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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.
Haha. Holy shit man, get off your high horse. Could you, in principle, reform yourself into a sensible person? This is just laughably tone-deaf in 2026. It's not "the rest of the world" – you don't represent the world, this won't even work as a polite fiction, "the world" is overwhelmingly against this lunacy, and not because the world likes Ayatollahs. You're on the side of a clearly fascist nation committing genocide in the name of a crude ethnosupremacist theological doctrine, you endorse the second tier version of that doctrine due to being too low IQ to understand Christianity without sectarian perversions, you're ruled by millenarian fanatics worse than Shia Muslims. You openly and proudly commit perfidy, you bullshit all the time, and you're boasting of how these interventions are not even designed to create peace-loving liberal democracies but to, like, appropriate muh oil. Your democratically elected representatives are worse than their authoritarians. I'm quite serious, we can just take a glance at "them" and see that Iranian leaders you're murdering look and talk like normal white Europeans from a developed nation, while yours, authorizing those strikes – Hegseth, Trump – are barely human but instead some degenerated swine from a Fromsoft game (and unsurprisingly detest Europe and revel in harming and humiliating it directly and indirectly). There's a limit to how much you can avert your eyes from the nature of your society and people. Or is there?
Then again, I realize that talking to Americans is as pointless as talking to demons from Frieren, you're only responsive to kinetic and financial arguments at this stage.
Look - I used to find your comments and insight to be a part of the special sauce that this place brought that I couldn't seem to find anywhere else.
But lately I've lost that feeling, and if I recall correctly you are a hair's breadth from catching a major ban.
I don't want that to happen, but you have to stop with some of this stuff. I'm not sure if it's meant to be rhetorical flourish but some of what you are saying sounds just as bad the worst TDS /r/politics user.
Yes the U.S. and the current admin has plenty worth complaining about, but saying the U.S. is a "clearly fascist nation committing genocide in the name of a crude ethnosupermacist theological doctrine" is wrong on so many levels that it has to have taken work to come up with that.
Calling Americans barely human? Come on man.
Like what the fuck are you doing.
If I was to try and deliberately write a comment to get me banned and convince Americans that Europeans have nothing worth listening to it would be like what you wrote.
What happened??????
Just being persnickety but I'm pretty sure a "clearly fascist nation committing genocide in the name of a crude ethnosupermacist theological doctrine" is referring to Israel.
That said, I agree that Dase is overstating his case. I personally always found his ideas interesting and his style to be an unfortunate barrier to the ideas, but I guess that's how he likes it.
Oh oops if I mixed that up but going on to add "you're ruled by millenarian fanatics worse than Shia Muslims" I'm fairly sure that's in reference to the reporting about U.S. leadership.
Also things like the later "Hegseth, Trump – are barely human but instead some degenerated swine from a Fromsoft game."
I mean that's Nazi talk. The level of dehumanization is I think new and totally collapses much of value of the contribution since you know it's all hiigghhhhly colored.
"Hegseth, Trump" isn't a demographic category lol. Individual people can be (and are, case in point) aptly described as degenerate swine regardless of the political ideology of the person doing the describing.
See my response to Southkraut.
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