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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   815 thread views

Transnational Thursday for May 7, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Has anyone been keeping up on the Iran conflict? I've been seeing some commentary on Iran running out of storage capacity and I don't know if it's bullshit or not, or even how to find out short of going there myself.

Shutting down wells would not do permanent damage, afaik. They would be back up to running at full capacity within a year. Even Kuwait where everything burned in the first gulf war didn't do much lasting damage.

Thinking that time is on the USA's side and Iran would have to fold when running out of oil storage is Trump Logic.

Nothing is "permanent" - if they were able to get the oil out of the ground the first time, they obviously can do it again, and with existing infrastructure it probably will be easier this time. The question is how much would it cost and who will pay for it. Iranian economy was not in spectacular shape when it started (remember the whole story begun with riots caused by economic hardships) and probably is much worse now. Would it be enough to break the IRGC? Unknown, and maybe not - hardcore organized groups survived in much worse conditions. But it certainly makes it weaker, less capable of projecting its force outside (Iran's favorite mode of operation) and more open to negotiated settlement. "Have to fold" is a very hard condition to satisfy - in WW2, Japan had to get two nukes dropped on them to be ready to fold, and Germany had to be completely occupied. Occupying Iran is not a proposition that is seriously considered, neither is nuking them. That makes "have to fold" hard to achieve - however, "more open to settlement" can still be done. Or at least "beaten up enough they wouldn't ask for seconds for a while" if anything else fails.

What about burning the oil wells ? Once they start burning they are pretty hard to put down.

Hard, but not impossible. I don't think Iranians are going to set them on fire though, and neither US nor Israel want to either - if they did, they could have done it already.

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