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Iran declares Strait of Hormuz completely open to commercial ships during Israel- Lebanon ceasefire, but US naval blockade stays in place
Still no significant movement on the maritime trackers. Ships are still grouped at the anchorages on both sides of the Strait. But Trump says Iran is working with the US to remove them. If Trump offers sanctions reliefs and ends the US blockade (which I doubt) in exchange for giving up their nuclear program and ceasing support for proxies against Israel, maybe this war could end quickly and we can return to pre-war status quo by the end of the year.
This is as close to a win-win situation as we can get. For Israel, there's a weaker defeated Iran in the region without means to develop nuclear weapons quickly, and for Iran, they get to survive and have access to sustenance funds. Trump can also claim some victory points for his base.
All of this is of course assuming Trump is being truthful and wants to end the war that he started. There's so much we don't understand or know behind the scenes.
Iran seems to be dealing with some amount of infighting or at least utter confusion and disorganization internally. There's a funny recording of an Indian ship which got approval from the iranian authorities to cross getting shot up by another iranian boat.
Looking the other events, two dozen ships approached the strait, almost certainly under guidance from iran, only to be turned back right away.
Given all the other nonsense that's been posted on twitter and ships not moving at all, there must have been some indication on the ground by iranian authorities that the ships should go. They they all got sent back right afterwards.
The important thing, of course, is to realize this is all on the US, and Trump lied when he said the strait was open.
The important thing is to realize that the IRGC and the Iran’s conventional army, the Artesh, are two different things, the IRGC and the Iranian government are two different things, and the IRGC is making its own moves contrary to the wishes of its political leadership.
This has an interesting graphic: https://x.com/TheIranWatcher/status/2042717802637766685
I dunno, I'm being told by reliable sources that Iran has in fact been thoroughly honest, aboveboard, and consistent the whole time and everything bad that has happened has been becase the US was deceptive and duplicitous.
(And Artesh has been completely absent the whole time)
I would not go that far. It is very possible that more than one side in a conflict is shitty. The Iranian leaders are also not getting a Nobel any time soon.
Iran is clearly a repressive dictatorship, and it is also pursuing nuclear weapons.
But I do have different standards. First, the US and Israel are clearly the aggressors here. This does not make them bad per se, sometimes aggression is required. But it does clear communication out of what might be termed a decent respect to the opinions of mankind. If you talk about bombing your enemy 'for fun', you are making an excellent argument for yourself being evil.
Second, I remember the Iraqi propaganda minister during the W invasion. His statements were about as trustworthy as anything Trump has ever tweeted, yet the Western reaction was amusement, not outrage. This was simply because few people in the West had any expectations for the mouthpiece of a dictatorship not to be a lying sack of shit. By contrast, for the most part past US presidents have tried to avoid telling direct lies or calling their opponents names. Saddam was merely a regional problem, Greenland was perfectly safe from his reach. By contrast, the US under Trump is everyone's problem.
Iran has been launching missiles at Israel, engaged in near constant terrorism against Israel, and is engaged in a variety of forms of cyberwarfare with the US and Israel.
You can trace back decades in an attempt to figure out who started it "first" but a fight has been going on for a long time.
Iran just mad because they've been punching people in the face without ramifications and Israel and the US said "one more time and I'm going to shoot you in the knee" and then they did.
They are not the aggressors.
My general understanding is that Iran would prefer to support partisan groups against Israel in a matter rather reminiscent of the US support for the Mujaheddin. While I am much more sympathetic towards Ukraine than Hezbollah, I find it difficult to say that e.g. Poland providing rockets to Ukraine which are predictably fired into Russia is okay while Iran providing rockets to Hezbollah which are predictably fired into Israel is a declaration of war on the part of Iran. (Of course, it helps that Ukraine has the ability to pursue their goals through regular military means rather than terror attacks. But there is a continuous spectrum between a soldier attacking legitimate military targets and a terrorist blowing up civilians.)
Israel has meanwhile run a decade-long campaign of slowing Iranian nuclear weapon development through assassination and bombing. As an undeclared nuclear power, Israel is the last country on Earth to have any moral standing for bombing to deny nukes to others.
Or take the assassination of Soleimani in Baghdad, which caused some weak-sauce retaliation against American bases. Sure, you may claim that he had no legitimate business in Iraq, but if instead Iran had killed an IDF general in the West Bank (who likewise would not have legitimate business there) you can bet that Israel would have retaliated as well. Of course, the real retaliation for Soleimani was likely Iran greenlighting the Oct 7 attacks.
Now, it could be that I am genuinely wrong and IRGC forces have habitually launched missiles against Israel, but I recall the Biden years to be rather quiet as far as direct attacks are concerned, presumably because Iran did not want to get into a pissing contest it knew it would lose. All the escalations since Trump took office seem to originate in the US and Israel.
Iran didn’t greenlight October 7, they appear very much to have been surprised by it was the intelligence assessment. Iran was and is much closer to Hezbollah than Hamas, Hamas are Sunni, were on the other side in the Syrian Civil War, etc. It’s more of an enemy of my enemy thing with them.
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So your argument for Israel being the aggressor is that the US and Israel killed the king of terrorists and assassins via assassination? And that this action makes the abduction, rape, torture and murder of over 1000 civilians a legitimate act of warfare and retaliation?
That is certainly a choice.
Any argument that Israel is the aggressor has to deal with 10/7 and the arm of the Iranian military that functionally exists to murder Israeli civilians (the proxies).
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