Iran War?

[mongers]

Kuwait shot down...3 F-15's today. Friendly fire.

I don't understand that could happen. Surely before beginning such a major military effort, the Pentagon would have carefully planned and coordinated with allies and friendly affected states. . . oh wait

The Kuwaitis were close.  Just one number off.

It's not implausible that the Emir phone phoned his buddy, trump and asked for a favour/help and trump ordered/demanded the air force send in fighters to shot down the drones; no time for co-ordination and the Kuwaitis not having much experience, the rest is history for those jets.

[Legbiter]

Pilot explaining he's not an Iranian.

[mongers]

Starmer: 'This government does not believe in regime change from the skies'

I wonder if he's listened to trump / nuttyarenow?

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'm not aware of any long-term LNG storage facilities anywhere in the world. The system is designed to compress the natural gas into a liquid form for transport, and store it temporarily so that it is available when the ships pull in to load it and send it to its destination, or alternatively to send it down a pipeline to end users.

And user storage is similarly short-term in nature.

It's literally a flow through system.

I think this is correct, there is long term gaseous storage of NG in the United States, where the NG storage industry is a decently large industry. But it isn't stored in liquid form and it's generally stored in underground chambers from which it had previously been extracted (and thus naturally remains sealed away when it is pumped back in.)

[OttoVonBismarck]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/02/uk-airbases-us-attack-iran-trump-starmer

Like I have said elsewhere UK is probably going to force the US to just unilaterally annex Diego Garcia. The Labour government's belief in the importance of fictitious international legal analyses to put the base at risk is not intelligent, and the U.S. isn't going to give a key military base to some random African country with no valid claim to it.

UK 'took far too long' to let US use its airbases to attack Iran, Trump says
US president also 'very disappointed' in Keir Starmer over UK government's deal to hand Chagos Islands to Mauritius

The UK "took far too long" to allow US forces to use its airbases to attack Iran, Donald Trump has said.

The US president added that he was "very disappointed" in Keir Starmer over the British government's deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius as a means to preserve the status of the UK-US airbase on Diego Garcia, part of the Indian Ocean archipegalo.

The Chagos deal, which Trump initially supported before changing his mind, was a "very woke thing", the US president argued.

While Starmer and his ministers did not openly oppose Saturday's initial wave of US-Israeli attacks on Iran, which killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, they did not allow US forces to use Diego Garcia or any UK airbases because of doubts about the legality of the strikes.

On Sunday evening, however, Starmer said this position had changed given that Iran had launched a wave of retaliatory missile and drone attacks on a range of targets in the Middle East, with one hitting a UK airbase in Cyprus.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Trump said Starmer was too slow to change his mind, adding: "It took far too much time. Far too much time.

"That's probably never happened between our countries before. It sounds like he was worried about the legality."

The UK should have immediately allowed Diego Garcia to be used, Trump added, because Iran was responsible for killing a "lot of people from your country".

"[There are] people without arms and legs and faces that have been blown up. Iran is 95% of those. Those horrible events were caused by Iran," the president said, without elaborating on what he meant.

The UK government bill to formalise the deal with Mauritius is paused at its final stage in parliament after Trump changed his mind. Starmer has said that the plan will not go ahead without US agreement.

While Trump had previously criticised the plan, which is backed by the US state department, early in February he had described it as the "best" deal Starmer could make in the circumstances.

But in a change of heart later that month, the US president said on social media that Keir Starmer was "making a big mistake" by handing sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius in exchange for continued use by the UK and US of their airbase on one of the islands, Diego Garcia.

"All of a sudden [Mauritius] was claiming ownership," Trump told the British newspaper. "He should have fought it out and owned it or [made them] take it, if you want to know the truth. But no, we were very disappointed in Keir."

He added: "It would have been much better on the legal front if he just kept the ownership of the land and not given it to people that weren't the rightful owners."

On the strikes against Iran, Trump said the operation was "well ahead of schedule", adding: "We always anticipated four weeks. We also anticipated two to three weeks to take out some of the leadership, but we've taken out all of it in one day. So that was well ahead of schedule. We always viewed it as a four-week operation."

Trump has been vague about what the goals of the military strikes are, saying that the aim is for the Iranian people to rise up, but also talking about the idea of holding talks with successors to Khamenei.

While Trump peppered his statements with a number of low information and low intelligence falsehoods (as per the norm) proving that even an imbecile is sometimes right, he correctly notes that Mauritius has no valid claim to these islands and the UK is being quite stupid in accepting fictitious claims.

[Syt]

German newsticker this morning:

8:43am - [German Foreign Minister] rules out military evacuation of travelers
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (CDU) has ruled out a military evacuation of German travelers currently stranded in the Gulf region due to the war. "We won't be able to do that, because the airspace is completely closed," Wadephul told the Bild newspaper. It is currently impossible to predict when those affected will be able to leave. The German Travel Association put the number of affected German travelers in the region at around 30,000. This figure refers to travelers with German tour operators who are currently in the region or have flights via hubs in the area.

8:47am - Britain prepares to evacuate citizens
Britain is preparing to evacuate its citizens from the Middle East. An estimated 300,000 Britons have registered their presence in the region, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told Sky News. The government is working on various options, including cooperation with the travel industry and state-organized evacuations. Intervention forces have also been deployed to the region.

German commenters say whoever ran the ticker knew what they were doing posting the news in this order.

At least they later changed their mind:

2:20pm - German government plans to send planes for evacuation
The German government is preparing to send planes to the Middle East to bring stranded German tourists home. The aircraft are to be sent to Muscat in Oman and the Saudi capital, Riyadh, explained Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul. He stated that the airspace there is still open, but safety is the top priority for the deployment. He added that he had spoken with Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr, and that the airline has the necessary capacity.

[Syt]

Tagesschau.de also reports that France wants to increase its number of nuclear warheads, and:

Macron to Expand Nuclear Umbrella
France aims to reach an agreement with eight allied countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom, on extending its nuclear umbrella to encompass Europe. "Contacts have been established with an initial group of allies, starting, of course, with our most important partner, Germany," Macron said in a keynote address on France's nuclear deterrence. The other interested countries are Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, and Denmark. Specifically, Macron suggested that partners could participate in French nuclear exercises. Furthermore, strategic elements could be temporarily redeployed to the allies. French air forces could also be deployed further into Europe.

[frunk]

I think that Iran and Venezuela have shown the US leadership has succumbed to CEO disease, thinking the only important person is the one in charge.

Once the leader is removed you can easily install someone you can control or whoever the replacement is will accede to your demands out of fear for their life.  That just doesn't work.

[The Brain]

I think that Iran and Venezuela have shown the US leadership has succumbed to CEO disease, thinking the only important person is the one in charge.

Once the leader is removed you can easily install someone you can control or whoever the replacement is will accede to your demands out of fear for their life.  That just doesn't work.

I don't hear anything from the American rule of Venezuela, so it probably goes smoothly.

[Duque de Bragança]

Tagesschau.de also reports that France wants to increase its number of nuclear warheads, and:

Macron to Expand Nuclear Umbrella
France aims to reach an agreement with eight allied countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom, on extending its nuclear umbrella to encompass Europe. "Contacts have been established with an initial group of allies, starting, of course, with our most important partner, Germany," Macron said in a keynote address on France's nuclear deterrence. The other interested countries are Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, and Denmark. Specifically, Macron suggested that partners could participate in French nuclear exercises. Furthermore, strategic elements could be temporarily redeployed to the allies. French air forces could also be deployed further into Europe.

I was about to post a more detailed on the French thread. Just dit it.

https://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,16371.1080.html

[Legbiter]

Tagesschau.de also reports that France wants to increase its number of nuclear warheads,

Macron aura farming as the kids say when announcing this.

[The Minsky Moment]

DJT told Jonathan Karl that they had identified "candidates" in advance to take over Iran once Khamenei was removed. 

He then explained: "The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates. It's not going to anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead."

Idiocracy was not satire; it was a soberly understated documentary that projected out centuries too long.

[Zanza]

I never understood that, you subsidize this tech for decades right up until it becomes profitable than just...stop?

it wasn't profitable at the prices charged by the cheap Chinese imports.

Seems weird to give up though after decades of subsidies. And for Germany, a country that desperately has needed alternative energy for at least a century. What happened to fortress Europe keeping out the cheap stuff?

A conservative government. They destroyed that industry in the same year they decided to phase out nuclear energy.
Geniuses.

15 years later and they are just doing the same thing. Moving away from renewables to fossils. Conservatives here are utterly retarded on energy policy.

[Jacob]

It does suggest a very personalized view of state to state interaction: States are an extension of the leader. You do things to the state to force the leader to comply; if you kill the leader then that's the ultimate sanction. The state and the population is almost incidental.

It'll be interesting to see how that view holds up.

[Zanza]

It does seem like living with the spot price fluctuations is the only option.  In theory you could try a financial hedge but the scale is so big it would tough to find a reliable counterparty and the costs would be very high.

EU is already pursuing lowering total gas demand because of Russia.  If there is any blame to throw out in terms of preparation it would be not pushing nuclear harder.

The sensible thing would be to invest massively into renewables, storage, transmission and electrify the economy, transport, and private heating. The only way to gain energy independence for Europe is solar and wind power.