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Notes -
On the failed peace negotiations and the US blockade of Iranian oil
This started out as a reply to last week's CW post about the Islamabad negotiations having failed, but then I got into the blockade and decided to drag this to the new CW threat instead.
When Trump chickened out of becoming one of the top four genociders of all time by ending Iranian civilization, he called the Iranian ten point plan a "workable basis on which to negotiate". I was a bit surprised by that (call me naive for being surprised by anything out of of the White House), given that this plan was basically the wish-list of Iran,
but then again I am not a "stable genius" master negotiator.Honestly, I thought this was the best outcome the world was going to get. The world gets their dirty energy fix. Iran gets on the order of a dollar a barrel in transit fees, whatever. Perhaps Iran and Israel nuke each other in the next decade, but at this point I can not really bring myself to care -- religious crazies will do as religious crazies do, and the best thing the civilized world can do is to stay the hell out of it.
Presumably, at some point, someone in the White House thought to actually read the ten point proposal, and noticed that it would place Iran in a strictly better strategic position than before the start of Trump's special military operation. I am kind of amazed that they took 21 hours to realize that they had no overlap. I think Vance rejected anything which was not the miracle victory Trump would need not to get slaughtered in the mid-terms, and Iran was unlikely to budge on key issues such as the control of the strait or their nuclear program, whose strategic importance Israel and the US had just made blatantly obvious.
People have been pointing out that the Trump timeline was obviously never meant for production use for a decade, but lately things have been going to shit at an accelerated pace.
Now Trump has apparently announced that the US is going to block the strait of Hormuz. I wonder who could have given them that idea, and expect Trump to announce that the US will start enriching uranium next week and the US will start funding Shia proxies in May.
More seriously, a blockade is an act of war. Arguably, it is not only an act of war against the country being blockaded, but also against any neutral country who wants to peacefully trade with the blockaded country.
Not all blockades are created equally. When Kennedy blocked the peaceful trade of medium-range ballistic missiles between the USSR and Cuba, he could point out that actually this was a rather narrow blockade aimed to interdict a specific strategic weapon.
Iran's blockade is much harder to justify. Saudi oil being sold to Europe or Asia is not of direct military importance for any conflict Iran is currently fighting, their blockade is a weapon aimed at global trade itself. This makes them a rogue state and gives any country which trades oil with the gulf states a legitimate casus belli against Iran: simply send a single tanker under your flag through the strait claiming innocent passage. Either Iran sinks it, in which case you have war, or it does not, in which case you have no blockade.
The problem is that Iran does not exactly care, which is sound strategy given their situation. Blocking the strait is their one way to squeeze the balls of the world economy to exert pressure on the US, of course they are doing it.
Some strategists might notice that the United States find themselves in a slightly different situation than Iran. So far, they have not been considered a rogue nation willing to wreck the global economy to exert pressure on their opponents.
A US blockade of oil tankers bound for Iran would be as little justified as the Iranian blockade, but like the Iranian regime, they would probably get away with it. China is sadly not in the position to champion the free, peaceful trade between nations by sinking a few US aircraft carriers blockading Iran. Everyone can see that trying to end Iran's capability to block Hormuz will be a military mistake, trying to attack the US over their blockade will end just as badly.
Of course, this strategy will also not work very well for the US.
The Iranian blockade works because the median US voter reasonably cares more about the prices of gas than the regime in Tehran. Oil is the lifeblood of the economy, even a modest disruption will wreck the economy to a far greater degree than what a US presidency can survive.
The US blockade will not work because the Iranian regime cares a lot more about who rules in Tehran than their quarterly growth numbers. The US and Israel just spent tens of billions in bombing the shit out of Iran, with the net result of hardening their will to resist (if only someone had warned us!).
The idea that economic constraints might achieve what getting bombed did not seems absurd. Put bluntly, the regime in Tehran can survive a year with Hormuz being closed (especially as there are countries in whose strategic interest it will be to support them, even if they can't buy their oil, in the same manner in which NATO countries support Ukraine). The one on DC can not.
A chess grandmaster often has different objectives he achieves with a single move. Likewise, Trump has an uncanny ability to make strategic blunders which hurt American interests in a lot of different ways.
In the grand scheme of things, Iran does not matter. However, the US is just establishing that they consider broad trade blockades of enemies a legitimate strategy. This seems foolish not just in principle but because there is a country which matters which might be vulnerable to blockades, which is Taiwan.
(So far, China has been the adult in the room, refraining from any special military operation adventures. The CCP might be evil and bend on world domination, but at least they seem competent. Xi Jinping seems to have object permanence and an inclination to stay out of social media, both qualities which I find aesthetically pleasing in world leaders, and as far as avoiding a paperclip maximizer goes, I trust the CCP more than I would trust Altman, Zuckerberg and Musk. Still, looking at this timeline, it seems sadly possible that Xi Jinping might decide to walk in the footsteps of other elderly world leaders and decide to fuck up the world a bit before he exits the stage.)
Purely on capabilities, it does not matter if there is a precedent for a blockade of Taiwan or not. But narratives matter, especially when allies are concerned. Before, China blockading trade to Taiwan would have been an outrage. Now, they can simply point out that just as the US prohibits Chinese oil tanker from approaching Iranian ports on pain of war, China is blockading western container ships approaching Taiwan.
I think this whole analysis is built on false assumptions frankly.
The alternative explanation is that the ten point program listed by the Guardian is not the ten point program Trump was referring to. That instead of almost agreeing to a total Iranian victory, that US negotiators were informed of Iran's willingness to concede on most points. Then instead of needing to invent an explanation for why America seesaws from day to day (I guess Trump just didn't have any goals when he launched this war so he's fine with giving Iran more than what they started with?) -- we can actually be totally reconciled to other facts:
Heck, the Guardian article itself notes that the English version they are describing is different from the Farsi version on the question of nukes, so why are we taking it for granted that it's the Iranian negotiators who are trustworthy? Why are we repeating uncritically claims made by Iranian government officials when they contradict American officials?
People here really don't like when I phrase it this way, but this really is a form of TDS. America is presumed to be acting in all manner of irrational and stupid ways because Trump is the President. Any evidence that America is acting according to some kind of consistent logic or with the consent of its allies has to be explained away or ignored, because we all know that America is irrational because of Trump. Trump accepts Iran's victory one day but not the next day? It can't be the case that reports of Iran's victory and America's surrender were greatly exaggerated. No, it must be the case that Trump got bored.
One interpretation of the Iran War: Trump stupidly launched a bad war, and he didn't have any plans for the war, and the Israelis and Saudis didn't warn Trump because they're scared / selfish, and all reports that the Saudis wanted this war too are fake news, and although we destroyed Iran's military Trump understands that we lost, and he wants us to surrender to Iran ASAP, but JD Vance didn't get that memo because Trump is bored with the war and not paying attention, so now Trump is doubling down to save face, which won't work because everyone in the world knows he's lost!
Another interpretation: America is winning and the idea that we are about to sign a surrender deal to Iran is fake news.
This is just fantasy by the way.
Exactly. The ten points the Guardian is referring to is almost certainly the one Iran sent last week before the ceasefire, it had to be significantly reworked by multiple parties (Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey) on tuesday to be considered an acceptable starting point for negociation by both parties. So it is not "the same" as Iran's demands. I don't think anyone has published the accepted one, at least not that both sides have confirmed "yes, this is what we agreed on for the ceasefire". So we don't know what it was, so whatever people assume it was is just a confirmation of their prior biases.
Yeah I generally try to refrain from basing my opinions on breaking news or the latest updates, because they're so prone to error or emotion or rumor. So much of it ends up not being true. But if we were to do a full and open blowout of such content, it would imply a much larger world than the simple failures proclaimed by most posters here. Scrolling twitter casually, I see Trump saying the blockade only covers Iranian ships and ports. I see a report that the Iranians might actually concede on nuclear weapons. I see an Iranian minister whining that Trump's blockade violates international law so he shouldn't be allowed to do it. So many potential leads. They would all imply America is winning. And if we are going to accept half news as evidence, we basically have to apply our skepticism entirely in one direction to get the one-sided American Defeat theories I see all day on the Motte.
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This doesn't follow.
The UK blockaded Germany during WW1 and WW2, and it's not like this was the UK was declaring war on the entire world by doing so. The US is just moving to option 4 in the escalation ladder list. Blockading a country from trading with neutrals is generally seen as acceptable wartime behavior, and although it can cause consternation with 3rd parties, it's not seen as overtly hostile to them.
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Maybe this belongs in the small questions thread, but how does Iran unilaterally restrict access to the strait without Oman's buy-in as well (at least without effectively performing an act of war against Oman)? Also is there anyone here familiar with international maritime law (and preferably not of the sovereign citizen, "how dare you stop me while I travel in my vessel, officer" types) who knows what rules exist (if any) about allowing access to the high seas from territorial waters that are otherwise "trapped" by another country's territorial waters, like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia currently are?
I believe Oman has quite a few sympathies with Iran, and is likely also getting kickbacks. But yes it would involve dropping mines or threatening strikes to ships in Oman territorial waters.
Iran has hit Oman at least a few times in this conflict, despite Oman not (currently) hosting any US forces. Oman was also one of the more neutral in it's public statements (IIRC they congratulated the new Ayatollah), although I don't know if that stance has changed in the last few weeks.
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This is not a criticism of this post - I appreciate the time it took to write this up and it provides a useful springboard for less lengthy digressions (such as my own) - but I still think it is too soon to tell what the ultimate US strategy is or really what the final outcome is going to be here. I remember a week ago when users here seemed to be prognosticating the end of the conflict based on ten-point plans released on notoriously reliably news aggregation website
TwitterX and of course the US did not in fact bite.Iran might still agree to a deal. I think the economic pressure on them from the blockade may be underappreciated. But if they do not, the US could return to more punitive measures. The US appears to have used the ceasefire to rearm their carriers. I think it is a mistake at this point to assume the final plan of the States is to have a yearslong blockade. It seems plausible to me that the US resumes airstrikes if Iran refuses to return to the table.
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China has been incompetently funding a procy war and genocide in Myanmar. Nobody in the west really cares about it though.
My understanding is that the relationship between China and Myanmar is a bit complex. The Chinese government is somewhat supportive of the junta, invited the head to victory day military parade but refuse to call him leader of the country, etc etc. The junta in return helped catching A couple of gangsters and drug lords annd sent to China. And china sold weapons to the junta. But the northern separatists (kokang) are ethnic Chinese and was a splinter group of the indochina communist party, and had always received support from the Chinese. We’ve been funding both sides, a time honored tradition like how we sold weapons to GCC while buying sanctioned oil from Iran.
I’m not sure if nobody cared about “genocide” in Myanmar. Aung San suu kyi got her Nobel stripped. Some do care but they’re not in charge of their own country now.
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I thought the "blunt melee weapons only" conflict with India a few years ago was at least notable. I'd call it funny, but there were more than a few deaths reported.
The Nine Dash Line isn't winning them friends in their neighborhood either.
ETA: Also their international fishing fleet often accused of stealing from other nations' waters.
In the context of your country pursuing a costly and unpopular war in the Middle East AGAIN, threatening to destroy a civilization, doing flip-flops, wrecking the world economy, and threatening your own allies, I don’t understand what all this hand-wringing about China “winning them no friends” is about. Go find a mirror or something.
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You should. A nuclear exchange would be a disaster for humanity. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of Israelis and Iranians would be a huge loss to the world. The loss of human capital and consciousness would be a tragedy, the suffering would be immeasurable.
Oddly, I think the Iran war probably precludes a Taiwan war in the near future because two things have become clear. Iran has demonstrated the USA's superiority in technological warfare to an absurd degree. The United States and friends were able to decapitate the Iranian leadership, they've been able to operate with impunity over Iran, they were able to land a small force and operate an airstrip inside Iran during a war. If the USA is even marginally interested in fighting China, it will be extremely costly for China, and especially for the Chinese leadership elite. But also, the Iran war has apparently hastened the decline of American influence abroad. Niall Ferguson brings up, over and over, that this could be the American Suez crisis. America's irresponsible behavior is causing rifts within the alliance system, the special relationships with the anglophone countries are gone, NATO could die. American may have sacrificed its alliances in Europe for its "alliance" with Israel. This increases the odds significantly that Taiwan peacefully unifies with China, with no American opposition, because China grows in power and prominence and Taiwan eventually sees the hand writing on the wall.
As for the blockade war, I can see the logic, but a lot depends on China and India. If China sends a naval escort for a Chinese flagged ship, what happens?
It could quite easily have the opposite takeaway. We've now seen that even a pariah state can exert a surprising amount of leverage against the superpower next door, even with only a fraction of the military power. And we've seen that said superpower can't reliably affect regime change simply by dropping a few bombs, boots on the ground are likely required.
It's been clear for a while now that reunification with mainland would be a massive boon for the Taiwanese economy, but I doubt the Taiwanese people would want it.
I thought boots on the ground was China's Plan A?
Peaceful reunification has always been plan A. The official line has always been “we pursue peaceful reunification with maximum effort but never rule out the use of force” or something along those lines. The Communist Party has always talked with the Taiwanese KMT (Kuomintang, lit. Nationalist Party, the party that was defeated by the Communists and retreated to Taiwan) since Chiang Junior’s era about peaceful reunification. Xi met with then-Taiwanese president and KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou in Singapore in 2015 and met again with KMT chairwoman Cheng Li-wun just a few days ago, which should be a step in the right direction. I think it’s one of the biggest happenings for cross-strait relations lately, but few seem to have heard of it in the West, partly because the other strait took their interest. Partly because Chinese positions on Taiwan was not imo rightly represented in western media, and the fact you think boots on the ground is plan A is pretty telling.
Also, PLA military advantage over Taiwan is a relatively recent development. Before the 2010s, the PLA navy and air force were weak, and their only edge against Taiwan was the PLA Rocket Force, which as you can see right now in Iran cannot force a complete defeat without boots on the ground.
I think it would be obviously stupid and tremendously tragic to do an Ukraine on Taiwan. I don’t want rockets destroying their (in my mind, our) civil infrastructure. I don’t want to destroy our cultural artifacts, and most importantly I don’t want to kill my own people, even if they don’t recognize themselves as my own people, which I think is something that could be changed without the use of force. They are 96% Han Chinese after all. There might be good reasons to have to do all of the above (the anti-secession law in China outlined a few things, including Taiwanese acquiring nukes) but it’s by no means plan A. I hope the KMT wins the next election (although I think it’s rather unlikely), and the temperature cools down a bit.
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You are correct, of course, my not caring is about their polities qua polities. My frustration is that there is little one could do to ensure better outcomes. Similar how life under the Taliban is obviously terrible for a lot of people, but there is preciously little the rest of the world can do to fix it. We do not have the will to permanently occupy Afghanistan, Israel and Iran permanently (or until they wisen up and become slightly less murderous in another century or so), and I don't require an EA impact analysis to notice that past occupations have been terrible on a QALY-increase per dollar spend metric (and a lot of other metrics beside that).
I would liken dealing with such countries to dealing with a chronically suicidal ex-partner. Of course you care if they suicide (or nuke each other), but you also don't want to spend the rest of your life doing crisis intervention. Bombing Iranian enrichment facilities, or having your ex committed to a psychiatric hospital for some time is a stop-gap measure which kicks the can down the road, but makes the problem worse in the long run.
Nobody has the stomach to occupy Iran or have someone long-term committed for suicidality. If someone wants to kill themself, or a regime is willing to pay the price of tens of millions of their civilians being murdered in reprisal for them murdering tens of millions of 'enemy' civilians in turn, that is hard to prevent.
Personally, I would have preferred to take my chances with a timeline in which Iran gets a nuke earlier but also does not have a history of Israel and the US bombing the shit out of them for a few decades to delay their nuclear program, and hope that both sides would be rational enough to play cold war like responsible adults.
With Trump in charge, your guess is as good as mine.
Generally speaking, I think that China is unlikely to start a war in a theater it can not win, and I do not see them winning a naval war in the ME against the US (though I am also not very well informed on relative naval capabilities).
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Iran is blockading countries that participated in the attacks against them. Saudi, Bahrain, UAE can't claim that they aren't participants. They were a part of the war from day one and it is reasonable for them to pay for the damage they helped create.
As for the war I don't see it ending any time soon. The expectation is always that the next war is going to be short and end in a few weeks yet these wars generally drag on for years. Gaza is still ongoing 2.5 years later. Afghanistan dragged on for 20 years. Iraq was going 8 years after mission accomplished. Ukraine is on year 12 and 4 in terms all out war. Syrian civil war went for 14 years.
Trump has created a mess that isn't going to disappear and that will simply continue to deliver headache for years to come. George Bush at least started with popular support for his war. Trump has a war with 38% support in the first month. Trump has effectively shot himself in the foot and wrecked his second term.
As for China the pivot to Asia has become a pivot to the middle east and Ukraine. The US can't be the industrial base for Ukraine's military, fight a forever war in the middle east and compete with the world's largest industrial super power in terms of military might.
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Where in his tweet dies he call for mass murder with intent to eliminate Iranian as an ethnic group? He is clearly using "civilization" as a synonym for the Islamic Republic regime. A clear stretch of the term, but less of a stretch than calling a total regime change, a genocide, as you are, and many in the mass media are implying.
A blockade of Iranian ports, if taken to the extreme, will likely result in famines in Iran, which causes people to starve to death in large numbers.
They import a lot of their calories and don't have the road/road logistics capacity to replace their ports.
The bulk of the Iranian population lives away from the Gulf in roughly the northwestern third of the country. Their second-largest city, Mashhad, is next to the border with Turkmenistan. They definitely have enough logistics capacity to move stuff around.
I was repeating/summarizing a handful of comments I read on /r/credibledefense, which is usually quite pro-USA (mixed on this conflict)
We could rightly question their epistemic status, although in the same vein I'd question yours as well. I suspect everyone is talking out of their asses.
That being said, I genuinely hope that you are right. I have no sympathy for IRGC members being turned into pink mist, but I strongly dislike rampant punishment of civilians.
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They have a northern coast along the caspian sea and several long land boarders. The sanctions will not be as solid as people expect. Russia is still flying Boeing jets four years into the war. Sanctions don't work in a globalized world along long boarders.
I was repeating/summarizing a handful of comments I read on /r/credibledefense, which is usually quite pro-USA (mixed on this conflict)
We could rightly question their epistemic status, although in the same vein I'd question yours as well. I suspect everyone is talking out of their asses.
That being said, I genuinely hope that you are right. I have no sympathy for IRGC members being turned into pink mist, but I strongly dislike rampant punishment of civilians.
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It appears that food and other humanitarian cargoes will be inspected and then permitted to pass.
I have my doubts they can accomplish this while also stopping Chinese drone parts or whatever getting in.
But I hope this works! At this point whatever ends the war fastest while minimizing civilian harm (remember when we were freeing them from their fucked up government?) receives my full support
I don't think stopping Chinese drone parts from getting in (via sea) will be very hard, I don't think Chinese ships are likely to try running the blockade, although I could be wrong. China can provide stuff like MANPADS via aircraft easily enough if they really want to.
I suppose they could declare a destination in e.g. Bahrain and then attempt to swerve at the last minute, but then presumably they would be stuck in Iran indefinitely (I assume the US would interdict them if they successfully pulled this stunt and then tried to leave, although I might be wrong).
Keep in mind that sea control is an ideal task for aircraft and thus it's not very hard for the US to keep an eye on ~all ships transiting the strait, and they can do it without deploying, say, destroyers in the Persian Gulf. And I don't think it would be very difficult for ships with humanitarian aid to stop in Dubai or wherever for inspection and then finish the rest of the journey.
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Although blocking oil exports while continuing to freeze Iran's foreign assets will mean that food and essential humanitarian imports will cease reasonably quickly because Iranians can't pay for them.
This happened to Iraq between the two Gulf Wars - food and medicine imports were excluded from sanctions, but the exports to pay for them were not. There was an oil-for-food programme at one point, but it never worked because Saddam didn't care about disfavoured ethnic groups starving and accordingly didn't actually want food imports, he wanted to embarrass the countries imposing sanctions.
I agree that this might be a problem - and sincerely hope and pray that it is not.
However from a humanitarian perspective it seems to me the blockade is almost infinitely preferable to a concentrated power generation destruction campaign. When a blockade is lifted, it takes days or weeks for trade to resume; when power generation capacity is wholesale destroyed, it takes months or years to rebuild, and the economic damage from a blockade would be overshadowed by the economic damage from destroying Iran's power generation capacity.
(The US does have specialized munitions to temporarily degrade power supply but given that their effects are, I believe, relatively easily reversible I am not sure we would use them for "Bridge and Power Day.")
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This is the biggest asymmetry you can have vs the west. As long as your local faction has all the guns and you don't give a shit about the civilians, you can ensure your boys with guns are always fed, and any civilians who die along the way are a bonus because you/people in the west can point to them and scream "genocide"
Is it underhanded and fucked up? Yes. Is it an effective tool on the strategic layer? Unfortunately, also yes.
Sadly it works because local opposition parties in the west are incentivized to leverage the accusations for local gain rather than take the necessary stance to discourage the practice.
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Words have meanings, and I'm not a fan of constantly excusing the use in official communications of words that mean something completely different.
I agree with this take (it's poor form from someone not winning as much as they planned), but I assumed it was (intended as) a mirror to the longstanding motte-and-bailey of what the "America" in "death to America" means. Sometimes Tehran's supporters claim it only means the current government. On the other, they say the same thing about Israel and seem to have no qualms launching cluster munitions at civilian population centers there. Or supporting proxies happy enough to target Americans.
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The word “civilization” is never used to refer to just the political faction currently in power. If you google “Chinese civilization”, you will not find anyone using this term as a stand-in for Xi’s current regime. So this would be a brand new use of the term. The content of the tweet also goes against your interpretation as Trump claims there already has been total regime change:
So he can’t just be referring to the regime, as there has been “complete and total regime change”.
Thanks for digging up the actual tweet, I think it speaks for itself. Also, if he meant the Ayatollah regime with civilization, he would not express regret but glee at their removal.
@Poug: I am not claiming that he threatened to murder every last ethnic Iranian. (Doing that with Iran would surpass all historical genocides in scale, I think.) However, the crime of genocide does not require that you kill everyone.
The act of genocide is the intentional destruction of an ethnic group as a distinct culture -- which is damn close in concept space to 'destruction of a civilization'. Outright murder is a typical strategy, but not the only one. Mass sterilization or the forcible transfer of children to other ethnic groups are likewise ways to destroy a group.
However, context matters, and the context does not do Trump any favors here. The 'softer' variants like cultural genocide generally do not work overnight. Nobody could mistake Trump's threat as "we will occupy Iran, outlaw Shia Islam and the speaking of Farsi, force everyone to speak English and eat at McDonald's to destroy any distinction of the Iranian people and turn them into generic Americans" -- not that that would have been acceptable.
The only way Trump could possibly destroy the Iranian civilization overnight would have been to nuke their cities, killing most of their urban population and industrial base, so that the survivors would find themselves in a mixture of Fallout and rural Afghanistan, neither of which qualify as civilization. This would still dwarf the Shoa and the Holodomor in total deaths, even if the Nazis were more meticulous about murdering every last one of their victims.
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