I thought this video was a good balanced summary of Shia Islamist ideology in Iran and gives a bit of an understanding of why the regime won't easily back down. Historical and religious context is important to understand why Iran having nuclear weapons gives neighbouring countries more anxiety than other countries in the region. As always, consider the source and open to criticism.
Also, don't take this an me justifying the U.S. or Israel engaging in a conflict like this. I think what they are doing is equally as dangerous and isn't solving anything. It's more just a response to critics when they question why Iran in particular is feared compared to other nuclear countries.
I mean all of this equally applies to the US Israel and Pakistan, at this point the rational nuclaer powers are China and Russia, the UK and France
I always seem to read his posts in a Pinky and the Brain voice
Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran's crown jewel, Kharg Island. Our Weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the World has ever known but, for reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island. However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision. During my First Term, and currently, I rebuilt our Military into the Most Lethal, Powerful, and Effective Force, by far, anywhere in the World. Iran has NO ability to defend anything that we want to attack — There is nothing they can do about it! Iran will NEVER have a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the ability to threaten the United States of America, the Middle East or, for that matter, the World! Iran's Military, and all others involved with this Terrorist Regime, would be wise to lay down their arms, and save what's left of their country, which isn't much! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President
DONALD J. TRUMP
This is where 90% of Iran's refining and oil exports occur (due to how shallow the coast around Iran is). It's the engine of their oil output.
This means several extremely crucial things
USA is clearly planning to take over Iran's oil infrastructure for itself (or at the very minimum completely severing Iran out of its oil export ability)
It's also the perfect location to plan a ground invasion of Iran and makes a ground invasion almost inevitable at this point (especially if the intent is the full takeover of the island).
It's a significant escalation, the video of Bessent after coming back from an urgent discussion with Trump, he likely knew the economic repercussions of the move would be immense.
Ironically, this Guardian article from 2 days ago explains why Kharg would be such a bad target.
Experts say bombing or capturing the site with US forces would be likely to cause a sustained increase to already surging oil prices, as it would amount to taking the entirety of Iran’s daily crude exports offline.
“We may see the $120 a barrel price we saw on Monday heading to the $150 if Kharg were attacked,” said Neil Quilliam, with the Chatham House thinktank. “It’s too vital for global energy markets”.
It's effectively semi-permanently removing / locking out 4% of the entire world's oil market for the foreseeable future (Canada sits at 6% for context). Adding this to the 20%-25% that the Strait of Hormuz represents excluding Iran and is expected to continue to have mass disruption, the world is not ready for the sheer shock.
Quote:
“If the US were to seize it, then you are separating the Iranian oil industry. Iran would have production but couldn’t export, while the US wouldn’t be able to produce. That would set markets in a tailspin; that’s a real standoff,” the analyst said.
China is one of the most impacted by this, and can't possible be happy or sit on the sidelines forever. And with China controlling 1/3 of the world's shipping fleet, this will have significant supply chain disruption and price escalation.
Iran has said any attack on its oil and energy infrastructure will lead to retaliatory strikes on facilities in the region owned by oil companies that have American shares or cooperate with the United States, state media reported, citing Tehran’s Khatam al-Anbiya military command headquarters.
Quote:
The United States’ strike on Iran’s Kharg Island, a critical crude export terminal, has escalated the stakes in the war and could ultimately send oil prices “out of control,” a retired army official told CNN.
“It means that we have raised the stakes in this war considerably. It’s gone simply from a ‘take out the military, take out the regime’ but now we’re trying to take out the economic lifeblood of this country, potentially,” former US Army brigadier general Mark Kimmitt said.
Kimmitt said the US is holding the island “hostage” to ensure that Iran allows ships through the Strait of Hormuz, whose closure has already sent crude oil prices soaring.
However, if that oil infrastructure is targeted, Kimmitt said “it is clear that Iran is going to attack the rest of the infrastructure in the Middle East.”
“And at that point, the prices of oil will just go out of control,” he added.
Im guessing Iran is responding to the Kharg island bombing
Iranian regime is issuing "evacuation warnings" to residents of the United Arab Emirates, calling on them to evacuate from three ports and the adjacent areas in the country: Jebel Ali Port in Dubai, Khalifa Port in Abu Dhabi, and Fujairah Port. First warning of its kind.
Ya, there have been plenty of articles about how they didn't have a plan. What it sounds like is Bibi said he was going to do this with or without the US, and the US said "OK fine" and maybe thought it was going to go like last year when it was 12 days or whatever.
But Israel's plan is scorched Earth, they don't care about human suffering there. They don't really care about the Straight of Hormuz. Their agenda is to decimate Iran so they don't have to worry about terrorist attacks, which is a fair and reasonable desire. I don't fault that goal. But the reality is this will not lead to that. We know this, because there are countless examples from history. Perhaps they know, too, that they are just buying a decade of down time. The reality is you can't get peace with war on a people(not Iran, terrorists) who are not rational actors. Their fundamental philosophies are not compatible with peace with Israel.
They way out of this is long and hard, involving decades of work to turn people from desperation to hope and success so they don't see desperation as the only option. You do this one child at a time. One village, one town, one school. It's hard dedicated work that can fix this. Not bombs. Unfortunately resources for this are scarce, but hey, at least billionaires can have planes and yachts, and now rockets. We reap what we sow.
I mostly agree with what you said here. Israel has had enough, they made their own mistake letting their guard down on Oct 7th, and you can see the results of that.
I do not think that Israel doesn’t care about the civilians of Iran, or they would be hitting civilian areas that would result in maximum civilian deaths. Now, mistakes have been made, look at US hitting the school, so to say that there haven’t and won’t be more civilian casualties is false. But you have Iran and its proxy’s whose stated goal is death to Israel and death to America, you see them targeting civilians.
If Israel didn’t, or doesn’t attack Iran, what do you think would happen? Well, we have seen what happens. They build up missile and weapons stockpiles and when they get to the point where they think they can inflict significant damage and casualties to Israel, they attack.
I do agree with your last paragraph that the long term way out is through education, hope with jobs and economic development. That is not the path that the current regime in Iran is going down. That’s why they have to change the regime.
Unfortunately, change in Iran and the region reguires conflicts, one side has to be pushed back, so it can be built up through education, economic development, and hope.
As long as Iran’s stated goal is death to Israel and death to America we will continue to see uncertainty and destabilization in the region. If both sides are at least willing to let the other side exist, then there is a chance, and possibly hope that peace can come to the region.
I mostly agree with what you said here. Israel has had enough, they made their own mistake letting their guard down on Oct 7th, and you can see the results of that.
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Considering how deep of a penetration Israel has of Iran and their proxies it’s almost impossible to think they did not know of October 7th.
A more realistic view is Israeli leadership was ok with October 7th as it provided justification for waging war for the purpose of the ultimate destruction of Palestine and Iran.
Considering how deep of a penetration Israel has of Iran and their proxies it’s almost impossible to think they did not know of October 7th.
A more realistic view is Israeli leadership was ok with October 7th as it provided justification for waging war for the purpose of the ultimate destruction of Palestine and Iran.
In what ways do you think Israel is waging a war that will result in the ultimate destruction of Iran? Or are you talking about the Supreme Leader of Iran?
In what ways do you think Israel is waging a war that will result in the ultimate destruction of Iran? Or are you talking about the Supreme Leader of Iran?
I honestly think the scariest nuclear threat is Netanyahu frustrated that Iran's fighting back and getting bombarded by Iranian missiles, and in a fit or rage, he nukes Iran.
It's rich that Netanyahu makes all these false claims about Iran being a nuclear threat in a matter of weeks for the past 30 years, when it's him that's the biggest nuclear threat to the world.
Naw, that's not how Bibi operates. He'll convince Trump to nuke Iran, if anything. Interesting that Isreal is not committing any ground troops alongside the yanks...
They didn't have 2500 to spare? Need to keep them all available to kill more Palestinians if and when needed?
Wait, I thought the U.S. had the biggest baddest bestest military ever? They started this stupid bulls***. They can damn well do it themselves. I hope the UK and everyone else tells him to eat a d***.
USA is clearly planning to take over Iran's oil infrastructure for itself (or at the very minimum completely severing Iran out of its oil export ability)
It's also the perfect location to plan a ground invasion of Iran and makes a ground invasion almost inevitable at this point (especially if the intent is the full takeover of the island).
I don't really see how that's the aim with the island. There's no realistic scenario where the US takes over Iran's oil infrastructure on Kharg for its own benefit without taking over the entire country, or at least enforcing a regime change to create a compliant state.
Nor do I think taking over an exposed (and tiny) island to launch an amphibious assault 30km away would make any kind of sense. And even if it did, they don't have any troops in any real numbers in that part of the world. It took something like 6 months to mass enough ground troops in the region for each of the Gulf wars.
The attacks and threats on Kharg are basically a clumsy attempt at brinkmanship to force deescalation. The US is likely hoping that by threatening basically all of Iran's oil industry, they may convince them to open up the Strait of Hormuz.
But Iran may view it as an empty threat. If they lose Kharg, then there's really no disincentive to heavily mining the straight to keep it closed or attacking oil infrastructure in the gulf nations and the US knows that. And unless the Iran regime falls, those kinds of things aren't really something that the US can totally prevent from happening. They tried to bomb their way out of Houthi attacks on shipping, and it didn't work, so they ended up giving up.
When you have fanatics leading one side and a government whose citizens freak out over $5/gallon gas on the other, the pain points are very asymmetrical. Iran is likely (and probably correctly) assuming that the US can't keep this up for the long term.
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I mean all of this equally applies to the US Israel and Pakistan, at this point the rational nuclaer powers are China and Russia, the UK and France
I don't know if I would consider Russia more rational than anyone else. I think all of the current nuclear powers are rational at least in the sense that they are not welcoming an end of the world scenario. That's not to say that there aren't degrees of recklessness with current nuclear powers, but Iran is the only country in the world where eschatology forms policy. This particularly impacts Israel since ground zero of that policy is in in Megiddo, a region in Israel (Armageddon is the Greek translation of Har Megiddo). Israel and America definitely warrant criticism, but I can't think of a more provocative and irrational foreign policy than the one Iran has towards Israel because it is totally based on mythology.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
Wait, I thought the U.S. had the biggest baddest bestest military ever? They started this stupid bulls***. They can damn well do it themselves. I hope the UK and everyone else tells him to eat a d***.
What happened to being able to "fight 2 wars at the same time"?
I don't really see how that's the aim with the island. There's no realistic scenario where the US takes over Iran's oil infrastructure on Kharg for its own benefit without taking over the entire country, or at least enforcing a regime change to create a compliant state.
You are still thinking from a rational perspective.
If you would have said in December that the US planned to kidnap Maduro to steal Venezuela's oil, decapitate the Ayatollah with full scale bombing of Iran, and attack Kharg Island with oil going over 100$ as a result of this calamity you would have likely been branded an extremist conspiracy nut.
If you would have said last year that Trump would declare world wide tariffs with percentages based of trade deficits of all things, you would have been seen as overzealous.
Yet here we are.
There is no plan for Iran. But it doesn't stop the Trump administration from doing things on a whim thinking it will solve problems because Trump is surrounded by yes men who will agree to anything that goes through his mind. Bessant's face yesterday said it all, and he's one of the only semi-competent person in his administration who does understand the repercussions.
No, it shouldn't mean that Trump is planning a ground invasion of Iran and I definitely think that was never a plan at all, but I genuinely think he thought Iran would just submit after their leadership got taken out.
Give it 2 weeks. He will half ass something worse and get himself in even more of a quagmire. And I think he may very well do attempt a ground invasion / takeover of Kharg Island because he is just that stupid.
Someone definitely would have claimed you have Trump Derangement Syndrome. Which turns out to just be people who recognized what he was before most others did and were desperately trying to stop a massive mistake. Oh well!
