The other issue that is less said is that the USA probably doesn't have the capacity to keep bombing in this way. They are using all the fancy missiles first, but haven't made a safe path to do unguided cheap bombing. This is Russian level stupidity, and shows the danger of letting "true believers" organise things over actual planners who've done this before.
more over, allies can't keep up that level of air defence.
It _could be_ bullshit that iran has a whole load of ballistic and drones spread all over the place, but frankly the US can't afford to find out if thats the case.
Sure the US could escort tankers, but that would mean much higher risk of casualties. Given that the USA is reasonably self sufficient in oil, thats probably a hard sell.
Also, does the US have enough stock of ship born anti-missle systems? Sure it has the expensive stuff, and the Phalanx at last resort, but does the USA have the stomach to have a ship sink? I fear what happens after that.
The whole ME is in chaos nowadays. Some of those Arabian countries, such as Bahrain and Jordan, may even see civil unrest and such, which will further destabilize the region.
If the Kurdish people decided to take up the deal and go against Iran, and Turkey/Azerbaijan decided to follow suite, then it's going to be really messy.
This is what "move fast and break things" looks like when it is applied to foreign policy. It is called imperialism.
As Mark Carney said: "if the middle powers are not in the table, they are in the menu" meaning "if the weak don't unite and resist together we'll be eaten by the strong".
OTOH, does anyone remember the "shock and awe" in the first days of Iraq War? It was pretty much like this. Soon, the orange buffoon might have a "mission accomplished" [1] moment and revert the tendency in the midterms. And then the U.S. gets even more screwed in the long run.
Setting aside any considerations on our side: for this war (or really any war), it's worth turning the chessboard around to look at things from your adversary's perspective as much as possible.
If you're the Iranian regime, the world is a hostile place. You're surrounded by enemies and potential enemies. In your time of crisis, the friends you thought you had are acting like they don't know you. The situation is one of existential threat. A future reality with your head on a pike is a very real possibility. You don't exactly have many options here, so maybe you play the only move you can make. It's a risky one, but it's at least bold and will be effectuating.
Interestingly, this move also attacks your real enemy: the globalized market. Iran would do well for itself in a world of 1926; in 2026, there's going to be friction.
In a sense, they're not fighting the US/Israel. They're fighting our datacenters. I'm sure the strategy for this conflict was vibe-planned to a large extent. A hyper-conservative regime like this will probably fare (at least in the long run) about as well as you would if you decide to nope out of society and go live in a Hobbesian state of nature in your local park. That might work for awhile, but eventually, the system will come for you. And that's just neutrality. Pick a fight with capital, and you'll always lose.
> In a sense, they're not fighting the US/Israel. They're fighting our datacenters.
LOL. Sorry, this is silly. Do you really think that Iran hates data centers?
The best scenario for Trump is to make this a limited war that nobody even notices outside of Iran's borders. He wants to announce to Americans "see? We did what we wanted and it was over in a few days, you barely noticed it".
While the nightmare scenario is to end up bogged down in a long drawn war with global repercussions, inflation, market crashes or even boots on the ground for months and years.
Iran can't win a military confrontation with the US, but it can make it so expensive that the US will decide to back off. These are strategic attacks, their form of "second strike". Raising the price of an attack on them, exactly as a nuclear armed country would retaliate on cities and not on military bases.
It explains that one of Iran's goals is to make the GCC (UAE, Kuwait, etc) uninvestable by making them non-safe and choke the Strait of Hormuz. This affects the petrodollar as well as American stock market since the GCC invest much of that oil money back into American companies.
He also explains in this video why a ground invasion of Iran is damn near impossible due to the terrains and how Saudi Arabia and Iran are connected: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y_hbz6loEo
As someone who doesn't know much about the highly complex history, goals of the Middle East and the world, they're informative but I'm also open to people who disagree with this guy. Would love to hear things from all sides.
Warning: The Youtube channel has a very doomish view of this conflict though. He thinks this is the start of WW3.
Japan and korean has it's oil imports from havoc at a 70-90% percent i think? very interesting to see how will this go.
very smart move for Iran to attach USA millity base at UAE...
Yay! Another wave of hyperinflation and affordability crisis coming in, while youth unemployment is at its highest and the millennials are losing their jobs to AI. What could go wrong?
The only thing Trump achieved so far was replacing Khamenei with Khamenei. Otherwise, it's a total disaster from the strategic point of view. Making the US that much weaker in the long run is somewhat ironic for a guy wearing a MAGA hat.
But yes, I generally agree with you. It’s like the US/Israel don’t know how Iranians think about their country, their government, and the history of US in the region.
Do they not know that many people who hate their government’s domestic policy actually support their foreign policy?
Do they know that of dozens of ace fighter pilots (e.g. Jalil Zandi) minted by Iran during the Iraq-Iran war, most of them were “Shah loyalists” who preferred an Islamic Iran over foreign invasion of Iran?
It’s too incredible to think that they don’t know these things, so I guess they don’t care. So the goal must not be military, but something else.
Cut off the EU's main energy supplier and make it dependent on the US.
Grab the largest oil reserves.
Start a special military operation with Iran, knowing that Iran will close the Strait of Hormuz, thus cutting off a large part of the world's oil and gas.
The US profits from this are going to be staggering.
The shipping disruption has a second-order impact that I haven't seen discussed much: fertilizer.
Five of the world's largest fertilizer exporters — Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Bahrain — rely almost entirely on Hormuz to ship their products. These aren't boutique exports. They supply a meaningful fraction of global nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
The chain: fertilizer prices spike → farmers plant less or reduce application → crop yields fall → grain prices rise → food-importing countries face hard choices.
This runs on a different clock than the oil shock. The oil price spike is visible today. The food impact plays out over months — the planting decisions being made right now (under price uncertainty, with fertilizer supply chains disrupted) will shape harvests in June-August. Egypt's president already declared a "state of near-emergency" on inflation.
Hormuz blocking energy exports makes headlines. Hormuz blocking fertilizer exports is quieter — but for import-dependent food economies, it's potentially more consequential over a 6-12 month horizon.
Shipping insurance up 400% makes everything worse. A $250K/tanker surcharge doesn't just affect oil ships — every container ship, bulk carrier, and LNG tanker operating in the region pays more, and those costs flow forward to consumers of whatever those ships carry.
One under-discussed coupling here is war-risk insurance.
Even if you assume you can physically route around the Red Sea or queue for escorted transits, the cost/availability of coverage can dominate the actual freight rate. A $/bbl/day premium that looks small at baseline becomes enormous once you multiply it by (a) crisis multipliers and (b) the holding time you incur from delays/port congestion. That creates a nonlinear feedback: higher perceived risk -> higher premium -> fewer sailings -> more delay -> higher premium.
I built a small terminal simulator to explore those dynamics (physical cargo + futures + insurance + random events + ceasefire crash): https://rentry.co/5ske8k8z
17 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 40.9 ms ] threadFrom one evil war monger to the next.
Its worked before (see 1980s https://www.strausscenter.org/strait-of-hormuz-tanker-war/), and it'll probably work again. Especially as Iran has different values on loss.
The other issue that is less said is that the USA probably doesn't have the capacity to keep bombing in this way. They are using all the fancy missiles first, but haven't made a safe path to do unguided cheap bombing. This is Russian level stupidity, and shows the danger of letting "true believers" organise things over actual planners who've done this before.
more over, allies can't keep up that level of air defence.
It _could be_ bullshit that iran has a whole load of ballistic and drones spread all over the place, but frankly the US can't afford to find out if thats the case.
Sure the US could escort tankers, but that would mean much higher risk of casualties. Given that the USA is reasonably self sufficient in oil, thats probably a hard sell.
Also, does the US have enough stock of ship born anti-missle systems? Sure it has the expensive stuff, and the Phalanx at last resort, but does the USA have the stomach to have a ship sink? I fear what happens after that.
If the Kurdish people decided to take up the deal and go against Iran, and Turkey/Azerbaijan decided to follow suite, then it's going to be really messy.
As Mark Carney said: "if the middle powers are not in the table, they are in the menu" meaning "if the weak don't unite and resist together we'll be eaten by the strong".
OTOH, does anyone remember the "shock and awe" in the first days of Iraq War? It was pretty much like this. Soon, the orange buffoon might have a "mission accomplished" [1] moment and revert the tendency in the midterms. And then the U.S. gets even more screwed in the long run.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech
If you're the Iranian regime, the world is a hostile place. You're surrounded by enemies and potential enemies. In your time of crisis, the friends you thought you had are acting like they don't know you. The situation is one of existential threat. A future reality with your head on a pike is a very real possibility. You don't exactly have many options here, so maybe you play the only move you can make. It's a risky one, but it's at least bold and will be effectuating.
Interestingly, this move also attacks your real enemy: the globalized market. Iran would do well for itself in a world of 1926; in 2026, there's going to be friction.
In a sense, they're not fighting the US/Israel. They're fighting our datacenters. I'm sure the strategy for this conflict was vibe-planned to a large extent. A hyper-conservative regime like this will probably fare (at least in the long run) about as well as you would if you decide to nope out of society and go live in a Hobbesian state of nature in your local park. That might work for awhile, but eventually, the system will come for you. And that's just neutrality. Pick a fight with capital, and you'll always lose.
LOL. Sorry, this is silly. Do you really think that Iran hates data centers?
The best scenario for Trump is to make this a limited war that nobody even notices outside of Iran's borders. He wants to announce to Americans "see? We did what we wanted and it was over in a few days, you barely noticed it".
While the nightmare scenario is to end up bogged down in a long drawn war with global repercussions, inflation, market crashes or even boots on the ground for months and years.
Iran can't win a military confrontation with the US, but it can make it so expensive that the US will decide to back off. These are strategic attacks, their form of "second strike". Raising the price of an attack on them, exactly as a nuclear armed country would retaliate on cities and not on military bases.
It explains that one of Iran's goals is to make the GCC (UAE, Kuwait, etc) uninvestable by making them non-safe and choke the Strait of Hormuz. This affects the petrodollar as well as American stock market since the GCC invest much of that oil money back into American companies.
His other videos on Iran, Israel, and America through the lens of game theory are also quite good. It's a side you often you don't hear in mainstream media: https://www.youtube.com/@PredictiveHistory/search?query=iran
He also explains in this video why a ground invasion of Iran is damn near impossible due to the terrains and how Saudi Arabia and Iran are connected: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y_hbz6loEo
As someone who doesn't know much about the highly complex history, goals of the Middle East and the world, they're informative but I'm also open to people who disagree with this guy. Would love to hear things from all sides.
Warning: The Youtube channel has a very doomish view of this conflict though. He thinks this is the start of WW3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_bombing_of_Iraq#Distracti...
But yes, I generally agree with you. It’s like the US/Israel don’t know how Iranians think about their country, their government, and the history of US in the region.
Do they not know that many people who hate their government’s domestic policy actually support their foreign policy?
Do they know that of dozens of ace fighter pilots (e.g. Jalil Zandi) minted by Iran during the Iraq-Iran war, most of them were “Shah loyalists” who preferred an Islamic Iran over foreign invasion of Iran?
It’s too incredible to think that they don’t know these things, so I guess they don’t care. So the goal must not be military, but something else.
Cut off the EU's main energy supplier and make it dependent on the US.
Grab the largest oil reserves.
Start a special military operation with Iran, knowing that Iran will close the Strait of Hormuz, thus cutting off a large part of the world's oil and gas.
The US profits from this are going to be staggering.
Five of the world's largest fertilizer exporters — Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Bahrain — rely almost entirely on Hormuz to ship their products. These aren't boutique exports. They supply a meaningful fraction of global nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
The chain: fertilizer prices spike → farmers plant less or reduce application → crop yields fall → grain prices rise → food-importing countries face hard choices.
This runs on a different clock than the oil shock. The oil price spike is visible today. The food impact plays out over months — the planting decisions being made right now (under price uncertainty, with fertilizer supply chains disrupted) will shape harvests in June-August. Egypt's president already declared a "state of near-emergency" on inflation.
Hormuz blocking energy exports makes headlines. Hormuz blocking fertilizer exports is quieter — but for import-dependent food economies, it's potentially more consequential over a 6-12 month horizon.
Shipping insurance up 400% makes everything worse. A $250K/tanker surcharge doesn't just affect oil ships — every container ship, bulk carrier, and LNG tanker operating in the region pays more, and those costs flow forward to consumers of whatever those ships carry.
Even if you assume you can physically route around the Red Sea or queue for escorted transits, the cost/availability of coverage can dominate the actual freight rate. A $/bbl/day premium that looks small at baseline becomes enormous once you multiply it by (a) crisis multipliers and (b) the holding time you incur from delays/port congestion. That creates a nonlinear feedback: higher perceived risk -> higher premium -> fewer sailings -> more delay -> higher premium.
I built a small terminal simulator to explore those dynamics (physical cargo + futures + insurance + random events + ceasefire crash): https://rentry.co/5ske8k8z