Iran War

[crazy canuck]

Trump knows how to do one thing. Threaten people until they give him what he wants.

Now Trump is threatening everyone in the world with unsustainably high gas prices.

How will the world now react to this American threat? That is the interesting question of our time.

[The Minsky Moment]

Yeah, I saw one claim that Netanyahu has finally "made his fatal mistake" by getting into a war he can't extricate himself from.

Right, he doesn't want to extricate himself from anything.  He wants Israel to be so tied up in conflict the electorate is scared out of changing jockeys mid-race.

The fatal mistake is that the latest Israeli polls indicate the voters are not that impressed by the latest gambit; his coalition is now projected at 51 seats to the opposition 59.

[Jacob]

Yeah. I forget who it was who shared the substack post from Hussein Aboubakr Mansour a while back, but in his analysis Israel's interest re: Iran is to keep it as chaotic and unstable as possible to degrade its ability to strike at Israel (through decapitating command networks, destroy logistics corridods, eliminate senior leadership, and forcing the dispersal or demobilization of key proxy formations).

Having the US participate in this does not seem like a loss.

Where it may turn into a loss or "key mistake" if this US participation is short-lived and results in a political change in which the US abandons Israel as an ally.

I don't know if Trump is going to abandon Israel, even if he does have form for betraying allies.

But will post-Trump MAGA - assuming MAGA maintains power - be as committed? Or if MAGA fails to hold on to power, will the Democrats be as inclined to support Israel? What is the US getting out of supporting Israel at this point?

[crazy canuck]

For the first time ever ever, the majority of Americans are now more sympathetic to the Palestinians Israelis.

I think that's a pretty big loss for Israel.

[Zanza]

Trump knows how to do one thing. Threaten people until they give him what he wants.

Now Trump is threatening everyone in the world with unsustainably high gas prices.

How will the world now react to this American threat? That is the interesting question of our time.

It's bizarre that someone who considers everything transactional somehow can't offer something to partners or adversaries.

[jimmy olsen]

Trump knows how to do one thing. Threaten people until they give him what he wants.

Now Trump is threatening everyone in the world with unsustainably high gas prices.

How will the world now react to this American threat? That is the interesting question of our time.

It's bizarre that someone who considers everything transactional somehow can't offer something to partners or adversaries.

It's why he's always been a terrible buisnessman. He's never been able to concieve of a deal where both sides benifit.

[crazy canuck]

What will last longer, the American blockade or a head of lettuce?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

What will last longer, the American blockade or a head of lettuce?

Depends.  If the lettuce has also been PM of Britain then it won't last as long due to the stress of being an important politician.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Have we received confirmation the blockade is even real?

[crazy canuck]

I just heard a news report on the CBC that the US aircraft carrier in the region just put out an announcement to commercial shipping that the entire coastline is under blockade and an interception by the United States Navy

The Americans are becoming pirates

Edit, here is a more detailed report from the Globe

U.S. Central Command announced that from 10 a.m. EDT, or 6:30 p.m. in Iran, the blockade would be enforced "against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas." It said that would include all of Iran's ports on the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. CENTCOM said it would still allow ships travelling between non-Iranian ports to transit the Strait of Hormuz, a step down from Trump's earlier threat to blockade the vital waterway, where 20 per cent of global oil transited before fighting began.

[Sheilbh]

Slight aside but interesting example of what the end of American regional hegemony/a multi-polar world actually means.

There's been a huge amount of UAE sponsored bots attacking Pakistan. This is largely because Pakistan didn't invite the Emiratis to the Islamabad talks while the Saudis and Egyptians were invited to send observers. But also in part because Pakistan has sent a huge deployment of more than 10,000 troops and 15 planes to Saudi as part of the Saudi-Pakistan mutual defence agreement.

In addition to the sponsored social media attacks, reports now coming out of the Gulf that UAE is on the cusp of signing a mutual defence agreement with India.

One side is just the centrifugal effect without US hegemony imposing a structure or logic on their dependent allies - which I suspect we'll see more of (and is also a risk in Europe). I think we're likely to see more of this "minilateralism" of smaller groups or bilateral defence arrangements and I think there's a positive case for them, particularly in Europe. But this something that feels quite 1890s/1900s. You can easily see how these pacts start to overlap and the structure of these relationship means something in the Gulf escalates in Kashmir or vice-versa.

[Syt]

I just heard a news report on the CBC that the US aircraft carrier in the region just put out an announcement to commercial shipping that the entire coastline is under blockade and an interception by the United States Navy

The Americans are becoming pirates

Edit, here is a more detailed report from the Globe

U.S. Central Command announced that from 10 a.m. EDT, or 6:30 p.m. in Iran, the blockade would be enforced "against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas." It said that would include all of Iran's ports on the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. CENTCOM said it would still allow ships travelling between non-Iranian ports to transit the Strait of Hormuz, a step down from Trump's earlier threat to blockade the vital waterway, where 20 per cent of global oil transited before fighting began.

We should send some Jedi to negotiate.

[The Minsky Moment]

Slight aside but interesting example of what the end of American regional hegemony/a multi-polar world actually means.

There's been a huge amount of UAE sponsored bots attacking Pakistan. . .

The collapse of the Shi'a crescent reoriented Saudi policy away from a pro-Israel tilt and towards a less confrontational approach to Iran. MbS' policy both domestic and foreign has also put him in increasing tension with the UAE and the two sides have backed opposing factions in regional conflicts. The UAE spat with Pakistan is another manifestation of the Saudi rivalry, with Pakistan and Turkey aligning with the Saudis and with Egypt perhaps tilting that way as well.

All this has nothing directly to do with the US, but the US has managed these kinds of tensions before (Korea and Japan in Pacific, Greece and Turkey in NATO . . .).  For all Trump's faults, this was one area where administration policy had done a decent job of papering over the massive cracks in Gulf unity, because the Trump family's deep involvement in regional graft kept them on the inside of both camps.  But the Iran war has exposed the destabilizing aspect of Trump's erratic confusion, his inability to hold up the US end of the security bargain, and his penchant for using crises of his own creation to extort additional rents. 

[Valmy]

So a Chinese ship goes through the Straits...are we really going to capture or sink it?

Have we thought this through?

[Sheilbh]

The collapse of the Shi'a crescent reoriented Saudi policy away from a pro-Israel tilt and towards a less confrontational approach to Iran. MbS' policy both domestic and foreign has also put him in increasing tension with the UAE and the two sides have backed opposing factions in regional conflicts. The UAE spat with Pakistan is another manifestation of the Saudi rivalry, with Pakistan and Turkey aligning with the Saudis and with Egypt perhaps tilting that way as well.

All this has nothing directly to do with the US, but the US has managed these kinds of tensions before (Korea and Japan in Pacific, Greece and Turkey in NATO . . .).  For all Trump's faults, this was one area where administration policy had done a decent job of papering over the massive cracks in Gulf unity, because the Trump family's deep involvement in regional graft kept them on the inside of both camps.  But the Iran war has exposed the destabilizing aspect of Trump's erratic confusion, his inability to hold up the US end of the security bargain, and his penchant for using crises of his own creation to extort additional rents. 

And also I think those two paragraphs are linked in a really radically different risk tolerance between the UAE and the rest of the Gulf. I mentioned but I think I saw that after the US announced a ceasefire there were Israeli and Emirati strikes on Iran. By all accounts the Emiratis are really all in, while the rest of the Gulf seems more willing to settle. Part of this is reflected in the Arab flame wars on social media right now with the UAE internet accusing Saudis of basically being a Pakistani puppet and the Saudis saying the UAE is a puppet of "the Zionist entity". As you say this is tied to the collapsing of the "axis of resistance" because that would have been unimaginable pre-October 7 when it looked like Saudi-Israeli normalisation was just a matter of time.

I think the comparison of Korea and Japan in managing tensions is one of the valuable things a hegemon can do. I think another side of it - which is perhaps more relevant in Europe than the Gulf or East Asia - is that I think it can allow you to stop thinking strategically. As I say I think that's the case in a lot of Europe where European strategy has basically been "we're in NATO" - there is no need to go beyond that because NATO fixes your immediate risks and you just orient in one way or another around the US on other things. I think it's part of the challenge in Europe is the rapid need to learn again how to think strategically and get out of that learned helplessness - but also to try and manage it without different perspectives actually becoming an even bigger weakness.

But the other bit is that if the US is really simply that if the security guarantor of the Gulf is the US then, as you say, tensions within the GCC can be managed without anyone needing to look for other external security partners with their own risks. It's one of the upsides of a hegemon for the rest of the world is it contains flashpoints. To take it a bit further you can easily see overlapping security relationships creating a lot of global risk particularly with India and Pakistan. These relationships in the Gulf, India's with Japan (and maybe Australia) through the Quad plus deepening defence relations with Korea, Pakistan leaning more on China. It's nowhere near Guns of August but you can start to see how states rationally and for very sensible reasons create security structures and relationships that in turn generate the potential for a spark in, say, the Gulf to escalate elsewhere very quickly.