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Iran has allegedly mined the strait of Hormuz
I've seen a lot of discussion online about whether or not Iran would mine the strait, and it looks like it's happening.
I'm curious as to what is driving this. My understanding is that the Iranian military is structured so that military units can operate with a lot of autonomy if the chain of command breaks down. Is this a small, but official action, or is it the action of units who are operating with what they have in the absence of official orders?
What are the global economic impacts of mining the strait? I tangentially work in insurance, and talking to the Actual Insurance Guys, it seems like this is probably just as bad as regular missile attacks, if not worse. Do commercial ships have any way to protect themselves against mines, other than "don't be where the mines are"?
I've also been seeing vague rumblings in the news that non-Israeli Mideast nations may materially contribute to the conflict. Does this move the needle?
It seems to me that this represents a pretty significant escalation. While sea mines are not land mines, they are both indiscriminate area denial weapons that have significant risks of civilian casualties that can last long after the end of the conflict that caused their emplacement. They're hard to find and create significant anxiety for anyone who has to traverse the area.
Is this a good strategic move by Iran? I'm not an expert on global geopolitics, but my gut tells me it harms them more than helps them. Fighting a defensive war against the Great Satan put the Iranian government in a very sympathetic position with their neighbors, but shutting down one of the most important economic transit corridors in the world with weapons that most governments find distasteful at best seems like a signal to the region that Iran will drag everyone into the flames along with them. Theoretically, this might pressure those countries to abandon the US, but that's a high stakes choice.
Of all the stupid things Iran has done, this is perhaps the stupidest.
I've heard of no end of third worldists talking out of their asses, gloating about a petroyuan and the imminent fall of American hegemony. To those people, I say: how the hell can a sea mine collect a toll? At least drones and ballistic missiles can be aimed. How does this help the Iranians, who themselves use the strait to commerce their own oil? Any hope of Chinese or European arbitration in the dispute is gone now.
I've noticed that this is a pretty common sentiment among the college students near me. I don't get it. Do they genuinely think that a world where normalizing blockades of international shipping is one that they would actually want to live in? I like being able to afford food, and generally dislike freezing to death in the winter. What's driving the disconnect between them and me? It honestly feels like pure nihilism.
They don't care about blockades of international shipping. The petrodollar has been has been a boogieman of the far left for decades they are just happy to see one of their demons slain or wishcast it bein slain. The same way goldbug libertarians don't care what would happen to the economy if we switched to the gold standard.
Regardless I don't think this is normalizing anything. This blockage only happened because the US started a war and assassinated most of the Iranian leadership. It's not just a blockade for kicks. If the US did the same to Egypt or Singapore I'd imagine they'd react similarly and close their straits but as long as we don't do that I don't see any reason to worry. If anything the US blockade of Cuba sets a much worse precedent for what you fear. Iran did what they said they'd do if they were attacked, close the straights, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to avoid by simply not attacking them.
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If it (1) allows them to feel morally superior; and (2) harms their outgroup, then I would guess "yes," in the sense that they might choose such a world. They might regret such a choice later, though.
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I've seen it first hand and I don't think it's Nihilism so much as a particular interpretation of Rawlsian Ethics that is almost a reductio ad absurdum.
My impression of is that they have this idea "Equality" that functionally boils down to "equal outcomes" which sounds nice in theory but it leads them to this weird theory of "Justice" where in the morality (or "Justness") of any act or actor is largely if not entirely determined by power differential. This idea of "Punching up" which is is a fundamentally noble act versus "Punching down" which is a fundamentally ignoble act.
Because the goal is equality, they feel they must simultaneously moderate "the strong" while elevating "the weak". Which again sounds nice in theory, and might even appear somewhat workable in a staid collegiate setting but it leads to deeply perverse positions when applied outside the classroom. Positions like;
and
This can be demonstrated untrue by asking those you think hold to this belief system their opinion on Nazi Germany in 1945. Unsurprisingly, no, they do not flip to liking the Nazis once the Nazis are being unambiguously punched down upon. They just like Hamas and like Iran.
See my reply to @MayorofOysterville. Also, Rawls' Theory of Justice wasn't published until 1971, 26 years after Nazi Germany surrendered.
Does Rawls propose a statute of limitations on morality?
I am also talking about those affluent liberals. They do not believe what you claim they do, because they don't support the Nazi underdogs you imply they would.
No. Rawls does not propose a statute of limitations on morality, but it is kind of silly of you to expect people to be familiar with his work more than two decades before it was published.
I am asking what they would think of the Nazis in 1945 in retrospect, because most of them do have retrospective opinions on the Nazis still.
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I really don't think you are modeling this correctly. The far left was still pro-Palestine when the Arabs were stronger than Israel. As a result of Soviet propaganda, and principles of national liberation. The original PLO and Palestinian cause was much more secular, much more leftist and inline with many other "national liberation" groups that the far left liked. The far left in general doesn't like Hamas and in in group discussions frequently blames Israel for creating Hamas and "tainting" the Palestinian cause.
Israel is also just in the far lefts outgroup in fact it's one of the most hated outgroups they have. Just like in the original I can tolerate anything but the outgroup they can tolerate Hamas even if they don't love them but have a burning hatred of Israel. It's not a function of power dynamics if the Palestinians somehow came out on top and actually did drive the Jews into the sea they wouldn't flip sides because Israel is inherently evil and tainted for them.
I'm talking specifically about the sort of affluent liberal who attends a George Floyd or Free Palestine rally, and the posters here who are acting like the current conflict with Iran hasn't been decades in the making. People like Alex.
Not historical Soviets nor Soviet sympathizers.
Affluent liberals who attend such things want all sorts of people punished many of them weaker. And while they aren't Soviet sympathizers the chain of transmission of their support for Palestine comes from a 70s milieu who were Soviet sympathizers. Also affluent liberals are pretty divided about Israel-Palestine. It's their children who are hardcore anti-Israel.
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I really doubt that they think so, but I suppose I haven’t seen the sentiment firsthand.
I would posit that you could get the average college student to cheer for mass killings if President Trump spoke out against them. Countersignaling is cheap.
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The sentiment is that the future is going to be, at best, pointless and at worst, bad anyway. So anything that causes an upheaval and bloodies the nose of the groups they dislike is good.
"If it bleeds it leads." William Randolph Hearst understood this.
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They have the same attitude as Iran -- that America is the Great Satan and the source of all evil, and so anything that weakens it is good.
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Everyone was cheering when Israel infiltrated a consumer electronics supply chain to plant hidden explosives inside batteries. That is actually pushing the boundaries of normalized warfare. Blockades when you are at war has long been normalized. The US has been blockading Venezuela and Cuba international shipping without any sort of war.
Me too, but rather than bemoan the predictable consequences of an aggressive war it's more productive to contend with the apparatus that brought the world to this state.
Did anyone not in Hezbollah get a pager with explosives in it?
If you define Hezbollah as, “the entire Shia population of Lebanon,” then probably not. If you define Hezbollah as, “people engaging in or directly supporting militant operations,” then yes, a whole lot of innocent people got exploding pagers.
I have no idea how this didn’t kill the export market for Israeli electronics. For all we know, Mossad has the capability to kill anyone anywhere in the world with an Israeli-made chip in their car at any time.
Mossad has deviously sabotaged Intel's 10nm and 7nm processes, forcing Windows laptop manufacturers to rely on Israeli-made chips - when overloaded with excess wattage - to reach temperatures high enough to detonate the lithium ion batteries within. That's why real warriors of the Ummah use AMD and ARM.
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There were reports of collateral victims, yes but that hardly matters. Planting hidden explosives in the consumer supply chain is normalized terrorism, so I don't really want to see people act shocked that Iran is projecting power over its Strait, literally the most normal and predictable wartime maneuverer ever.
I don’t love the term “terrorism” here since the electronics were clearly aimed at military targets and not civilians. No one calls it terrorism when you bomb an army base but some collateral damage kills civilians too. Terrorism I think by definition is causing civilian harm to change politics.
I agree, but the basic playbook is (1) identify conduct which is perceived as being reprehensible; (2) falsely accuse Israel of doing it. Thus, the false accusations of "genocide," "apartheid," "terrorism," etc.
Israel obviously did genocide when the State was founded. And some elements of apartheid seem obviously true. Those it’s fine to say might makes right. I sort of believe segregation is good.
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American authorities have done this regularly since at least the 1983 Beirut bombing, through the attack on the Cole, and the Kabul bombing just a few years back. Maybe their definition is slightly more consistent if you expected uniforms while doing combat actions, but "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" isn't completely wrong either.
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So if a mail bomb is sent to some IDF recruit by Hezbhollah to blow up inside his house then that's not terrorism because it's a military target?
It's not the target that is exceptional here, it's the clandestine appropriation of a consumer supply chain as a weapon. That is actually unprecedented, it's a method of warfare that fundamentally erodes global trust in economic trade and cooperation, it is far more unusual than a blockade of a Strait in the middle of an existential war. As to the semantics, feel free to not call it terrorism if it makes you feel better, even though you would call it that if/when bombs are set off inside the homes of Israeli or US troops.
Spitting in the food in the back kitchen isn't such an enormous taboo because of the direct consequences, but because none of us want to live in a world where that is remotely acceptable behavior, we want to trust our food has been handled properly and not question it when we sit down to eat. But people here defending the planting of hidden explosives in consumer goods can't seem to wrap their minds around those consequences. Why is Hezbollah such a dangerous enemy Israel has to normalize spitting in the food as a method of warfare?
If Hezbollah were genuinely targeting a specific soldier, I wouldn't call that terrorism, especially if Hezbollah had the option of destroying the entire neighborhood the soldier lived in but instead decided to use a mail bomb. I would object for other reasons, but I wouldn't call it terrorism.
As far as blockades go, I agree that the rules of war do not have a general prohibition on naval blockades. However, I recall the following:
(1) A blockade must be directed at enemy territory, as distinguished from a blockade of the high seas or of an international waterway. Thus, if the Iranian Navy blockaded the Port of San Diego, this would arguably conform to the rules of war. But I doubt that blockading the Strait of Hormuz would conform.
(2) The blockading state must not play favorites, i.e. the blockade must be enforced against all states, friendly or not.
I'm not an expert, but it looks to me like this is an illegal blockade. Of course I am open to being corrected.
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Targeted killing of enemy combatants is not terrorism. Simple as.
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Are either of these strictly a "blockade"? The Cuba embargo is strictly rules on US businesses in (most, but not all) industries doing business with Cuba. Other countries' ships and planes can and do go in and out there. The closest to a blockade proper was the Cuban Missile Crisis, but that's quite a long time ago now.
There were some seized ships going to Venezuela recently, but those were nominally illegally-flagged vessels ("shadow fleet") in international waters. I don't think correctly-flagged vessels saw any disruption.
Blockades aren't unheard of in hot warfare, though.
Cuba is facing essentially a full-country blackout from three months of US oil blockades...
If by oil blockade you mean 'no longer receiving it for free from Venezuela', then I suppose there is a global oil blockade on everyone. Cuba is the world's worst sovereign in paying back its debts: even North Korea has to play nice with China and Russia on occasion. It's like a bankrupt whining about a 'loan blockade' after defaulting on credit cards several times.
Cuba could very easily buy oil from Venezuela or Mexico. They just choose not to, because their government wants to pocket the American dollars for themselves.
I'm sorry, can we just cut the bullshit? The US kidnaps the leader of Venezuela and then forbids them from shipping oil to Cuba. Then it strongarms Mexico into stopping oil shipments to Cuba. No matter how you try to rationalize this, it is certainly not more normal than Iran's restrictions on the Strait.
Iran is fighting an asymmetric war for its survival. The only two possibilities were ever immediate surrender or blockading the Strait. Most likely the Friday timing of the attack on Iran was intended to wrap up the war before the markets even opened by Monday in the best case scenario. But I find it hard to tolerate people complaining about Iran acting in a way that's unprecedented or unpredictable, when it's neither of those things. If Iran wants to survive, blockading the Strait and threatening regional infrastructure are things it must do. And no I do not like it, which is why I was strongly opposed to this war and want it to end.
All of this was extremely predictable. The question people should be asking is not why Iran is doing what it is doing, but why we were led here by our own leaders walking directly into extremely predictable consequences. There is no good answer for that.
It took me a moment to find the article, but the Americans have no formal oil embargo on Cuba from Venezuela.
It's not a rationalization: it's an objective fact, and you are the one who is full of shit. You're a third worldist who is upset that a communist nation is not getting free gibs. The fact the Cuban economy cannot afford oil imports at market rates is a result of their mismanagement, corruption, and incompetence. Mexico can quite easily sell to Venezuela at below-market rates. Why don't they?
Is because, I don't know, they want to make money, and not give away gibs?
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The answer to your question is No, because the answer to the first 4 words of your question is also No.
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An inability to actually model the world. They are so sheltered that they cannot conceive of a lack of material abundance being available. It's too abstract for them. The world is too complex for them.
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