The Strait of Hormuz is a such a historical f-up. 1) It cuts the oil supply 2) It creates the demand and infrastructure for non-US backed Oil 3) It gives Iran a revenue stream and domain over taxing the Strait where none existed before 4) Crypto happens outstide of reach of most sanctions 5) Not knowing your footing: This has now encompassed the placement of underseas cables and global connectivity 5) As time goes one, there are other shoes that will drop 6) Even if this resolves, things like decoupling the USD and Oil now have momemntum.
You're taking this claim way too seriously. Iran is at war. This part of the information war. Nobody is going to pay fees to Iran to use internet cables.
See in an information war, it doesn't have to be true to be dangerous, and never assume how stock prices might effect people's resileance. The greater point is there are cans of worms that are opening that weren't anticipated. This is just one example;].
They can make all the demands they want. I can demand you give me a thousand bitcoin to not burn your house down. That doesn't mean it has any remote chance of happening.
> Now Iran knows they can blockade that Strait and makes these demands so they have much more leverage
Tehran has more potential leverage inasmuch as they've credibly demonstrated they can block the Strait. Whether they have more actual leverage than before is uncertain–trade flows are routing around them. And their own shores remain blockaded. (Just because the U.S. has less leverage than it did before doesn't mean Iran necessarily has more.)
I imagine they'll be able to cut exactly one cable before the US starts bombing them again. If my goal is to profit from subsea cables I don't own, getting bombed doesn't sound like a great strategy if I'm Iran.
It's information war to scare US companies away from the middle east.
What's to stop Iran from using the threat of cutting those cables as leverage? A speedboat and a depth charge are all it takes, and neither are particularly difficult to make.
> The enormous pile of ordnance floating in the gulf of oman that can be easily dropped on Tehran, for one
Probably not. The other comment is right: cutting cables means having its own cables cut. (Tehran is also probably weighing whether it wants to continue mobilising almost all of its neighbors against itself. Trashing e.g. Kuwait for shits and giggles isn't strategically productive.)
At what point can we just commonly agree that the goals of this "administration" are to do as much damage as possible to the United States? I'm sure there are some true believers (eg Trump himself would be just as much at home yelling racist abuse at nursing home staff), and many that are just in it to steal as much as they can. But the people whispering in ears and the overall support is driven by powers that want to destroy the United States - whether it's Russia, Israel, China, Big Tech who want to turn the place into a corporate authoritarian prison camp, or all of them together with their own pet projects. And that so many Americans continue to buy into this administration's nonsense narratives really illustrates an undercurrent of hate for this country that has been brewing for decades.
Refilling the SPR would’ve required finding money to actually buy some oil. Put simply the SPR is broke/in debt.
Over the last few years congress passed pieces of legislation (infrastructure bills, healthcare changes, BBB) and used future SPR oil sales as an "offsetting receipt". Basically they say the’ll sell off millions of barrels of SPR holdings, count the future revenue as negative spending on paper, and use that money to pay for entirely unrelated legislative projects to make bills look deficit-neutral.
Yet another source for deficit spending (to the tune of $20bn) that doesn’t even show up in the headline numbers. Borrowing from future generations yet again.
(Sorry this is the kind of thing that grinds my gears - setting up some organization that is intended to be revenue neutral and self sufficient, then plundering it when politically useful. Same thing is happening to the Presidio park in SF right now)
1) Oman and Iran both have territorial waters that extend into the center of the strait. See #3
2) What is "non-US backed oil?
3) Every country has the right to control their territorial waters.
4) Governments have worked hard to erode people's privacy rights such that crypto is not as untraceable as people still think.
5) ?
5) ?
6) Let it happen.
These objections seem confused. The person you are replying to is not attacking Iran, but you seem to be defending Iran. They're saying that attacking Iran was a stupid idea, because it caused Iran to strangle the Strait of Hormuz, a thing they hadn't done and that there was no indication that they were considering doing before the attack.
It's even stupider than the OP said. Aside from the strait, when you destroy Iran's oil facilities, you raise the price of oil for the foreseeable future. When Iran retaliates by destroying the oil facilities of local allies, it raises the price of oil for the foreseeable future. The only beneficiaries are oilmen in the US, Russia and South America, and the US is also supposed to be attacking Russia and South America.
The US has never looked, or been, weaker than it is right now.
It was Jimmy Carter that established that the Strait of Hormuz would stay open, through the strength of the US military threat.
And now? The US is a paper tiger, making ridiculous threats via barely used social media platforms and then revoking them with just as little formality. The US has already done its worst, except for nukes, and the threats of nuking Iran are clear fakes.
The US used to be a guarantor of safety on the seas. That appears to have been completely destroyed by the weak leadership in the US.
None of these things are true, it's just propaganda.
> The US has never looked, or been, weaker than it is right now.
Nothing has fundamentally changed with respect to American power. If this was true, that America has never been weaker than it is right now, why wouldn't China just go ahead and invade Taiwan? This is the perfect opportunity! Or is it that the US is so strong that even at its weakest point it can deter China from taking military action over Taiwan? Doesn't pass the smell test.
> It was Jimmy Carter that established that the Strait of Hormuz would stay open, through the strength of the US military threat.
And that worked for a long time.
And things change. The world isn't static.
And if the Strait is closed then it, as it is today, is also closed for the Iranians with the ultimate effect of making a cheeseburger cost a few dollars more and people coal-rolling their F-250s around having to spend more to do so. It screws over the rest of the world, but they also allowed this Iranian regime to fester and threaten until it was intolerable.
> And now? The US is a paper tiger, making ridiculous threats via barely used social media platforms and then revoking them with just as little formality.
The United States casually walked in and bombed the hell out of Iran's military and killed its leaders. Idk. If I was Iranian I sure wouldn't be looking at the US as a paper tiger when it can go park an aircraft carrier nearby and then bomb all my stuff and there's basically nothing I can do about it except to bomb defenseless oil tankers.
> The US used to be a guarantor of safety on the seas. That appears to have been completely destroyed by the weak leadership in the US.
It's a package deal. In order to be the guarantor of the seas you have to take actions like the on in Iran. All Iran had to do was double, triple, or quadruple its missile stockpile and then try to enact tolls on the Strait of Hormuz and the cost to stop it would be too great. US action today is exactly the role it is playing in guaranteeing safety on the seas. By the way, why is the US the one that has to do this? And if you don't like us doing it, maybe we should stop. I know that's what the far-left and MAGA want - they want isolationism.
> Nothing has fundamentally changed with respect to American power.
Oh, come on. NATO and Gulf allies are starting to deny US use of their bases, and Trump's been credibly threatening to leave NATO. We've also nixed a bunch of our soft power programs like USAID.
NATO just today as reported by Bloomberg said that if the Strait isn't open by July that it will take or consider taking action.
Your view of the situation doesn't match reality.
Separately, we still have like 11 aircraft carriers and our entire military still in tact. Nothing has changed with respect to our power. If you think otherwise, you are simply wrong. There's no other way to put it.
It was clear from very early on that this war was (IMHO) the largest strategic blunder in US history and it's not even close. Prior to this, closing the Strait was an untested threat. This war forced Iran to prove they can in fact close the Strait and there's nothing the largest military on Earth can do about it. Well done, everybody, the system works.
The one point I'll disagree with is that sanctions do prevent you paying Iran even with crypto. I mean, you can fund your own wallet and give money to Iran but you've technically committed a crime and a pretty serious one. It's also one that's fairly easy to document and prove that you did it.
Oh, also the impact of cutting the world fertilizer supply hasn't hit yet. That'll come later in the year when the harvests are down, primarily in the Global South. This will also impact food prices in the West so look forward to that.
Your last comment suggests weakening of the petrodollar. I don't know if you meant it this way but let me dispel that myth: the USD doesn't have strength and power because oil sales are denominated in dollars. You have it backwards. Oil trades are denominated in dollars because of the demand for dollars and the root of that is the US military.
> The threat of US sanctions are a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
The threat of arrest is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
The threat of handcuffs is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
The threat of tasering is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
The threat of criminal charges is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
The threat of drone strikes is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
The threat of literally having your President helicoptered out of your capital by US special forces is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
>the USD doesn't have strength and power because oil sales are denominated in dollars. You have it backwards.
Not quite. The "petrodollar" deal has helped to bootstrap and anchor the USD strength at a somewhat critical moment of history after the gold peg was "temporarily" suspended, which was effectively a default of the US government (second in the 20th century!).
Sure, today trade of oil in USD no longer plays a significant role in supporting its dominance, but it still plays a role. Together with other factors (such as increased weaponization of the USD-led financial system) rise of alternative settlement systems corrodes the network effects on which USD relies. Each blow in isolation may be insignificant, but their accumulation could become critical owning to the extreme non-linearity of the network effects.
I would like many, many other entities and institutions to demand Big Tech (and large multinationals writ large) pay up, in general. Their coffers were filled by people unknowingly giving away valuable resources, which these companies then sold on for their true worth; in a more just world, users would have been able to sell those resources at actual fair value, and then use the income to pay for the tech industry's services out-of-pocket. The "shakedown" is a little uncouth, but preferable to the alternative we've been living for almost 2 decades.
Basically. Strong country attacks weak country. Weak country can't fight back against strong country so they attack other weak countries hoping they can get enough negative feedback to strong country. And seek sympathy from people in strong country.
Saudi and Iran hatred goes back long before that. Shia vs Sunni. Genesis of most of the problems in middle east. Syrian civil war: Sunni vs Alawites(Shia offshoot). Yemen civil war: Sunni vs Shia. When a mosque is bombed somewhere in middle east, its sunni vs Shia. It makes for some interesting decisions on support from the US side. We are now backing the new president of Syria who spent had spent a decade killing Americans in Iraq when he was leadership in Iraqi Al Qaeda.
Why would they want to harm Iraq? Iraq is mostly Shia who identity with Iran. Their only real military force is Iranian backed Shia militias which led to some interesting things like US bombing Iraqi military installations. More interesting is the media never covered all the American A10s strafing Iraq government installations in Iraq.
Looking at the map, I am failing to understand why any of the named American Big Tech companies would risk breaking sanctions to protect these cables. Why not just threaten your neighbouring countries instead? They have some skin in the game.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48193578
Article claims this primarily affects US tech companies. Then refuses to elaborate on who and how.
The Strait of Hormuz is a such a historical f-up. 1) It cuts the oil supply 2) It creates the demand and infrastructure for non-US backed Oil 3) It gives Iran a revenue stream and domain over taxing the Strait where none existed before 4) Crypto happens outstide of reach of most sanctions 5) Not knowing your footing: This has now encompassed the placement of underseas cables and global connectivity 5) As time goes one, there are other shoes that will drop 6) Even if this resolves, things like decoupling the USD and Oil now have momemntum.
You're taking this claim way too seriously. Iran is at war. This part of the information war. Nobody is going to pay fees to Iran to use internet cables.
See in an information war, it doesn't have to be true to be dangerous, and never assume how stock prices might effect people's resileance. The greater point is there are cans of worms that are opening that weren't anticipated. This is just one example;].
This was all theory before the war. Now Iran knows they can blockade that Strait and makes these demands so they have much more leverage.
They can make all the demands they want. I can demand you give me a thousand bitcoin to not burn your house down. That doesn't mean it has any remote chance of happening.
> Now Iran knows they can blockade that Strait and makes these demands so they have much more leverage
Tehran has more potential leverage inasmuch as they've credibly demonstrated they can block the Strait. Whether they have more actual leverage than before is uncertain–trade flows are routing around them. And their own shores remain blockaded. (Just because the U.S. has less leverage than it did before doesn't mean Iran necessarily has more.)
It’s not like they can shut down the main air corridor to Asia if they please, right?
> not like they can shut down the main air corridor to Asia
"Shut down" is not particularly accurate. America and Europe can route around. The only ones fucked are the Gulf carriers.
What is nobody going to do if Iran military cuts cables?
Or blocks repair ships after normal accidental damage?
I imagine they'll be able to cut exactly one cable before the US starts bombing them again. If my goal is to profit from subsea cables I don't own, getting bombed doesn't sound like a great strategy if I'm Iran.
It's information war to scare US companies away from the middle east.
What's to stop Iran from using the threat of cutting those cables as leverage? A speedboat and a depth charge are all it takes, and neither are particularly difficult to make.
> What's to stop Iran
What's to stop them? The enormous pile of ordnance floating in the gulf of oman that can be easily dropped on Tehran, for one...
> The enormous pile of ordnance floating in the gulf of oman that can be easily dropped on Tehran, for one
Probably not. The other comment is right: cutting cables means having its own cables cut. (Tehran is also probably weighing whether it wants to continue mobilising almost all of its neighbors against itself. Trashing e.g. Kuwait for shits and giggles isn't strategically productive.)
Tehran is also probably weighing whether it wants to continue mobilising almost all of its neighbors against itself
Interesting point. It might be a good time for some good old-fashioned false-flag action.
Appeasement doesnt stop it, that's for sure. They would still be free to do it.
The problem is that you can only do it once.
Starting a war with Iran without filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserves at $60/bbl was truly special.
The Iran regime was obviously going to be a push over.
Not the first forever war initiated as a Blitzkrieg. Not the last either.
At what point can we just commonly agree that the goals of this "administration" are to do as much damage as possible to the United States? I'm sure there are some true believers (eg Trump himself would be just as much at home yelling racist abuse at nursing home staff), and many that are just in it to steal as much as they can. But the people whispering in ears and the overall support is driven by powers that want to destroy the United States - whether it's Russia, Israel, China, Big Tech who want to turn the place into a corporate authoritarian prison camp, or all of them together with their own pet projects. And that so many Americans continue to buy into this administration's nonsense narratives really illustrates an undercurrent of hate for this country that has been brewing for decades.
Refilling the SPR would’ve required finding money to actually buy some oil. Put simply the SPR is broke/in debt.
Over the last few years congress passed pieces of legislation (infrastructure bills, healthcare changes, BBB) and used future SPR oil sales as an "offsetting receipt". Basically they say the’ll sell off millions of barrels of SPR holdings, count the future revenue as negative spending on paper, and use that money to pay for entirely unrelated legislative projects to make bills look deficit-neutral.
Yet another source for deficit spending (to the tune of $20bn) that doesn’t even show up in the headline numbers. Borrowing from future generations yet again.
(Sorry this is the kind of thing that grinds my gears - setting up some organization that is intended to be revenue neutral and self sufficient, then plundering it when politically useful. Same thing is happening to the Presidio park in SF right now)
These objections seem confused. The person you are replying to is not attacking Iran, but you seem to be defending Iran. They're saying that attacking Iran was a stupid idea, because it caused Iran to strangle the Strait of Hormuz, a thing they hadn't done and that there was no indication that they were considering doing before the attack.
It's even stupider than the OP said. Aside from the strait, when you destroy Iran's oil facilities, you raise the price of oil for the foreseeable future. When Iran retaliates by destroying the oil facilities of local allies, it raises the price of oil for the foreseeable future. The only beneficiaries are oilmen in the US, Russia and South America, and the US is also supposed to be attacking Russia and South America.
The US has never looked, or been, weaker than it is right now.
It was Jimmy Carter that established that the Strait of Hormuz would stay open, through the strength of the US military threat.
And now? The US is a paper tiger, making ridiculous threats via barely used social media platforms and then revoking them with just as little formality. The US has already done its worst, except for nukes, and the threats of nuking Iran are clear fakes.
The US used to be a guarantor of safety on the seas. That appears to have been completely destroyed by the weak leadership in the US.
None of these things are true, it's just propaganda.
> The US has never looked, or been, weaker than it is right now.
Nothing has fundamentally changed with respect to American power. If this was true, that America has never been weaker than it is right now, why wouldn't China just go ahead and invade Taiwan? This is the perfect opportunity! Or is it that the US is so strong that even at its weakest point it can deter China from taking military action over Taiwan? Doesn't pass the smell test.
> It was Jimmy Carter that established that the Strait of Hormuz would stay open, through the strength of the US military threat.
And that worked for a long time.
And things change. The world isn't static.
And if the Strait is closed then it, as it is today, is also closed for the Iranians with the ultimate effect of making a cheeseburger cost a few dollars more and people coal-rolling their F-250s around having to spend more to do so. It screws over the rest of the world, but they also allowed this Iranian regime to fester and threaten until it was intolerable.
> And now? The US is a paper tiger, making ridiculous threats via barely used social media platforms and then revoking them with just as little formality.
The United States casually walked in and bombed the hell out of Iran's military and killed its leaders. Idk. If I was Iranian I sure wouldn't be looking at the US as a paper tiger when it can go park an aircraft carrier nearby and then bomb all my stuff and there's basically nothing I can do about it except to bomb defenseless oil tankers.
> The US used to be a guarantor of safety on the seas. That appears to have been completely destroyed by the weak leadership in the US.
It's a package deal. In order to be the guarantor of the seas you have to take actions like the on in Iran. All Iran had to do was double, triple, or quadruple its missile stockpile and then try to enact tolls on the Strait of Hormuz and the cost to stop it would be too great. US action today is exactly the role it is playing in guaranteeing safety on the seas. By the way, why is the US the one that has to do this? And if you don't like us doing it, maybe we should stop. I know that's what the far-left and MAGA want - they want isolationism.
> Nothing has fundamentally changed with respect to American power.
Oh, come on. NATO and Gulf allies are starting to deny US use of their bases, and Trump's been credibly threatening to leave NATO. We've also nixed a bunch of our soft power programs like USAID.
NATO just today as reported by Bloomberg said that if the Strait isn't open by July that it will take or consider taking action.
Your view of the situation doesn't match reality.
Separately, we still have like 11 aircraft carriers and our entire military still in tact. Nothing has changed with respect to our power. If you think otherwise, you are simply wrong. There's no other way to put it.
It was clear from very early on that this war was (IMHO) the largest strategic blunder in US history and it's not even close. Prior to this, closing the Strait was an untested threat. This war forced Iran to prove they can in fact close the Strait and there's nothing the largest military on Earth can do about it. Well done, everybody, the system works.
The one point I'll disagree with is that sanctions do prevent you paying Iran even with crypto. I mean, you can fund your own wallet and give money to Iran but you've technically committed a crime and a pretty serious one. It's also one that's fairly easy to document and prove that you did it.
Oh, also the impact of cutting the world fertilizer supply hasn't hit yet. That'll come later in the year when the harvests are down, primarily in the Global South. This will also impact food prices in the West so look forward to that.
Your last comment suggests weakening of the petrodollar. I don't know if you meant it this way but let me dispel that myth: the USD doesn't have strength and power because oil sales are denominated in dollars. You have it backwards. Oil trades are denominated in dollars because of the demand for dollars and the root of that is the US military.
> I mean, you can fund your own wallet and give money to Iran but you've technically committed a crime and a pretty serious one.
Other countries aren't subject to any US laws. The threat of US sanctions are a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
> The threat of US sanctions are a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
The threat of arrest is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
The threat of handcuffs is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
The threat of tasering is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
The threat of criminal charges is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
The threat of drone strikes is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
The threat of literally having your President helicoptered out of your capital by US special forces is a just a threat, not any sort of law enforcement.
This is fun!
>the USD doesn't have strength and power because oil sales are denominated in dollars. You have it backwards.
Not quite. The "petrodollar" deal has helped to bootstrap and anchor the USD strength at a somewhat critical moment of history after the gold peg was "temporarily" suspended, which was effectively a default of the US government (second in the 20th century!).
Sure, today trade of oil in USD no longer plays a significant role in supporting its dominance, but it still plays a role. Together with other factors (such as increased weaponization of the USD-led financial system) rise of alternative settlement systems corrodes the network effects on which USD relies. Each blow in isolation may be insignificant, but their accumulation could become critical owning to the extreme non-linearity of the network effects.
When you put it like that I am starting to think this Trump guy might not be that good of a leader, this time neither.
I would like many, many other entities and institutions to demand Big Tech (and large multinationals writ large) pay up, in general. Their coffers were filled by people unknowingly giving away valuable resources, which these companies then sold on for their true worth; in a more just world, users would have been able to sell those resources at actual fair value, and then use the income to pay for the tech industry's services out-of-pocket. The "shakedown" is a little uncouth, but preferable to the alternative we've been living for almost 2 decades.
Iran's chief strategy in this war seems to be to harm Iraq and Saudi Arabia
Basically. Strong country attacks weak country. Weak country can't fight back against strong country so they attack other weak countries hoping they can get enough negative feedback to strong country. And seek sympathy from people in strong country.
Hurt people hurt people?
I guess. I think the dynamic is different though. Iran attacking bystanders is more strategic than what that adage normally refers to in my opinion.
Not quite. Saudi Arabia is a base for US operations.
Saudi and Iran hatred goes back long before that. Shia vs Sunni. Genesis of most of the problems in middle east. Syrian civil war: Sunni vs Alawites(Shia offshoot). Yemen civil war: Sunni vs Shia. When a mosque is bombed somewhere in middle east, its sunni vs Shia. It makes for some interesting decisions on support from the US side. We are now backing the new president of Syria who spent had spent a decade killing Americans in Iraq when he was leadership in Iraqi Al Qaeda.
Why would they want to harm Iraq? Iraq is mostly Shia who identity with Iran. Their only real military force is Iranian backed Shia militias which led to some interesting things like US bombing Iraqi military installations. More interesting is the media never covered all the American A10s strafing Iraq government installations in Iraq.
Their enemy has bases there
It's fine guys, the DOW is at 50k.
Looking at the map, I am failing to understand why any of the named American Big Tech companies would risk breaking sanctions to protect these cables. Why not just threaten your neighbouring countries instead? They have some skin in the game.
Aren't US citizens and corporations prohibited from paying anything to Iran due to sanctions?
Crypto.
Only if you’re not in the club
In letter and spirit, yes. If you're in the club, no.
> If you're in the club, no
Evidence folks in the U.S. leadership are "paying antyhing to Iran"?
Can you substantiate this?
"There is only yes and all other answers"
2€/MB :(
Completely avoidable and optional btw.
Thanks Trump and Bibi! The whole world suffers for these two men.