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Why do you expect this simplistic rhetoric to work? Does it actually work internally? I guess it does. But at some point, if everyone disagrees, maybe it's you who's wrong, ever thought about that?
Even stalwart Anglosphere allies positively obsessed with being friendly to the US and pitching in in its wars whenever possible, Australia and the UK, have just had their leaders deliver a rare national address and specifically say that they don't want any part of this shitshow, and would rather have austerity than go help Reopen The Straight; joining with Canada in a polite de facto withdrawal from the American reality distortion field. The causality of the current crisis is too painfully obvious to all — Iran had a defensive posture, your guys wanted a regime change or state collapse, attacked mid-negotiations with apparent maximalist goals, and Iran retaliated in the most predictable manner, indeed the manner that's been predicted for decades.
So you defected, both against Iran and more importantly against your allies and other economies, this is your mess of choice, and you shan't get to offload it on anyone else. This is a repeated game; irrespective of the EV of reopening the strait in the short term, in the long term the question is what kind of hegemon is bearable, deserving of cooperation and deference in matters such as war. A reckless and indifferent one has been deemed undeserving.
You might not be up to speed, but that's not the response anymore.
You mean, they retaliated with war crimes. And there's just no desire from the rest of the world to punish them for it. Ok then, enjoy the world you're making.
Spare me this charade. You have forfeited the moral high ground, you're doing realpolitik, building a defensive sphere, taking over oil and such (or at least offering such justifications for otherwise pointless actions). So everyone else will also do realpolitik; enough freeriding on the world's sentimentality and wishful thinking. Besides, closing a water passage in a war is only a war crime in a rather non-central sense. Meanwhile you've killed scores of civilians, support displacement of millions, bomb population centers with impunity, and your president is threatening to escalate to committing large scale war crimes with childlike glee, as a Tough Negotiation tactic that he finds very clever. Let me cite it in full:
Nevermind the amount of bullshit here (starting with "serious discussions" which apparently don't happen and definitely the "new regime") and the charming bit with "desalinization". The US is consistently electing a person unequipped for knowledge work or politics at any level, and cannot be treated as a serious rational actor capable of even self-interested cooperation with other nations. In two words, it's a rogue state. Whether we will enjoy the new world or not, it'll have to be built on the basis of this undeniable fact. I'm not moralizing, just stating what everyone has accepted by now or is in the process of accepting.
I had somehow missed the threat against the desalinization plants. It really does make the "closing the strait/shooting at Qatar is a warcrime" people have egg on their face, lmao.
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Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be. By scores do you mean dozens? We have certainly killed fewer than the Iranians own government did a couple months back. Most Iranians are not displaced. Most homes are in tact. The Iranians I see who can still get the occasional internet access say that they aren't afraid of the bombs, they're afraid of the bombs stopping because that means the war is over and the IRCG is still in charge.
Targeting mixed-use infrastructure is not actually a war crime and there are ways to target infrastructure without permanently destroying it. Trump might actually be legitimately senile and I hope he gets replaced soon, but the military is still run by competent good people. Don't pay any attention to anything on Truth Social ever and you'll probably have a clearer view of world events.
I'm not otherwise following this discussion, but bargaining down from n x 20 to n x 12 seems like nitpicking to me.
Oftentimes when people say scores they mean thousands instead of the actual number of 20.
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After moralism, rules lawyering? I don't think this rule is being enforced with any sort of consistency, and after Europe's response is, "America, control Iran better! and other such claims I don't think you get to ask for it to be enforced. But to be clear, by "you" I mean "Israel + the US", since you clearly are operating as a coalition.
Nation states are defined by having a monopoly on violence within their jurisdiction. Your opinion that the Iranian regime is not legitimate (whereas your own regime is sacred and must not be violated by foreigners), and that it is acceptable to demand submission to a foreign-backed attempt at violent revolution, is just that, an opinion; it doesn't give you the right to kill any extra civilians. Moreover you're not even doing it at the right time, should have joined in while protests were actually happening, when Iranians were killing cops and getting killed in turn.
I see estimates at > 1000 civilians dead, no idea how valid that is, except for the now-indisputable Tomahawk strike on girls' school (which Trump rather pathetically denied). I have seen footage of massive destruction that includes clearly residential housing, and the way these things go, that should have cumulatively taken some hundreds. The high estimates of 30-40-60 thousand killed in protests appear to be simply made up as well.
Might be the most bizarre war ever, the way Americans all suddenly have contacts in Tehran and are grasping at straws, straining to hear the voices of unbroken opposition, to convince themselves that they're liberators, even as their Secretary of War is plainly relishing the opportunity to break a nation.
Though this reminds me, people liked to see "all the pretty Iranian woman trying to learn Trump's YMCA dance a few weeks ago". Since then, the most viral of these pretty women had her cousin "killed in a war". She objects: not a war, a rescue operation! "The reason I lost my cousin is only and only the Islamic regime and no one else!". So yes, there is something to your point.
Nobody asks now how many of these dissidents or incredibly Zionist diaspora monarchists (very funny movement, imagine wanting this guy to be your king) are children of SAVAK, or astroturfed by Israel, or not even real. What they say soothes your conscience, so they get to speak for the will of the Iranian people as a whole. The poor Iranian people now apparently need their entire civilian infrastructure wiped out to Truly rise up against the brutal regime. We'll see how it goes.
I don't actually read Truth Social, and I'd prefer if the President of the United States of America didn't use it as his platform of choice, but reality is often disappointing.
The military is ran by a visibly incompetent Fox News host with a drinking problem, who's such s good person his mother condemns him for abuse of women.
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I would also just add that I think the idea that the US just now started acting with "realpolitik" is...very ahistorical. Europe accepted us after WW2 because the Russians were ~infinitely worse, not because the US didn't indulge in realpolitik.
For all the griping about Iraq (which...I get it! I also gripe about Iraq!) and American Empire, the specific failures of Iraq were bad in (large) part because it wasn't tempered by realpolitik, not because it was an imperial/hegemonic action. I think a realpolitik view (and also most American presidents throughout all of history) would have just bombed the heck out of various unlucky places known or suspected to be involved in terrorism and bribed, beg, borrowed, stolen and murdered until we got UBL and then called it a day. That might have been bad in different ways but it probably would not have been a 20-year ground occupation.
Would you prefer it if I said that the difference is just that Europe is finally doing realpolitik on its own? They're sometimes too slow, for sure, as Macron puts it.
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