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Notes -
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.
The impossibility of negotiations with the US and Israel. It doesn't really matter if Iranians have coherent command or not, even a midwitted officer can independently realize the payoff matrix here. Israelis will keep killing their leadership because the official Israeli objective is regime collapse or at least degrading Iran to the condition where it can be gradually collapsed with "mowing the lawn" tactics. American negotiators (Kushner, Witkoff) are now known to be a) incompetent and b) represent Israel first, so any possible ceasefire agreements will be immediately exploited to kill Iranians with more freedom of action, like the US has done to Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq after a recent ceasefire agreement.
They don't have moves that improve their situation left, sans imposing costs on the global and regional economy and hoping to provoke a strategically unsound concession via international pressure on the US&Israel, to genuinely win time and reestablish deterrence. It's a pretty absurd bet, especially seeing as neither Israel nor the US are directly harmed by the closure of Hormuz Strait and consider giving Iranians room to develop nukes (or even maintain a ballistic missile program) unacceptable. It's also arguably backfiring with GCC countries (though this is largely irrelevant as they have little offensive capability beyond hosting American forces and allowing the use of their airspace, which they've been doing anyway).
I mean. They could voluntarily reform themselves into a peace-loving liberal democracy. They could even ally themselves to the US outright, or even to Israel!
And I know, I know, they're not gonna, it is to all intents and purposes as much of a ridiculous fantasy as "all Iranian weapon stores could spontaneously transform into rose petals overnight", but… on the other hand, no it isn't. These are human beings with moral agency and rational minds. In principle there should be nothing stopping them from just ceasing to be an oppressive warmongering theocracy, and then, miraculously, the rest of the world would stop trying to blow them up.
At some level I don't think we should lose sight of that basic fact when evaluating the decision-making ability of Iranian leadership. There is a right answer here, and although it's completely correct to start from the premise that they are simply never going to pick it, that fact alone should tell us something.
How can you claim they are not peace-loving? Have you ever looked at their previous wars? They had to enter the Syrian Civil War because America’s warmongering caused literal ISIS to pop up in their neighborhood; they had to enter the Iraq War to defeat ISIS after they took over the Sunni regions (and they were asked); they had to fight Iraq in the 80s because we funded the Iraqi invasion where they used chemical weapons on 50,000 Iranians. America, 6000 miles away, compelled them to defend their regional interests. I’m not even sure what the last unjustifiable war is that Iran participated in when you exclude the Shah. You might have to go back to the 1800s.
Women do not need a mahram to travel freely in Iran. This makes them more liberal than our ally Saudi Arabia, and more liberal than parts of Syria (something we caused). Women can also get away with showing their real hair, which makes them more liberal than many parts of Haredi New York City and London! There are major parties in Israel that are less liberal than Iran; shall we sanction them? Iranian women can divorce their husbands while orthodox Jewish are forbidden to without their husband’s permission.
They tried that. Their offer was rebuffed, perhaps because of the Israel Lobby. https://archive.nytimes.com/kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/irans-proposal-for-a-grand-bargain/
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA587314.pdf ctrl-f “grand bargain”
nuclear program cooperation
ending support for Hamas and Hezbollah
two-state solution
cooperation destabilize Iraq and Afghanistan
joint cooperation against Al-Qaeda
All declined. Our national security apparatus wanted it, Bush WH did not because they wanted to use an Israeli-funded militant group to foment regime change in Iran (MeK). And here we are.
They haven't shot tens of thousands of protestors last January after being warned not to by the US.
Far be it from me to accuse Israel of being reasonable either! Nor did I intend to claim that Iranians are strange evil mutants who have never considered the kinds of course of action I describe. Indeed, the fact that they did come to the table once is all the more reason to be disappointed that they don't seem willing to do so again. Bush was a long time ago. If they'd come forward with all those bullet points this year, would Trump have said no again, or would he have told the hawks in his cabinet where to stick it and leapt at the most obvious path to his Nobel Peace Prize that fate could hand to him on a gold-plated platter?
I should clarify as I did elsewhere in the thread that I don't actually support the current war. I just don't think Iran is remotely blameless for it, which is different from saying they bear sole moral responsibility for it, or that they left Israel and America no choice but to attack. I just cannot believe that there is nothing Iran could have done to deescalate once you open up the "willing to say on camera that uh, actually, maybe we're sorry we shot those protestors and maybe Jews and women and gays are alright and maybe America isn't the Great Satan and maybe it doesn't need to be destroyed" options in the decision tree.
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