Deterrence follow-through.
For the love of all that is holy, please spam all stations with these stickers: https://www.onbuy.com/de/p/100-stuc...HMqnDZ6z2FEa30t6DRDZGEfBOmUzsWnxoCaDAQAvD_BwE
I was just pointing out that the registration country of a tanker had no bearing here. You are accurate that the actual owners and beneficient of the supply chain affected do care about the status of those tankers. Which is the whole point of closing the straight. Those are powerful forces on the globe and hurting them, hurts the people who decided to attack Iran.
Direct Soviet and Maoist Chinese aid to clients warring with the US was perfectly normal. The Korean and Viet Nam conflicts are salient examples.Discreet US and client trade with those powers was a practical necessity.
Iran cannot impose seaboard invasion as a condition of US victory now so how pray tell could that change?
I know it is poor form to quote oneself but I just thought I needed to complete this thought a bit.
About the only thing I could see the US achieving with boots on the ground might be occupying enough of a land strip along the strait and coast to prevent shore launched drone boats. That would maybe make the straight passable again. I'm OK for it to stay closed until it's knock on effects topple the Trump regime.
The Iranian southern coast is a flat exposed strip of sand thats isolated by a wall of inhospitable mountains hundreds of miles long offering defenders a full unobstructed field of view with lots of places to hide and shoot from. It's sparsely populated and little infrastructure, I think it's also one of the of the hottest places on earth (like Death Valley hot). Not to mention the invader has to supply it's forces with EVERYTHING either by ship and air or truck everything from Basra down the ONE coastal road that exist, and that will have to be guarded as well...for hundreds of miles of inhospitable desert.
Fair enough, I've obviously not familiarised myself with the geography! The easiest way to learn on the internet is to post a wrong answer lol...
The phrase "dangling your dick in a piranha tank" comes to mind. Doing the thing that your military has explicitly been training not to get involved in for 50 years, that has failed spectacularly the last three times it's tried, on a much larger scale than any of those three, against a polity with greater cultural unity and nothing to lose, under the "leadership" of a toddler, whose only interests are corruption and getting his paedophilia out of the limelight?
Yeah it's a fairly obscure part of the world despite being right next to the fulcrum that all of modern life hangs from. I find such places to be fascinating to learn about.
While I find the Guardian a bit shrill in tone and replete with vacuous front page columnists, it is one of the few news orgs that I trust on generalized coverage after 2022 in that it speaks truth to power. It has been shocking to watch WaPo fall in line, the NYT avoid red line topics, and The Economist use its delightful prose to increasingly pander to the preexisting beliefs of Economist readers.
Iran invented the whole asymmetric speed boat naval warfare, but Ukraine absolutely dialed that up to 11 and perfected it.
It's a rational response. Sympathy and victimhood won't get you material international support in the face of American and Israeli animosity (look at Gaza). But making this war costly for the man on the street can shift governments.
Don't worry all those "drug boats" we blew up in South America weren't human rights violations they were training exercises! /S
Regarding the tankers, my view is that Iran has made it very clear for years, and experts have been saying for years, "if you attack Iran, Iran will close the straits". Now that Iran is under attack, they have very publicly and very clearly declared, "the straits are closed, do not attempt transit, or we will blow you up."
Sure, but writing on Ukrainian vs Gazan civilian casualties (as one example) or the "cheap fakes" Biden-is-fine reporting really showed how bias influences coverage.
I haven't noticed any shift rightward on the NYT. Most of the articles are fairly neutral, in my experience (and I have been a subscriber for years and I read a ton of news).
That article is 101 years old (from Dec, 1924). I don't think the editorial direction of a newspaper is comparable to what it was a century ago.
Please don't try to drag the thread back into the middle ages. We know: The Umayads conquered most of the place in the 700s, and over a few centuries the remaining Visigoth elites (supported by some marches set up by Charlemagne) reconquered it. It all ended in 1492, the same year some guy from Genoa missed India by half a globe or so. It is not relevant to the thread.
I feel like you're missing something: In order to avoid having to take a stand against the admin, the NYT provides psychological analysis in lieu of investigative reporting. Today for example, we have an article taking up space right beneath the masthead, titled "How Hegseth Came to See Moral Purpose in War as Weakness". AFAIAC, Hegseth's psychological history is no more news that what he's wearing. He holds a cabinet office. His actions matter. If, every day, he does some immoral or unlawful or just plain contrary-to-the-public-interest stuff, then, every day, the NYT is duty bound IMO to print an article about his morally corrupt and legally impeachable actions. But they'd rather psychologize, because it is safer.
The paper has an economic and cultural incentive to sanitize the status quo, whatever the status quo may be. It's entirely comparable, and we're all witnessing the liberal press sanitize Trump exactly how they sanitized that other guy, again.
