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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.
Stupid with respect to what? Of all the criticisms against American hegemony I've seen (and I'm not a big fan of it either), I've 'never' heard the statement you just made from "people talking out of their asses." At any rate, it wasn't Iran that was calling for a ceasefire most recently, it was the US. The media blackout in both countries is in effect and all sides are claiming everything is going well. But from the glimpses of Ritter, Mearsheminer, Wilkerson, Baud, Marandi, MacGregor, Diesen, etc. (people with fairly close connections to things on the ground) it's Israel who's the one really getting it's ass kicked and the US making itself out to be more the fool.
Nothing will create a global multilateral coalition faster than Iran indiscriminately making the strait of Hormuz impassible. You might as well declare war on the entirety of the modern economy. No, the world won't go along with a global depression just to spite the Americans and Israelis. Not even China. Not even Russia. Iran is diplomatically isolated in formal and informal terms and no one is joining them in their last, suicidal gambit. And if all of those intellectuals you've linked don't recognize the fact they're stupid - and wrong.
You would think. But they did, and the global response was "fuck you, US, for doing this". Then Europe backed off a little and sent a strongly worded statement asking the strait to be reopened and nothing more.
I doubt anyone seriously expected the Europeans to do anything. But indifference from the international community to the Iranian war is good enough. If China and Russian can't even be bothered to veto the Security Council resolution against them, the Europeans tut-tut, and the GCC is on side - it's just letting the Israelis and Americans do the dirty work.
This war is massive win for them
Is it? I know oil prices help, but weren't they reliant on Iran for drone parts?
Oil up is a gigantic win for them. Also any amount of sanctions relief is a huge win too.
I do not think they are reliant for drone parts any longer. In 2023? Most certainly. The tech/know how transfer was the real value unlock though. I'm pretty sure the Russians were recently shipping the Iranian drones via the Caspian Sea until Israel blew up the boat(s).
The other big win, and this is a huge win for China too, is interceptors. Every patriot missile that blows up in the Gulf or over Tel-Aviv is one less Patriot missile that can defend Taiwan or Kiyv. Interceptor production rates are so, so low. And the impending western shortage of them means that Ukraine won't be getting any freebies for a while.
I think there are arguments on both sides for this being a win for Russia and China vs. loss, but we aren't going to know until well after the fact.
If Iran collapses that's a loss for instance. Sources in the military are saying that part of our posture is to show off assets to Russia and China, if China does not invade Taiwan because of this misadventure we may not find out about it until decades later.
On the other hand if they go now it becomes a bit more obvious it was an own goal.
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