Massive China and Russia win here.
Was pretty hilarious to watch all these takes where people were saying how Iran can’t close the strait because that would hurt its allies. As if it was a binary thing as opposed to them being able to choose which ships will pass through.
Oh absolutely, that’s probably why they aren’t mining the strait but just blasting those that try.
Exactly, they don’t have to take any extreme measures like mining because the mere threat is enough for insurers to pull back. This is exactly what Yemen was doing in Suez, and proved to be extremely effective.
Yep! This coupled with Europe’s pivot to Russian LNG is going to be pretty huge for deteriorating US/EU relations.
we can only hope
EU seems pretty split now itself, with the Spain/Germany spat. I’m not getting my hopes up for that to manifest anything at the present moment though.
Same, I think it’s going to be a while yet, but the cracks are definitely forming.
you would thinking mining would be the go-to move since so much of the western world might join in the fray to protect their financial & military assets.
It’s the nuclear option, right now Iran wants to stay on Russia and China’s good sides.
speaking of nuclear: i wonder if tel-aviv/washington/london/paris would launch a nuke if iran makes too much progress in neutralizing all of the western assets in the region and if beijing or moscow would step in at that stage.
I don’t really want to think about that. Tens of millions of people would likely die in the process and World War III may get kicked off.
… World War III may get kicked off
i’m bet beijing and moscow will nope out of it because of this.
Tel Aviv I can’t predict. London and Paris are too sensible. Washington we could probably keep Krasnov from nuking anything (we’ve done good so far. I mean they changed the code from 00000 to 12345 at least, right? Right?) by giving him a red light up button and just letting him watch the end of Dr Strangelove
Sure, the US might be on the wrong side of Palestinian genocide and the new Iran war, but the proxy war against Russia is still the Good War™ /s
Just One More War
Countdown before US and Israel bomb such a ship.
Wouldn’t be surprised if they attempted piracy, considering recent events
It would not surprise me if the US declared it’s control over the strait of Hormuz and demanded Russian and Chinese vessels pay a “security fee” per tonnage to allegedly offset the cost of the US doing unilateral security of vessels, while boarding and stealing those who don’t pay the transit fees.
Of course, the cost for the war will be paid by the US taxpayers, and the security fee will go into the pockets of the wealthy. This would be textbook example of two axioms, “Create a problem, sell the solution” and “Privatise the profits, socialise the costs”
I saw Russia and China being criticized for their lack of support for Iran. I’m curious what that support consist of, because afaik they haven’t done much so far.
They provide weapons, intelligence, and economic support to Iran. I’m frankly not sure where the whole narrative that they’re not doing much is coming from. Iran certainly seems to think they’re doing enough.
Correct me if I’m wrong. China acts in a way that’s coherent with an interest in de-escalating the conflict. Which is a rational position, why would China risk nuclear war?
But on r/TankieTheDeprogram some folks are like, China bad, China doesn’t do enough, where are the Chinese missiles???
Yeah… Let’s try to avoid a nuclear winter for now.
Pretty much yeah, China is obviously not looking for a direct confrontation with the US here. The same way, the US is not looking for a direct confrontation with Russia in Ukraine incidentally. I don’t see anybody claiming that the US isn’t helping Ukraine because they haven’t put boots on the ground.
You can be criticized for “lack” of support on the absolute scale but still be the ones providing the most support because every other country is doing fuckall.
China should threaten the West with its rare earth elements. Taking out economic allies should be considered a security concern.
