to be almost the intent with the US and Israel especially announcing explicit intent to keep removing anybody who attempts to form a system of government.

So you'll have a permanently aggrieved population with nothing to lose saturated with know-how and materials for building missiles and drones who will just keep taking pot shots at ships and possibly commercial airliners. They don't have to "close" the straight - just make it hazardous enough that it becomes permanently very risky to sail through there. They can go dormant for 3 months and then send 30 drones at a single ship.

I'm not sure who in the strategic planning decided that no system of government for 90 million people was a good idea, but it seems quite insane to me.

by zmmmmm

3/9/2026 at 9:20:58 AM

> if you tip the Iranian conflict over into asymmetrical warfare, then nobody can stop it - ever

It's already asymmetytrical. And it could last as long as the current regime is in power. When the power structure will fall money will stop flowing too.

Huthies in Yemen look undistructable because they are supported (with moneny and weapons) by Iran. Who will bank-roll IRGC fighters when the government will collapse? China in theory culd but they depend on oil so will not contriube to prologed closing of the strait.

by citrin_ru

3/9/2026 at 1:06:55 PM

YOU are the regime. Only an american can pretend not to understand that the riots were orgsnized by US and Israel precisely to justify war on "regime killing its own people".. fighting agsinst people armed by US and Israel, but this piece is omitted in the free western media.

And still, also the people pretending to not understand, do know what is going on.

by ajewhere

3/9/2026 at 1:23:35 PM

Do you think the riots were simply for a little more freedom?

The bazaars / markets were completely closed in January because Iran’s inflation made importing goods impossibly affordable.

While the riots align with US interests, they also align with the interests of lots of Iranian people.

by thephyber

3/9/2026 at 10:09:11 PM

> YOU are the regime. Only an american can pretend not to understand that the riots were orgsnized by US and Israel precisely to justify war on "regime killing its own people".. fighting agsinst people armed by US and Israel, but this piece is omitted in the free western media.

The US and Israel is no way forced Iran's regime to mass murder their own people. The US/Israel aren't even using the regime mass murdering their own people as the main justification for going to war either way, the nuclear program, ballistic missiles and general security issues are the main justifications they seem to be using. The protests were probably just a trigger event that opened up an opportunity to finally take action against Iran that was likely going to happen in the near future regardless.

> And still, also the people pretending to not understand, do know what is going on.

Most Iranians want the regime gone, not everything is a conspiracy.

by jameshilliard

3/9/2026 at 5:27:39 PM

Putting "regime killing its own people" in quotes precludes you from any sort of moral judgement.

To quote Sahar Delijani: “Imagine what a dictator must do to its own people for them to greet missiles like salvation. Imagine the wound. Imagine the fury. Imagine the streets slick with blood.”"

by leaguedreams

3/9/2026 at 11:18:48 AM

There seems to be the idea that if you remove the regime a normal country will rise from the ashes. It is more likely that Iran will disintegrate and spiral into a civil war.

by expedition32

3/9/2026 at 12:58:14 PM

It's definitely a risk but a country in a civil war likely will be focused on internal problems and pose less of a threat to neighbors.

by citrin_ru

3/9/2026 at 5:29:06 PM

Nothing unites a group like a common enemy. If it does fall apart into civil war, expect past and random terrorism for years

by Anonbrit

3/8/2026 at 5:19:19 PM

> I think the real threat is that if you tip the Iranian conflict over into asymmetrical warfare

We're there already. We've been there. There's nothing symmetrical about this war.

Israel is basically unscathed in this war despite Iran launching barrages of missiles and drones. They were already fighting Israel asymmetrically by supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. They knew they could never fight a fair war against the US and Israel.

by ajam1507

3/8/2026 at 5:32:00 AM

In fairness to the Trump administration, they did have several acceptable candidates in mind for a transitional government.

They just accidentally killed them all.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/world/middleeast/iranian-...

by Jordan-117

3/8/2026 at 5:59:52 AM

In fairness i don't really believe them, i don't think anyone in the Iranian line of succession would've worked with the US.

by queenkjuul

3/8/2026 at 5:39:01 AM

Actually it was the other party in the war that killed them all

by mkoubaa

3/8/2026 at 6:52:48 AM

And they happen to have a different set of interests, which they may choose to follow over shared interests.

by pfannkuchen

3/8/2026 at 6:30:53 AM

> In fairness to the Trump administration

Probably, Iranians also had several accepted candidates in mind to lead the US, but they didn't attack because they had some opinions about foreign government

by throwaw12

3/8/2026 at 6:46:47 AM

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/iranian-intelligence-agent-co...

by Gud

3/8/2026 at 3:17:18 PM

What I find interesting is that Trump officials says Trump was the target here, but the guy was arrested in July of 2024 - which is when Biden was still in office.

by myvoiceismypass

3/8/2026 at 9:47:46 AM

Sure. Just like Trump was an informant for the FBI on Epstein island.

by text0404

3/8/2026 at 10:05:15 AM

I don't believe it's impossible Donald Trump spoke against his friends to the feds. I think it's likely.

by Gud

3/8/2026 at 12:34:11 PM

It was a convenient misunderstanding about a call to the Palm Beach Sheriff. The FBI has a recording of the call, but probably ambiently from the Sheriff’s side. It’s a small ray of innocence for a guy like Trump. And he forgot all about it until by luck it was in the Epstein files.

by sigwinch

3/9/2026 at 2:08:54 PM

This has always been the US way of doing things, going back to at least WWII: Get to Berlin, kill Hitler if required, and after that, uh, yeah, we'll get back to you on that. This is why things mostly kept going under continuous carpet bombing but fell apart completely once the bombing stopped and the administration was decapitated with noting to replace it.

The US then repeated the mistake in Iraq, take a population of 45 million, with most males having military training and a large percentage of the population dependent on government jobs and/or handouts, then remove the government. Who could possibly have predicted what would happen next?

And now they're doing it again in Iran.

by pseudohadamard

3/9/2026 at 8:04:24 PM

Closing the strait of Hormuz is worse for Iran and China than anyone else. Natural gas to Europe but not as big of an issue compared to Russian energy supplies. The Saudis and others have pipelines to bypass the strait. Many countries who sell oil obviously benefit from the increased price. I'd almost see how the U.S., Russia, Saudis and even the current administration in Venezuela would be fine with the oil price increase if Irans supply is taken off the market for a long time.

by treebeard901

3/8/2026 at 3:32:27 PM

This is all a double bluff to solve Global Warming. Make it impossible to trade oil, everyone will be forced to switch to solar and wind.

by jaybrendansmith

3/8/2026 at 5:21:39 PM

Yes, doubling the price of oil, and setting random maybe-not-enforceable tariffs and embargoes, is a net positive because it has the unintended effect of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

by entwife

3/8/2026 at 8:10:36 PM

They could always widen the straight...

by widenitnow

3/8/2026 at 9:03:05 PM

They could nuke both sides and make it bigger?

by whattheheckheck

3/9/2026 at 7:28:16 AM

As a “bonus”, all the dust blown into the stratosphere by the nukes would also conveniently cool the Earth!

by jiggawatts

3/9/2026 at 1:46:03 PM

Paul Warburg on YouTube is a geopolitical analyst. His video from this weekend[1] walks through the many reasons why the energy market is resilient and adjusts to issues like Hormuz being temporarily impassable, ship insurance risk, the geopolitical uncertainty of Iranian leadership, the price of oil/gas and how changes in the supply/demand curve cause other wells elsewhere in the world to take up the slack, etc.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2rgVaTofGQU

by thephyber

3/8/2026 at 5:20:47 AM

China’s move toward solar and wind seems more prescient than ever.

by standeven

3/9/2026 at 5:37:10 AM

China is using more coal, gas, and oil than ever. They went from using 1.5 billion tons of thermal coal in 2000 to 4.6 Billion tons today and they will reach 4.7 Billion in 2027.

They did "pledge" to "limit increases" in coal, but there is a big difference from limiting increases to "moving away from" coal.

As for oil, it is a similar story. Oil use doubled from 2005 to 2025, but they pledged to "slow increases" of oil to something less than the 7% annual increases per year that were the last 10 years average (over the business cycle).

Natural gas has tripled from 3 to 9.3 billion cubic feet per day from 2014 to 2023.

The prescient part was building a pipeline to deliver oil and gas directly from Russia as well as building trade routes through Russia and the central Asian nations that give them a direct route to their energy suppliers (Including Iran, which can supply China without ever going through the straight of Hormuz).

Energy security is very important, and China has invested heavily to build pipelines and trade agreements that keep the oil and gas flowing, and they have moved away from buying Australian coal to increasing their own domestic coal production, reaching 4.8 Billion tons mined and on track to hit 5 Billion tons in the next few years.

by carefree-bob

3/9/2026 at 6:32:09 AM

I have to laugh as progressively higher time derivatives are invoked to claim improvements. "The rate of increase in the deficit slowed this month" and the like.

by jasomill

3/9/2026 at 6:38:21 AM

Yes! I see this everywhere.

by carefree-bob

3/9/2026 at 1:38:33 PM

Russia paid for the pipelines because they were desperate for customers in the post-2022 sanctions era. China has remarkably little ability to refine the crude domestically and they aren’t even using most of that domestic capacity.

by thephyber

3/9/2026 at 10:29:42 AM

> China is using more coal, gas, and oil than ever.

Well, no. Coal peaked at 4.9 billion tonnes in 2024.

https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2024/executive-summary https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi...

> Oil use doubled from 2005 to 2025

yes, and gasoline production is trending down too:

https://www.mysteel.net/news/5109188-china-2025-gasoline-pro...

by tpm

3/9/2026 at 8:39:43 PM

Coal did not peak in 2024, but 2024 is the last year for which we have complete data, the other years are estimates.

This is how you get some people predicting drops of coal and natgas. You need to be very careful with recent data esp. from China as it takes time to collect data and you are usually 2 years behind.

But really stop and think - 2026 just started. Data from 2025 is now just coming in, and you are claiming that there was a "peak" in 2024. Even given the natural variability of this stuff across the business cycle, please, please know what you are doing with this stuff.

1. Measure from business cycle peak to business cycle peak

2. Wait until the data is in.

Thank you.

by carefree-bob

3/8/2026 at 11:43:09 AM

Renewables... and coal. If shit hits fan it's not just hammering EVs (including trucking/freight) but hammering coal to liquid/olefin to make diesel and plastics. This not talked about much, long term strategic hedge / resource autarky looks like electrify everything, and domestic coal+oil for industry/petchem. If Hormuz long term, PRC going to be ramping up coal for industrial feedstock including fuels, even if it's much more polluting or expensive, but expensive is relative, $80 barrel oil = coal + extra processing becomes economical.

by maxglute

3/8/2026 at 5:34:41 AM

EU rollback on reducing gas liability, especially the widely debated rule on « no gas car after 2030 », feels now laughable. Maybe the reason why « technocrats » are good rulers is because they use science and data to do it.

by 0wis

3/8/2026 at 5:44:25 AM

The problem with the EU is that now they depend on rare earth minerals / solar panels / etc. for their infrastructure, which means more dependency on China. However, as the war unfolds, I bet the EU will certainly want to cozy up more with China than whatever the hell that is the Middle East and the US (and hell no they don't want to depend on Russia either!)

by cyber_kinetist

3/9/2026 at 9:45:00 AM

While depending on China for Solar panels is of course a liability, it's a very very different liability from relying on fossil fuel imports.

A solar panel has an effective lifetime of 20-30 years. A barrel of oil is literally set on fire.

If China stopped selling solar panels, there wouldnt be any energy crisis, just an inability to install *new* panels.

Same goes for the battery dependencies we have on Chinese imports.

Not a perfect situation of course, but there are some clever things the EU is doing about it. For instance, the recycling requirements is creating a local industry of people who intimately know all the components and construction of Chinese panels and batteries, and these people will be vital in kickstarting the domestic industry if China tries something. It also means that we're getting better and better at recovering rare earth minerals from decommissioned products, and we are building domestic reserves.

by eigenspace

3/8/2026 at 5:54:14 AM

Rare earth minerals are often all over the place, they are just very messy to get to and that gets in the way of EU pollution regulations. China is not a sole producer - they are just cheap enough to make mining elsewhere not worth the hassle. That will change fast if they bottleneck the supply.

by dzink

3/9/2026 at 2:31:57 PM

There's a big find in Norway, largest in Europa according to new estimates[1].

The updated estimate shows that the total rare earth oxide (TREO) content in the mapped resources (Indicated and Inferred) has increased from 8.8 million tonnes in 2024 to 15.9 million tonnes in 2026 – an increase of approximately 80 percent. For the first time, parts of the resource are also classified in the Indicated category, reflecting a higher degree of geological confidence

The WSP report further shows that the proportion of neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) can be increased from approximately 17 to 19 percent of TREO. These REEs are regarded by the European Commission as the most critical raw materials in terms of supply risk and are important in the manufacturing of permanent magnets for EVs, green energy and defence.

There's no mine there yet though, and they haven't yet determined if it's economically viable. So yeah.

[1]: https://kommunikasjon.ntb.no/pressemelding/18817358/rare-ear...

by magicalhippo

3/8/2026 at 9:37:00 AM

And once enough panels start nearing the end of their lifetime, it's likely that we should be able to recover nearly all the rare earth minerals from them with proper recycling. They don't actually get used up the way, say, fossil fuels do.

by danaris

3/8/2026 at 11:04:49 AM

Solar panels contain negligible amounts of rare earths, compared to the amount used in wind / gas / steam turbines. They're also still used in oil & natural gas refining (though less than in the past).

Fossil fuel generators are most reliant on them, wind less so, solar barely at all.

by roryirvine

3/8/2026 at 4:17:29 PM

Oh, I completely agree—but they're so frequently used as a gotcha for why the rise of solar is just trading one "foreign master" for another. "Oh no, solar panels rely on rare earth minerals, so that means you have to kowtow to China!!!"

And it's true that there is some in them, so it's good to have at least a long-term answer for how we deal with them.

by danaris

3/9/2026 at 2:14:22 AM

> Oh, I completely agree—but they're so frequently used as a gotcha for why the rise of solar is just trading one "foreign master" for another. "Oh no, solar panels rely on rare earth minerals, so that means you have to kowtow to China!!!"

> And it's true that there is some in them, so it's good to have at least a long-term answer for how we deal with them.

It's the old saying about a man and fish and giving vs. teaching.

Solar panels bought now, at least the quality glass-glass kind, doesn't really go bad in a way that makes them depreciate at-all-quickly. If in locations that are not themselves at a premium, so lower yield only matters if maintenance overhead per yield becomes so bad it's cheaper to replace& upgrade, they can be expected to stay there for 30~50 years depending on how fast they'll mechanically fall apart after their warranty expires (which is expected to be the duration until which most stay alive). I'd guess something like an agricultural east/west fence install would stay more towards 50y and get individual modules replaced when they break, as they're easy to get to unlike roof/wall installs and the like where they're hard to get to and given they are very low complexity in mounting system ("fence panel") there's little engineering complexity in retrofitting a plain new future panel of the same physical size and sufficiently similar voltage/current.

by namibj

3/8/2026 at 11:06:18 PM

Solar panels hold and work for more then fifty years..

by Bombthecat

3/8/2026 at 9:12:53 PM

Rare earth minerals are not consumed in the process of generating solar energy, whereas once you've burned your oil to generate energy, it's gone and you need to buy more. That makes a pretty damn major difference.

by Balinares

3/8/2026 at 11:29:10 AM

China is looking pretty good compared to the alternative.

by Hikikomori

3/8/2026 at 6:17:51 AM

Solar and wind is more of a nat gas and coal substitution. They are still heavily dependent on oil for transportation.

by kortilla

3/8/2026 at 6:28:42 AM

Not for long. 75% of their rail network is electrified and 50% of the semi tractors sold in 2025 were electric.

by bryanlarsen

3/8/2026 at 4:46:37 PM

Seems like tankers passing through the straits will always be at risk so long as the IRGC (or any irregular faction) remains intact with access to drones.

Seems like the only options are reaching a deal with whatever the new regime is or occupying the coastal areas.

by cosmicgadget

3/8/2026 at 4:26:36 AM

Putin’s war ambitions profit most from the scare around Hormuz. His sanctions get removed to provide alternative supply, he can charge exorbitant prices, and he gets leverage. Since he is also providing targeting information for Iran to shoot at, it feels like this is an avatar joystick war for him to distract from his Ukraine disaster.

by dzink

3/9/2026 at 4:31:41 AM

Always strange how the Trump administration’s policies always seem to have a benefit for Russia… Just a fluke coincidence that keeps happening I guess.

by conception

3/9/2026 at 11:36:16 AM

Do you seriously think bombing a major Russian ally that has been materially supporting Russian war efforts is somehow a pro Russia move?

Every drone Iran has launched at Bahrain and the UAE could have been sold to Russia and used against Ukraine had this war not started.

by pibaker

3/9/2026 at 12:52:54 PM

They already won the war in Ukraine when they got the US to drop support. Greenland “war” pro Russia. Iran, oh what a surprise, Russia gets a fuel waiver from the US. All of this is a net benefit to Russia, yes. With all blame going to the US. The fact Russia is //providing targets// to the US shows this is definitely something they are excited about.

by conception

3/9/2026 at 10:56:16 AM

The Trump administration is slowly strangling Russia and China’s allies. First Syria, then Venezuela. Cuba is struggling without Venezuela oil. We’re bombing the life out of their drone supplier Iran.

In what way does that benefit Russia?

by antonymoose

3/9/2026 at 11:26:09 AM

The Trump administration is slowly strangling it's European allies.

And China is buying oil on the global market with money just like everyone else. Unless you are advocating for an oil embargo on China in which case congratulations you just started WW3.

by expedition32

3/9/2026 at 11:48:06 AM

> The Trump administration is slowly strangling it's European allies.

Perhaps, but this is ultimately orthogonal to the discussion “is this good or bad for Russia?”

I’m not sure what the intent of your reply is here but I’ve not advocated for violence. Simply pointed out that it’s countering the Russia-China bloc countries.

by antonymoose

3/8/2026 at 5:14:16 AM

Putin mainly benefits from the increased price of oil - black-market oil prices are a discount relative to standard-market oil, so he'll have a much healthier budget, even if his sanctions stay "airtight".

China benefits here - they import Russian crude oil over land, so their costs won't increase as much as the international market (unless Russia uses the leverage to absorb all the benefit, which I doubt), but more crucially: the alternative to oil fuel is renewables, and China dominates renewables so a spike in demand for solar/batteries will be a godsend for them.

by Qwertious

3/8/2026 at 12:38:42 PM

No, they don't import crude oil, but Russian gas by land pipelines.

by thisislife2

3/8/2026 at 5:17:40 AM

> China benefits here - they import Russian crude oil over land,

No, they don't. 54% of their oil comes from the middle east. Only 20% comes from Russia.

China does have a healthy oil reserve at the moment, so this may be marginally less bad for them. And yes, their electricity comes from renewables, but like in any other country, all of their logistics run on diesel.

By starting this war, the United States, unsatisfied with flipping the table on bilateral trade with other countries just flipped the table on multipolar international trade. What a time to be alive.

by vkou

3/8/2026 at 6:37:31 AM

Most of their trains are electric, and 50% of semi tractors sold in 2025 were electric. Lots of their logistics run without diesel.

by bryanlarsen

3/8/2026 at 9:26:15 AM

But at least for now, their fret trains have limited reach. They have a big country, with sparse population once you leave the coastal areas. I think this will help them push their railroad infrastructure though.

by orwin

3/8/2026 at 11:22:57 AM

It's not a sparse population until you're significantly further inland than Chengdu. A billion people are living in an area that's roughly comparable to west-of-missippi USA. It's cities and high-density farmland, nothing else. If there's a few square meters of unoccupied space, somebody planted vegetables there.

by nixon_why69

3/8/2026 at 11:59:15 AM

75% of track is electrified.

by bryanlarsen

3/8/2026 at 8:12:47 PM

Seems to me that a conglomerate of oil companies could have funded a canal and reduce this risk a long time ago. Just around this choke point in global logistics.

by alwayspossible

3/8/2026 at 10:14:58 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajar_Mountains

"Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

by pibaker

3/9/2026 at 11:47:33 PM

It actually doesn’t look too bad if the canal ran on the west side of the mountains…

One hopes that will be a moot point once the Islamists fall in Iran.

by Recurecur

3/8/2026 at 8:16:55 PM

I think scarcity and price spikes are a feature not a bug.

by thatmiddleway

3/8/2026 at 8:20:03 PM

My favorite conspiracy so far is the Qataris would like Iranian production to be destroyed because they drink the same milkshake

Good thing the Qataris have no influence over the American president /s

by jazzyjackson

3/8/2026 at 9:00:32 PM

The Qataris wouldn’t even have to have direct influence if they more are likely to be long term friendly. I hadn’t heard this before, it would actually make a lot of sense and wouldn’t even really be a conspiracy theory just a theory (unless we consider anything multiple people in government do together to be a conspiracy).

by pfannkuchen

3/8/2026 at 4:34:31 AM

It's not a big threat to the US. The US is a net oil exporter, has the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and, if absolutely necessary, Trump could make up with Canada so those oil imports restart.

Taiwan, Japan, and Korea, though - totally dependent on imports for oil.

Something that most pundits have missed: unlike all other US wars since Korea, the US can't end this war by pulling out. Iran, unlike all US combat opponents from Vietnam to Venezuela, has the demonstrated ability to strike well beyond its borders. This war isn't over until both sides say it's over.

by Animats

3/8/2026 at 5:13:12 AM

The US is a net exporter of petroleum (crude oil plus refined products) but from what Google tells me it is still a net importer of crude oil. It also tells me 75% of what goes through Hormuz is crude.

Also, domestic crude of mostly light, sweet crude whereas many US refineries are designed to deal with heavy, sour crude. Google is telling me 80% of the crude that goes through Hormuz is heavy, sour crude.

Does any of this raise the impact disruptions of Hormuz would have on the US?

by tzs

3/8/2026 at 5:25:52 AM

>Also, domestic crude of mostly light, sweet crude whereas many US refineries are designed to deal with heavy, sour crude. Google is telling me 80% of the crude that goes through Hormuz is heavy, sour crude.

The US has some of the best chemists in the world; light sweet crude is easy to refine but heavy sour crude is hard, so US refineries refining light sweet would be a waste of their talents - better to export it out for newbies to refine and buy the harder-to-refine and therefore cheaper heavy sour crude. But if heavy sour becomes more expensive, then the US will switch to the easymode option in a heartbeat.

An increased cost of inputs will always hurt the entire industry, but it won't particularly hurt the US any more than anyone else, and will probably hurt them the least - especially when they have plenty of domestic shale oil that will be financially viable to extract if prices go up.

by Qwertious

3/8/2026 at 5:00:54 AM

Iran has nobody in charge to lead any sort of negotiations or to order stand down. Now it really is guerrilla war. The type that never ends.

by whatever1

3/8/2026 at 5:13:06 AM

Iran should negotiate with whom?

If someone backstabbed me twice while we were in negotiations, I would not give them 3rd chance for negotiations, US and Israel really f....d their reputation after 2 attacks while in negotiations

by throwaw12

3/8/2026 at 6:12:23 AM

That's exactly what the Iranian fireign minister said.

"The fact is that we don’t have any positive experience of negotiating with the United States. You know, especially with this administration. We negotiated twice last year and this year, and then in the middle of negotiations, they attacked us," Araghchi said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/iran-foreign-minister-int...

To add insult to injury, the US also sent two clowns, Witkoff and Kushner, to negotiate, so it was quite obvious the negotiations would fail.

by petre

3/8/2026 at 6:20:10 AM

They said that, but there is also no evidence of them negotiating in good faith. Showing up to the table and just dragging the process out for years isn’t negotiating, it’s an act.

by kortilla

3/8/2026 at 6:27:51 AM

There is no evidence that they acted in bad faith as well, most of us don't have access to the briefings of those negotiations

But here is what we know:

* US acted in bad faith - because it planned attack in around December 2025

* Oman, mediator of negotiations told they were almost there with negotiations and Iran mostly agreed to conditions and boom, next day it got bombed: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/28/peace-within-reach-...

by throwaw12

3/8/2026 at 9:17:07 AM

This is how long negotiations took on the last agreement. 20 months. But I guess the current administration doesn't have that kind of patience and would rather blow them up instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...

We'll see if that works or wether another jihadist regime rises from their ashes.

by petre

3/8/2026 at 12:42:31 PM

There is evidence they negotiated in good-faith because they deliberately involved a third-party as a mediator. Oman, who was involved in the mediation said a nuclear deal was nearly done (where the Iranians agreed to completely scrap the Obama nuclear deal for a new Trump nuclear treaty) when the US changed its mind and decided to attack them.

by thisislife2

3/8/2026 at 11:03:30 AM

It took years to negotiate the nuclear deal that Obama got, it was productive, it was good enough to keep nuclear proliferation in check.

Comes dumbo and rips that off, goes back to "deal making" without any diplomacy, bomb them twice during the negotiation process after ripping off the previous deal.

Seems like the whole new negotiations from Trump's admin was just putting up an act after all... Quite disgusting.

by piva00

3/8/2026 at 5:16:51 AM

[flagged]

by whatever1

3/8/2026 at 5:28:12 AM

I was under the impression that everyone (ie US, UN, EU) basically agreed they complied with the JCPOA right up until the US pulled out of it? Is that not accurate?

by heisenzombie

3/8/2026 at 5:30:58 AM

I am not expert in Iran, but can you list agreements they didn't keep?

I know IAEA was allowed for inspections as agreed, but IAEA started leaking information to Israel and Iran stopped sharing more info with them.

Surprisingly, Israel, the country who didn't allow IAEA at all, while owning nuclear arsenal is attacking another country for "not-complying" with IAEA

by throwaw12

3/8/2026 at 8:36:43 AM

JCPOA was working, Trump cancelled it simply because it was Obama's.

by fmobus

3/8/2026 at 6:58:07 AM

I vote for nuclear inspections in the only mide eastern country that "doesn't" have nukes. If they don't have nukes, they shouldn't have any problems with inspections. Iran has been a much more trustworthy entity in the nuclear department.

by donkeybeer

3/8/2026 at 5:53:58 AM

That simply isn't true.

by jibal

3/8/2026 at 5:05:49 AM

Guerrilla war requires people at the grass roots to care. Is that true in Iran? Venezuela seems to have quieted down already.

by rayiner

3/8/2026 at 5:19:35 AM

The IRGC is 125k-150k people. Many of them are pot committed to the current government, because the IRGC has done... unforgivable things that a new government would be likely to punish.

Venezuela is also run by the same security apparatus and government as it was before. We didn't attempt to turn over the entire government.

by ncallaway

3/8/2026 at 10:58:36 AM

>The IRGC is 125k-150k people.

Takes Ukrainians 4 months to kill that amount. What you are saying winning is quite doable.

by rasz

3/9/2026 at 6:31:51 AM

You... simply cannot take the numbers from one war and blindly apply them to a totally different one. The comparison isn't apt for a number of reasons.

First, Russians are generally on the offensive, which means pushing into Ukrainian controlled territory.

Often, they are pushing into defensive lines that have had years of fortification.

Second, there are a lot more Russians in Ukraine. To kill 125k people, you have to find 125k people. It's a lot easier to find a Russian in Ukraine that it will be to find an IRGC soldier in Iran if there's an invasion and guerilla operations in response.

In Iraq after the conventional military phase, the US killed ~26k insurgents over the course of a decade (and also captured ~120k).

Iran is bigger than Iraq, has far more people than Iraq, and has much bigger logistical burdens for an invasion.

I could believe that the US Military is quite capable of running some small scale targeted operations within Iran successfully. We can probably pull off operations to do things like attempt to seize and secure uranium stockpiles if we know where they are (though such an operation could also go catastrophically badly, too).

I think the US Military could invade Iran and topple the regime, but it would be an enormous lift, and I think there's almost no chance we would have the political will to sustain the costs and casualties that a total invasion would entail.

by ncallaway

3/8/2026 at 8:16:07 PM

thats in a scenario with soldiers pushing into no mans land under permanent drone control. Israel demonstrates much lower stats when enemy hides underground. I would imagine having no boots on the ground will lower the numbers further.

by anabab

3/8/2026 at 9:37:02 AM

Maduro was such a bad leader that his prime minister sold him to the US.

Which means now Venezuela is still a chavist regime, but not under US embargo anymore. This will improve their economy a great deal, and if the regime doesn't capture all the profits for itself, will also improve the QOL of all Venezuelians, hopefully.

by orwin

3/9/2026 at 9:51:30 PM

Now Venezuela still has bad government, but without any embargoes imposed by us. This will likely improve the quality of life of the residents now that we don’t try to screw up their economy. Just hoping that the dastardly bad government doesn’t pocket the difference introduced by the better economy from us not screwing up their economy.

by keybored

3/8/2026 at 8:28:01 PM

Venezuela wasn’t a regime change war it was a US-backed palace coup that left the entire regime except for the guy at its head in place in exchange for a narrow set of policy favors to the US.

It has little in common with Iran, which is more like the 2003 Iraq war (but, so far, without committing ground troops, but there is no way to maintain that with Trump’s stated goal of “unconditional surrender”; that’s going to require a ground forces occupation at a minimum, and probably a ground forces invasion to acheive it) than it is like the recent intervention in Venezuela.

Even if they are not particular fond of the regime that is in the process of being destroyed, the Iranian people are likely to resist that, just as occurred in Iraq (with the most significant resistance there coming from forces that were opposed to Saddam’s regime and which had been actively suppressed by it while it was in power.)

by dragonwriter

3/9/2026 at 2:25:05 PM

Iran doesn’t need to be a regime change war. They can’t have an Ayotollah, just chill out with the “america is the great satan” stuff.

by rayiner

3/10/2026 at 12:27:04 AM

> Iran doesn’t need to be a regime change war.

It doesn't need to be a war at all.

However, it is a war, and Trump has declared the only acceptable end is unconditional surrender and Trump himself having a say in the new leadership, so it is a regime change war (but, yes, completely unnecessarily so.)

by dragonwriter

3/9/2026 at 4:54:05 PM

Iran can survive the war without regime change, they have infinite Ayatollahs, america just needs to chill out with the "bomb children and commit war crimes and being lead by the great satan and pedophiles" stuff.

by nullocator

3/9/2026 at 9:32:28 PM

The US (following Israel’s lead) offensively invaded another country. Nothing Iran could have said about America would make it look more like the Great Satan than what it has done itself.

But chill out, Americans say. We only demand that the Ayatollah (or any other Ayatollah) doesn’t exist/are dead. Why do you have to be so, like unchill about it?

by keybored

3/9/2026 at 10:19:31 PM

I would be much more sympathetic to your point if Ayatollahs hadn’t been chanting “Death to America” for 45 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America

I think it’s stupid for the U.S. to take out foreign leaders based on ideological disagreements. But what Khamenei was going seems like Trump-like populist demagoguery that invited a commensurate response.

by rayiner

3/9/2026 at 11:35:13 AM

Americans have the uncanny ability to make everyone hate their guts. A US occupation will inevitably breed resistance.

by expedition32

3/9/2026 at 4:11:56 PM

Not too many people like an armed occupation.

by toast0

3/8/2026 at 5:29:19 AM

Iran's theocracy is pretty ideologically motivated, they're not just in it for the money.

by Qwertious

3/8/2026 at 6:02:08 PM

Totally correct. I just don’t have a good handle on how deep the theocracy runs in society.

by rayiner

3/9/2026 at 12:00:57 AM

Probably as much as MAGA is in the US.

by fmajid

3/9/2026 at 4:13:21 PM

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religion-par...

It’s a lot harder to find decent evidence on the prevalence of religious belief in Iran, obviously, but I’d be willing to believe anything in the 70-90% range based on the commentary below. (Obviously this source is biased, but they at least cite their references adequately.) Large confidence intervals evince a lack of confidence.

https://muslimskeptic.com/2025/01/29/iranians-atheists/#Stat...

So yeah, it seems reasonable to claim that white Republicans are roughly as religious as Iranians overall.

This probably underestimates religious belief of those aligned with the government, however, since we can’t segment them out by political affiliation and the opposition is likely more secular in proportion.

by TimorousBestie

3/9/2026 at 4:28:20 PM

The republican party in the 2010s had a similar percentage of non-religious people as the democratic party in the 1990s: https://religionunplugged.com/news/2023/11/6/the-religious-c.... The percentage of republicans who never go to church in 2022 is similar to where democrats were at in 2008. With both parties seeing a shift towards non-religiosity during the Trump era.

Obviously Democrats in the 1990s weren’t theocrats. Maybe your point is that it’s not about religious attendance per se that makes for a theocracy, but the content of the religious beliefs?

by rayiner

3/9/2026 at 4:44:27 PM

My point was determining if the claim in the comment I responded to was reasonable or not based on the limited, weak evidence I could find on my lunch break.

by TimorousBestie

3/9/2026 at 11:12:14 AM

[flagged]

by rayiner

3/9/2026 at 5:01:45 PM

Ya, No.

MAGA is modern Nazism and Christian Nationalism, it was bread out of the Conservative and Republican party of the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s, and has been fully embraced by and has enveloped by both.

Rejecting hate, racism, indoctrination, and cultism is not "experiencing a religious awakening" it's quite the opposite.

by nullocator

3/9/2026 at 7:50:55 PM

Bill Clinton passed sweeping laws to curb illegal immigration, including the ban on using federal dollars to support illegal immigrants: https://scholars.org/brief/how-americas-1996-immigration-act.... Progressives meantime took positions that were fringe in the 1990s, like cultural relativism, and redefined that as “rejecting hate.”

Progressives have elevated cultural relativism to a core religious principle. They can’t even articulate why it’s desirable for immigrants to “assimilate,” because in their world view it must be taken as axiomatic that America wouldn’t be substantively less successful if it was culturally more like Guatemala or India.

by rayiner

3/9/2026 at 9:10:27 PM

Maybe they can't articulate a desirable reason for immigrants to you about why they need to "assimilate" because you're using the word to mean something else. You speak about bs like cultural relativism and fringe beliefs and then immediately turn around and try to use rhetorical and symbolic dogwhistles. For you and the MAGA cultist "assimilation" is more about cultural domination and conformation and forced civic integration. People grounded in reality and history embrace multiculturalism, bi-lingualism and only care about assimilation in terms of understanding laws and civic institutions. The progressive view would be one that helps and embraces immigrants and enables them to identify with the american national identity. I care more about whether or not someone believes they are part of and a citizen of the united states of america, whether they believe they have a vested interest in it and it's peoples. I do not care any more or less about an immigrants culture, beliefs, rituals or habits any more than any segment of the population (other than maybe from a curiosity standpoint in some cases).

by nullocator

3/9/2026 at 10:34:54 PM

> embrace multiculturalism, bi-lingualism and only care about assimilation in terms of understanding laws and civic institutions... I do not care any more or less about an immigrants culture, beliefs, rituals or habits any more than any segment of the population

You could put that in a dictionary as the definition for "cultural relativism." I mean, you just referred to "forced civic integration" like that's a bad thing! That's not Clinton Democrats believed in the 1990s. They believed in the "melting pot," which meant cultural homogenization. More specifically, it meant immigrants adopting Anglo-American culture, like German immigrants.

But progressives rejected the "melting pot," and now think we have a "salad bowl." This fight over the "salad bowl" is completely different than what the fight was about in the 1990s. Bill Clinton wasn't a cultural relativist--he never talked about a "salad bowl" multi-cultural America.

by rayiner

3/9/2026 at 3:59:27 AM

Getting bombed tends to make people care a lot, just not for the people doing the bombing.

by anigbrowl

3/8/2026 at 8:32:54 PM

> It's not a big threat to the US. The US is a net oil exporter

The US being a net oil exporter doesn't make the domestic market independent of the global market (especially over the short to intermediate term), for a large variety of reasons.

> has the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Which whille partial refilled from the 2022 drawdowns is still at rather low levels by historical standards.

> and, if absolutely necessary, Trump could make up with Canada

He could try (though I don’t think even that is in his character), that doesn’t mean he would succceed.

by dragonwriter

3/8/2026 at 4:41:48 AM

> has the demonstrated ability to strike well beyond its borders.

Yep, now if IR survives, I see no reason for them not to double down on even longer range missiles. Like, why not?

by reliabilityguy

3/9/2026 at 9:18:22 AM

Eventually the world will get so fed up with them they WILL invade.

by UltraSane

3/8/2026 at 4:57:36 AM

> Trump could make up with Canada so those oil imports restart.

Sounds like Trump hubris. Probably just what he'd expect. And then he'd accuse Canada of "behaving terribly" if things didn't go his way, and he'd reach for his tariff paddle.

by tejohnso

3/8/2026 at 5:09:56 AM

Fortunately, his handy paddle is no longer available (the one where he can make changes on whims, eg. when a commercial upsets him). He still has other options, they require process and need to be specific, setting aside the short term tariffs levied after his tantrum tariffs were rebuked by SCOTUS.

by verdverm

3/8/2026 at 5:10:52 AM

I don't think the oil exports from Canada ever stopped. If anything, they have grown.

by beached_whale

3/8/2026 at 4:46:16 AM

> It's not a big threat to the US. The US is a net oil exporter,

The thing is that the US exported oil is sweet crude, and our own refineries are not made for that type of oil. So for the petroleum products used within the US need the heavy oil that is imported. So if the world goes tits up so that the US can only use the oil it produces, it would take time before the US could refine it.

>Trump could make up with Canada

I'm sorry, did this suddenly become a comedy?

by dylan604

3/8/2026 at 4:57:57 AM

>So for the petroleum products used within the US need the heavy oil that is imported.

Is that really true? I've heard experts say that sweet crude is easy to refine. I've always thought that the reason US refiners bother with sour crude is that they're better at refining it than non-US refiners are, so they make a little more money that way.

by hollerith

3/8/2026 at 5:05:19 AM

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/america-produces-enough-oil-...

This link is just one of many that all suggest that the US is just not set up to refine light crude.

by dylan604

3/8/2026 at 6:03:50 AM

That link doesn't clear up anything for me

by hollerith

3/8/2026 at 6:10:23 AM

I'm not going to lmgtfy with other links. If you have something contradictory to show, then by all means show. I'm never one to be unwilling to learn something new, but I will not just accept the comment of a random stranger on the interweb providing no supporting evidence for their position that opposes my current understanding.

by dylan604

3/9/2026 at 7:42:19 PM

I didn't downvote you. In fact, I upvoted because you didn't dig in when challenged, but rather acknowledged the possibility that you might be wrong, which is more than the writers of most comments on here can manage. (I, too, might be mistaken on this topic.)

by hollerith

3/8/2026 at 10:05:23 PM

As I understand it, light sweet crude is in fact easier to refine, but refineries still have to be set up for it to get optimal or economically viable results, which US refineries largely are not. US refineries certainly could switch, but the process of doing so would be expensive and time consuming.

by rainsford

3/8/2026 at 4:52:48 AM

That's not at all the case. We have refineries that can handle everything from sweet to sour to Canadian tar sands

by idiotsecant

3/8/2026 at 5:04:18 AM

That goes against every thing I've ever read or heard. I'm no oil man, nor play one on TV, but I only know what information I've come across in reading or hearing in radio/tv. Maybe my googlefu is lacking, but a quick search still suggests this is the answer.

by dylan604

3/8/2026 at 4:56:03 AM

That and it's way easier to go from retooling from sour to sweet than reverse, way easier to go from heavy to light than reverse, etc. Not suggesting it's just a flip a switch kind of change, but it's usually a net reduction in complexity in refining for both of those changes.

by vel0city

3/8/2026 at 6:05:03 AM

Nah. Very little direct US trade moves past Iran. In a few weeks President Trump will declare the operation a success and end most kinetic strikes, regardless of the actual situation. Then someone else will have to deal with the aftermath.

by nradov

3/8/2026 at 5:13:36 AM

> It's not a big threat to the US. The US is a net oil exporter, has the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and, if absolutely necessary, Trump could make up with Canada so those oil imports restart.

The SPR is 58% full, so... not empty but also not all the way full.

Additionally, even though we're a net oil exporter, we're not insulated from the global oil market rates. Local producers aren't going to sell into America more cheaply than they can sell internationally, so if international rates spike, prices will go up domestically too.

If the Straight of Hormuz remains closed for an extended period of time, we'll definitely feel the pinch domestically.

by ncallaway

3/8/2026 at 4:51:53 AM

> Trump could make up with Canada so those oil imports restart.

Like hell he could.

- every Canadian

by testing22321

3/8/2026 at 4:59:58 AM

Hey Canadians, can you permanently dismantle some pipelines?

Unlike our fearless orange leader, I live on earth, and global warming's becoming quite a big issue over here.

Also, the sooner we're forced off oil, the sooner these dumb wars stop.

by hedora

3/8/2026 at 5:48:09 AM

Don't the Canadian pipelines just go to the gulf for exporting and not used in the US? In other words, what would turning them off do except hurt their bottom line?

by dylan604

3/8/2026 at 4:54:30 AM

The threat to the US is China feeling like they need to act. The loss of Persian gulf oil is an existential threat to the Chinese economy. This could end very, very bad.

by idiotsecant

3/8/2026 at 5:07:44 AM

Nah. So far we haven't hit Iran's oil export infrastructure. If China makes a serious move we blow it up. We can also close the straight ourselves and claim it's for protection.

by 01100011

3/8/2026 at 5:10:32 AM

https://understandingwar.org/research/middle-east/iran-updat...

They've started bombing the oil in infrastructure

by klooney

3/8/2026 at 7:21:14 AM

I ain't reading all that, but if you're referring to the strike on the oil storage facility in Tehran, AFAICT that's not for export. It's local consumption. We haven't, to my knowledge, hit oil exports yet.

by 01100011

3/8/2026 at 7:52:35 AM

Fair enough, but if the local supplies are disrupted, export oil will be repurposed for local supply, to avoid issues with the regime.

by disgruntledphd2

3/8/2026 at 6:00:56 PM

I don't think oil works like that. Infra takes a long time to reroute, especially in war time. Exports are nearly all of Iran's economy. They can't turn it off or they starve.

by 01100011

3/8/2026 at 5:46:46 AM

Why isn't China acting. Putin showed the world is not going to do anything when an aggressor invades. Trump is doing it now. Nobody stopped Israel. What is China waiting for?

by dylan604

3/8/2026 at 12:50:11 PM

They are helping Iran militarily and diplomatically. The last attack on Iran ended in 12 days. The Americans or Israelis haven't send any boots as a proper invasion requires. So they are just waiting and watching.

by thisislife2

3/8/2026 at 8:16:16 PM

China is starting to act.[1][2] There's a summit with Xi and Trump coming up. China is pushing for a cease fire with Iran. China has also stopped aggressive flights over Taiwan airspace for the last week, for whatever reason.

Diplomats on the China side are worried about the Trump administrations's amateurish approach to diplomacy. "... Trump’s reluctance to delegate, disdain for process and focus on quick wins, banking instead on personal magnetism and his “gut” as summit organising principles. ... “You have a handful of people who have never done this before, putting together what may be the most consequential trip in the president’s administration on a wing and a prayer. The Chinese are beyond worried. They’re apoplectic.” - South China Morning Post.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/07/china/china-us-iran-wang-yi-i...

[2] https://www.scmp.com/topics/2026-trump-xi-summit

[3] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3344769/trump-xi-sum...

[4] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3344769/trump-xi-sum...

by Animats

3/8/2026 at 12:42:56 PM

I think they will act if this stretches into a lengthy engagement. They want to see the US solidly committed.

by idiotsecant

3/8/2026 at 4:43:41 AM

Frankly this whole thing is worth it if it scares Taiwan and Japan into building new nuclear capacity. Taiwan has been suicidally turning off nuclear generation for a decade despite it being the last country on earth that wants to rely on naval imports of essential goods.

by bpodgursky

3/8/2026 at 4:57:04 AM

Could it be because nuclear is highly centralized? I would expect that something like solar/wind power would be better for decentralization (in a war).

Even if you don't blow up a nuclear plant, it seems like cutting the power from one would be relatively easy.

by foota

3/8/2026 at 6:42:37 AM

Russia has refrained from hitting Ukraine's nuclear plants directly, and Ukraine has more or less kept them connected to the grid (albeit with nonstop repair efforts).

Transformer substations are more vulnerable targets but it's hard to be decentralized enough to not have those.

by bpodgursky

3/8/2026 at 4:52:12 AM

[dead]

by westcoalst

3/8/2026 at 4:56:48 AM

What genre of cope is this?

by mkoubaa

3/8/2026 at 4:55:11 AM

Conceivably, the 50 tankers per day could move in batches with the protection of a Destroyer. It's hard to imagine a credible surface or subsea threat with current fleet presence so it's basically a question of missile defense. Some constellation of vessels can indefinitely secure the zone if any powers that be with a suitable Navy desire it, and there are at least a few that have plausible capabilities.

by kev009

3/8/2026 at 5:08:08 AM

How is a single destroyer going to protect 50 oil tankers at once? Oil tankers are almost comically unsuited to warfare and you don't need missiles to penetrate their non-existent defences, they can easily and cheaply be taken out by drones. Here's Ukraine doing just that for the Nth time last week:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr5ll27z52do

As the friendly article says, the US military has no idea about how commercial shipping works and how hard it will be convince anybody to transit through an active war zone.

by decimalenough

3/8/2026 at 5:44:17 AM

How good is an Iranian navy really? At this point, seriously asking, why is there anything left of an Iranian navy? If we're in a shooting conflict that's a war not a war, why would they not be going after anything that could be considered a blockade? I'm going with these guys didn't have a real plan, and that block the straight is something they actually didn't consider so nothing in place to counter. It's Keystone cops

by dylan604

3/8/2026 at 9:20:48 AM

Ukraine's entire navy was sunk in the first 3 days of the war, and 4 years later Russian Black Sea fleet knows to stay in port as more than half of their ships have been sunk by Ukrainian missiles and drones.

by the_why_of_y

3/8/2026 at 6:25:24 AM

The don't have a navy per se, just speedboats fitted with missiles, whatever is left of it. Enough to drive the insurance costs sky high and interdict tanker traffic through the strait. Also their navy port is right next to the strait, I wonder why.

See this comical propaganda clip:

https://youtu.be/GKJHaODzP-0?is=QRf8HkFJ0O4Amx3v

They also have Shaheds.

by petre

3/8/2026 at 6:31:27 AM

How is a fleet of speedboats not a navy?

"A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the branch of a state's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare;" --wikipedia

Also, comical is a great description. I was aware that Iran has a speedboat navy, but wtf that video?! How much is AI? The shot with the giant flame throwing rockets flying slower that the speedboats is hilarious. I guess perspective is everything??

by dylan604

3/8/2026 at 8:53:50 AM

I guess you could call a fleet of dinghies a navy as well by that measure. Anyway, they no longer have their navy, because according to Trump it was, uh, 'knocked out'.

What they do still have however, is enough Shaheds to interdict tanker traffic through the straight.

by petre

3/8/2026 at 6:10:43 AM

Iran doesn't need a navy to sink cargo ships going through the Straight of Hormuz, they just need a handful of guys in the mountains with a stock of rockets or drones.

by crooked-v

3/8/2026 at 5:25:37 AM

Not congruent to what I wrote: Why would the batch size be 1? Must it be the US military? What anti-drone capabilities do Destroyers have or could be made to have?

If the tankers are primarily for the benefit of Asia and not the US do you risk bringing additional parties with a grievance into your conflict?

by kev009

3/8/2026 at 5:36:10 AM

> Must it be the US military?

When the action you are talking about is, for anyone other than the US or Israel, signing up to become a co-belligerent with the US & Israel in their war with Iran? Yeah, the realistic options for who might do it are pretty limited.

by dragonwriter

3/8/2026 at 5:57:03 AM

Seems tinged in political fog. For instance, if China wants tankers to have safe passage they can present diplomatic arrangements with the other players (US&Israel and/or Iran) indicating they are there for escort only. Belligerence would not be up to them if they were forced to defend their merchant escort.

by kev009

3/8/2026 at 5:34:45 AM

Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Iraq, and Saudi are all US allies and they all rely on the Straits for exports. If they can't sell oil/LNG, they will be in much bigger trouble than their customers, who have other suppliers to choose from.

by decimalenough

3/8/2026 at 5:21:30 AM

The simple solution seems to be to put the Trump fortune up as insurance collateral. If he's so confident that the war's such a good idea, he needs to put some skin in the game.

by vkou

3/8/2026 at 5:45:09 AM

So now we know the true purpose for Board of Peace membership dues

by dylan604

3/8/2026 at 5:23:10 AM

You have to convince three sets of people to move any tanker through the Straight:

- the crew - the company - the insurer

The company has an obvious reason to take on some amount of risk to move a vessel through the Straight. However, both the crew and the insurer will be quite risk averse, so the Navy would need to demonstrate a very high success rate in intercepting both missiles and shaheds to convince those two other groups to say "yes".

by ncallaway

3/8/2026 at 4:28:27 PM

Seems like a great way to have the destroyer's air defense overwhelmed/depleted by shaheds while IRGC drone boats and speedboats attack from the surface. Then you have 50 insurance claims against the US treasury.

by cosmicgadget

3/8/2026 at 5:05:33 AM

The missiles destroyers have are not the kind you want to use to shoot down shaheds. The economics don't work out in the long run. Same for AIM-9s. There are some new guided pod rockets that likely break even, but they are new.

https://theaviationist.com/2026/03/06/typhoon-spotted-rocket...`

by verdverm

3/8/2026 at 5:00:04 AM

If Iran makes a nuisance of itself for long enough, I expect a coalition naval task force will go and open the strait back up.

by bigfatkitten

3/8/2026 at 5:07:25 AM

It's less about "opening it up" and more about the tanker companies feeling there is enough safety. With the Red Sea instance, they didn't start running ships until the Houthis said they were done.

by verdverm

3/9/2026 at 3:12:01 AM

The feeling of safety in this scenario would be provided by the assurance that anyone who tries picking on a tanker would be stomped into the ground by a destroyer.

by bigfatkitten

3/9/2026 at 6:59:18 AM

except that history shows otherwise, as relayed in the submission

by verdverm

3/8/2026 at 5:08:11 AM

And now you have a US navy destroyer in torpedo range of the shore.

by nixon_why69

3/8/2026 at 4:59:18 AM

[flagged]

by mkoubaa

3/8/2026 at 5:08:38 AM

It'd be more helpful if you could explain for the class why you disagree with their comment, rather than disparage it with nothing of your own to offer.

by nozzlegear

3/8/2026 at 5:04:34 AM

Okay.

Would you like to say which parts are the wrong parts?

by Dylan16807

3/8/2026 at 5:16:59 AM

Drones.

It costs a lot more to block one than to build one, and Trump's already blaming Biden because the US is running low on the top tier interceptors. Congressional testimony suggests the current stockpile will last weeks. After that, they'll fall back on ones that are less accurate, and that will let some attacks through.

The destroyer doesn't help much in that scenario, in the same way it's not going to stop mosquitoes from biting the oil tanker's crew.

You could use it to transport a large number of interceptor drones behind an armored hull, I guess.

But, in scenarios where you need to worry about strikes taking out stored interceptor drones on the tankers, then the tankers are already swiss cheese.

by hedora

3/8/2026 at 5:12:44 AM

> unlike all other US wars since Korea, the US can't end this war by pulling out

From what I read in Kissinger’s Diplomacy, Vietnam was also a war they couldn’t just pull out of if they wanted to.

The public wanted deescalation, but the Americans under Nixon had to escalate the war to get enough of an advantage to pull out without it being a bloodbath.

Hence part of Nixon’s infamy: he defied public opinion and escalated an unpopular war, precisely to end it more cleanly.

by mikrl

3/8/2026 at 5:51:12 AM

That sounds kinda stupid. These days when someone says something ridiculous but pro-war it generally turns out they are just lying through their teeth and just not being honest about their motivations (eg, getting kickbacks or they're worried about tactical political issues). It seems more than likely that when Kissinger writes that we're reading someone being dishonest.

In addition, I'm struggling with the idea that Kissinger of all people cared enough about what happened to Vietnamese people for it to affect policy. He was the sort who would have no difficulty at all allowing bloodbaths to happen if he thought that was advantageous. His wiki page suggests, in fact, that he did do exactly that a few times.

by roenxi

3/8/2026 at 2:14:24 PM

It’s not pro or anti war, it’s realpolitik.

Neither Nixon nor Kissinger wanted to be in Vietnam, but again, if they evacuated in 1969 it would have been a bloodbath of American soldiers I think is the point you missed.

The communists had a decisive advantage until the Americans escalated the war to a ceasefire then pulled out in the mid 1970s.

by mikrl

3/9/2026 at 9:05:56 AM

Did he claim war was peace and slavery was freedom on the way through? When I say that sounds incredible, I mean that in the sense it is difficult to link it with credibility. That argument's conclusion is that keeping troops in an active warzone will prevent them getting injured, and being driven out of a country represents the fruit of erasing the opponent's decisive advantage. With pretzel-logic of that magnitude that anything is possible.

There is a much easier conclusion which is Kissinger was making things up because he'd look like a real monster if he honestly said it was just stupid policy.

by roenxi

3/9/2026 at 9:26:57 AM

If they didn't want go be in Vietnam maybe Nixon should not have sabotaged the peace talks.

by Hikikomori

3/8/2026 at 5:00:05 AM

My predictions for the end of this war:

- The USA eventually declares some arbitrary "victory" condition.

- Iran will be left even poorer, and much less able to defend itself conventionally, but will remain under the same regime. Very likely they give up cooperating with atomic energy inspectors and do what North Korea did to a acquire weapons.

- Israel's ability to dictate US foreign and military policy will be degraded long term. What many commentators do not see is how anti-Israel younger consevatives trend in the US now. It will be decades or before a serious anti-Israel republican candidate will be fielded, but it is inevitable, and even your typical greatest-ally-wall-kissers will have to moderate themselves.

Will be very interesting to see what the mid terms bring. Some on the American right are already talking about voting democrat to protest - MAGA was specifically sold to them as an antidote to necon middle eatern entanglements.

by LAC-Tech

3/9/2026 at 4:06:41 AM

The US can't win without taking control of Iran's nuclear materiél. They can't do that without ground troops. And any ground invasion of Iran is going to be a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

by anigbrowl

3/9/2026 at 9:59:29 PM

Another war? Huh, what will that do for the mid term election? How interesting.

Yet only one country in this comment is named a regime.

by keybored

3/8/2026 at 4:36:29 PM

Think Iran will reopen the strait if the US leaves or remain interested in punishing the US and nearby states that supported the strikes?

by cosmicgadget

3/8/2026 at 5:48:38 AM

Iran won't be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. North Korea was under China's protection but no one is going to protect Iran. The USA, Israel, and maybe some of the Gulf states will continue occasionally "mowing the grass" whenever the threat level increases.

(I'm not claiming that this is a good scenario, just a likely one.)

by nradov

3/8/2026 at 6:18:46 AM

I am not seeing a scenario were they can be stopped. They are already surviving under combined US/Israeli strikes. Short of being attacked with weapons of mass destruction...

... oh dear god this administration is dumb enough to try that, isn't it?

by LAC-Tech

3/8/2026 at 2:44:28 PM

Iran can be stopped. Building nuclear weapons plus delivery systems isn't easy and requires a major industrial effort. They won't be allowed to sustain that effort, or rebuild the air defenses necessary to protect it.

by nradov

3/8/2026 at 4:34:31 PM

There is no reason to believe that they haven't already developed and worked out the details of all that, in case they'd ever need it. Now the US and Israel have killed the only man who was preventing it from being done, the late supreme leader. I cannot imagine the next supreme leader (that is about to be announced) not immediately cancelling the prohibition on building nuclear weapons (to be made public only after they've been built, ofc), and giving the order to build ~10 nuclear warheads (the amount that they can build based on the amount of 60% enriched fissile material they currently possess). With two nuclear powers relentlessly attacking them, it would be suicidal of them to not order the immediate building of nuclear weapons ASAP.

by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE

3/8/2026 at 7:31:03 PM

You're really missing the point. Just because someone gives the order to develop nuclear weapons doesn't mean that their defense industrial base has the capacity to do it, or that it can be protected against future strikes. Furthermore, if Iran declared that it did possess working nuclear weapons that wouldn't be a deterrent: it would trigger an immediate and massive preemptive attack by the USA and Israel.

by nradov

3/8/2026 at 8:43:16 PM

The point was addressed in the first sentence of my previous reply.

As for a preemptive attack, which I imagine you meant would be nuclear since they're already giving it all they've got with their non-nuclear attacks, it is already clear that Israel and USA don't have a way to stop Iran's faster missiles, and they would have no way to prevent Iran nuking Tel-Aviv and Haifa in return. At that point Israel would cease to exist as a state and as a society. They would never risk that. The entire decades-long war against the middle east by USA and Israel is fought for the benefit of Israel, not for its destruction.

by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE

3/9/2026 at 10:27:18 PM

> As for a preemptive attack, which I imagine you meant would be nuclear since they're already giving it all they've got with their non-nuclear attacks, it is already clear that Israel and USA don't have a way to stop Iran's faster missiles, and they would have no way to prevent Iran nuking Tel-Aviv and Haifa in return.

Israel generally has fairly solid intelligence in Iran and would almost certainly take whatever action is necessary to prevent Iran from building a Nuke...potentially all the way up to using small tactical nukes in targeted strikes on nuclear facilities if conventional attacks would be insufficient. Any preemptive attack would likely occur before Iran actually were acquire a viable nuclear weapon.

by jameshilliard

3/8/2026 at 9:49:09 PM

No, you're still missing the point. I mean a massive US conventional attack. So far in the current conflict the US has used only a fraction of its capability, and only targeted military and government facilities. In a scenario where Iran claimed to have nuclear weapons then the US would hit much harder and aim to cause so much infrastructure damage and civilian casualties that Iran would be unable to build much of anything more complex than short-range rockets.

by nradov

3/9/2026 at 4:04:45 AM

This is an absurd fantasy. Most of Iran's military capability is deep inside mountains. If the US & Israel wants to adopt a strategy of Vietnam-style carpet bombing to devastate the entire country, not only will they be making themselves pariahs (which they're already on the way to doing) but they will be incentivizing Iran to hit Israel with dirty bombs, which will collapse the Israeli economy in short order.

by anigbrowl

3/9/2026 at 4:56:03 AM

No one cares about Iran. I'm not advocating this, but the USA could commit genocide in Iran and it wouldn't make us a pariah. And dirty bombs are a joke, the notion that Israel would be afraid of them is an absurd fantasy. For better or worse, the USA will continue to prop up the Israeli economy.

by nradov

3/9/2026 at 3:35:20 AM

A massive conventional attack against a nuclear power is historically not a thing. That's the whole point of a nuclear deterrent. No one is attacking Russia or North Korea under pretenses of humanitarian interventions. A massive conventional attack that would tear Iran apart would be a sufficient reason to initiate nuclear armageddon between Israel and Iran, as it would be a doomsday event for Iran either way; might as well go down swinging. Again, that's the whole point of a nuclear deterrent. It's what Israel's Samson option is, even though none of their enemies ever possessed nuclear weapons.

by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE

3/9/2026 at 4:57:10 AM

No, you're still missing the point. The massive conventional attack will tear Iran apart before they construct enough nuclear weapons to present a credible deterrent.

by nradov

3/9/2026 at 5:24:01 AM

No, you're still missing your own arguments, based on which this discussion thread has been based. Citing your exact words:

> Furthermore, if Iran declared that it did possess working nuclear weapons that wouldn't be a deterrent: it would trigger an immediate and massive preemptive attack by the USA and Israel.

I've been discussing this under the assumption from your own words that "it did possess working nuclear weapons" ('it' being Iran). If you are now changing this to a massive escalation before they even get it, then that is out of scope for this discussion. I would argue they are already doing that to the extent that they can, as they have to tread carefully since Iran can also destroy all key infrastructure in Israel as well.

by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE

3/9/2026 at 5:37:33 PM

Having a working nuclear weapon is not the same thing as having a viable vehicle to deliver the nuclear weapon somewhere useful, unless we're talking like, suitcase nukes or whatever. It's hard for me to estimate what the timeline would be to retrofit their existing ballistic missile platform to be suitable, but it's not a super easy task - timeline in peace times would be years, most likely. War likely accelerates it... unless the key people you need for the program, the supplies, testing resources, etc., are victims of the war.

'Working nuclear weapons' is a really broad scale so it's tough to extrapolate without knowing if it means "they can send a person with a low yield weapon somewhere and blow it up vs. "they can launch a high yield weapon on a ballistic missile anywhere within 2000km"

by cthalupa

3/8/2026 at 6:22:11 AM

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by bulbar

3/8/2026 at 6:54:07 AM

Aside from the fact that the Iranian Regime never said that...why exactly should westerners care about the fate of Israel?

I know they think they are special, but to me they are just another West Asian country. I have zero reason to support them over Yemen, Lebanon, Iran, or any other state. Arguably I have more reason to resent them, considering how much money and blood we have spent furthering their cause and how ungrateful they are in return.

No Mullah ever called me "goy".

by LAC-Tech

3/8/2026 at 3:42:46 PM

And you know what's the worst thing? I don't know if its my sample bias, but I see very rarely Israelis complaining about actual "gas the kikes white power" hateful antisemite filth which have actually risen in quantity quite a lot recently. The only people who get smeared with the antisemite label are people who hundreds of times even to the point of most normal people would stop seeing the distinction between jews and Israeli actions but they still clarify the various ways they aren't talking about jewish people or judaism as a religion but Israeli governments actions, and perfectly reasonable people like the Irish get labelled as "extreme antisemites". You know what signal this sends? If repeatedly clarifying the difference between jews in general and criminal actions of Israel gets the label of antisemite and actual blood and soil neo nazis get ignored then perhaps people should become actual loud and proud antisemites, this is what Israelis mindset signals to people.

by donkeybeer

3/8/2026 at 9:44:49 PM

I have not seen a single prominent anti-semite on X talk about Jews in a more vile way than Randy Fine - a US representative - talks about Arabs.

by LAC-Tech

3/8/2026 at 7:14:03 AM

The only "greatest ally" that sold secrets to china, attacked american ships and refused to apologize, has characters like Pollard as heroes, jailed and tortured the man who exposed their illegal theft of nuclear weapons tech from South Africa, ....

by donkeybeer

3/8/2026 at 9:24:04 PM

> attacked american ships

Ship, not ships. The USS liberty accident 58 years ago was the only instance.

> refused to apologize

Israel apologized the same day of the incident. They also paid $13m in reparations (much more if we adjust for inflation).

> their illegal theft of nuclear weapons tech from South Africa

There was no theft from South Africa. His conviction was for leaking info about the Israeli program.

by dlubarov

3/9/2026 at 4:25:41 AM

>Israel apologized the same day of the incident. They also paid $13m in reparations (much more if we adjust for inflation).

That's the "public" view yes. Many survivors disagree of course.

The entity who committed theft was Israel not Mordechai, however I reread it and it looks like it was a secret collaboration with South Africa not theft. But the main point is, why should you listen to whining about Iran having nukes from a country that blatantly lies about its own nukes and refuses to let its nukes be inspected? Iran is a much more responsible party clearly when it comes to the nuclear department.

It's also very well known that Israel secretly sold western defence tech secrets to China.

You seem to have mistakenly passed over part of my message that mentioned Pollard, so have a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard

by donkeybeer

3/8/2026 at 4:29:32 PM

> they are just another West Asian country

They're not, they're just a temporary European colony that cannot survive without constant pouring of resources from the collective West. Like the crusader states of the 11th and 12th century. It's not a real country.

by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE

3/8/2026 at 9:36:35 PM

I do not support the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Palestine any more than I support the current Jewish ethnic cleansing of Arabs in Palestine. Both groups want to force the other into the western world and I reject both.

by LAC-Tech

3/9/2026 at 3:31:57 AM

No ethnic cleansing will be required, and the dissolution of apartheid South Africa tells us how things will play out. Once the state is degraded enough, they will largely all emigrate on their own since the jewish supremacy that is currently in full swing will be no longer. They will not want to live in a state where others have equal rights. The few who don't mind it will remain and live on with the majority that currently enjoys little to no rights.

by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE

3/8/2026 at 6:13:53 AM

The problem the US and Israel now have is that no amount of preemptively declaring victory and withdrawing will make it safe to pass through the Straight of Hormuz again.

by crooked-v

3/8/2026 at 2:34:05 AM

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by onecommentman

3/8/2026 at 4:27:54 AM

Taiwan, Japan, and Korea import the vast majority of their fuel from that region. If any of those three countries run out of fuel, the impacts would be larger than if any single Western European country lost energy. The world as a whole depends on tech manufactured in this countries, and we're already in a pinch with AI slop companies buying up global supplies of components for the whole year. If LCD/OLED screen factories are shut down for even a few weeks, that will have massive rippling effects across the world. And if TSMC needs to turn off its factories, it will be absolutely disastrous.

by kdheiwns

3/8/2026 at 5:16:50 AM

Some countries are more prepared than others. Vietnam, who now handles a lot of mfg moved from China, has reserves measured in days. Yes, some countries have a couple months. I don't know the stats for nat gas though, and that could be better or worse.

Petrochemicals are a big part of the world economy. Energy is needed to get workers to work, factories to run, and ships to move.

This could slow goods production on par with covid. Forward looking financial markets which, by and large, failed to predict this will likely overreact as well. If the private credit bubble bursts coincident with market panic we could see a major financial crisis (maybe not GFC, but big).

It's a big price just to cover up the Epstein Files...

by 01100011

3/8/2026 at 5:41:18 AM

Delusional levels of cope

by mkoubaa

3/8/2026 at 4:35:05 AM

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by asacrowflies

3/9/2026 at 7:08:45 AM

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by void_ai_2026

3/8/2026 at 12:05:10 PM

Trump announced yesterday they will murder anyone who takes leadership. They don’t want it opened, they want China and India to suffer while establishing themselves as alternative energy supplier.

US itself has huge reserves, and recent move with Venecuela further expands it.

Middle East countries are too blind to see it, they’re being thrown under the bus to hurt Iran.

by DrProtic

3/8/2026 at 12:36:15 PM

Yes, a decade or two down the lane, all of middle-east will regret that they didn't do anything to check the US backed Israeli aggression in their region. The lack of political foresight and political will is really astounding (and surprising). And this is after the US Ambassador to Israel openly said that Israel has the "Biblical right" to all of middle-east, and the US is fine with that!

by thisislife2