The Iranian government is terrible, but that doesn’t mean that the U.S. relationship with the gulf states isn’t worse off than in February. The United States made our alignment with Israel hard to ignore and was significantly unable to protect allied countries while drawing fire onto them. It’s entirely possible for both sides to lose a war and I’d bet we’re going to see enough of a shift away from us, likely to China, to solidly count this as a loss.

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YZF 9 hours ago | parent [-]

It hard to say which way this goes. It's a possibility. But China can offer even less protection than the US can.

We have seen that the US ability to project power is great. We've also seen (and I don't think anyone didn't know that) that power has its limits. Especially when it comes to fighting fanatics with nothing to lose.

The US is still the only world power that has the ability to e.g. prevent Iran from just walking in and taking the gulf countries. It's true that protection isn't hermetic.

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acdha 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> But China can offer even less protection than the US can.

I think a lot of those states are wondering how much protection they’d need if we weren’t based there and drawing fire. China can offer economic stability and sales of modern military equipment for self-defense, and I think the entire world is working through the implications of the United States allowing an unsound octogenarian to destabilize the dollar or declare a major war on a whim. There’s a lot to dislike about China but the gulf states aren’t exactly sticklers for democracy and stability is good for business.

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oa335 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It's true that protection isn't hermetic.

But hermetic protection is REALLY important when your entire economy is based off of oil and water desalination plants. Iran still retains the ability to damage that infrastructure. The Gulf countries have some hard decisions to make, but I wouldn’t be surprised if several of them sprint closer to Iran. Already we are hearing of a joint Omani-Irani agreement on Hormuz administration…

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YZF 8 hours ago | parent [-]

But it's not new that there's no hermetic protection.

There is no real possible alignment between the regime in Tehran and the Sunni Emirates or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. There is no way they are sprinting closer to Iran.

Oman is more complicated but they are also not going to align with Iran.

It's hard to evaluate but I don't see huge shifts from the gulf states. The US is still their best bet (not to mention that they are heavily invested in that). They have major investments that aren't oil, i.e. unlike Iran they can live very comfortably even if the energy sector is shut down. They prefer to make money from oil and gas but they also prefer a weaker Iran.

It's looking like more of the same and counting down to the next round.

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oa335 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> it's not new that there's no hermetic protection.

I think what new is the realization of Iran’s willingness to escalate.

> There is no real possible alignment between the regime in Tehran and the Sunni Emirates or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. There is no way they are sprinting closer to Iran.

Can you please expand on that? I don’t understand why they couldn’t be aligned.

	▲	YZF 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Iran are Shia and the other gulf countries are Sunni. There is a big religious gap between these and historical animosity and rivalry. The Islamic Republic of Iran believes in exporting the revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exporting_the_Islamic_Revoluti... Basically they believe the rulers of the gulf countries should be overthrown and that those countries should be run by Islamic rules. So basically MBZ who rules the UAE (as an example) wants to keep ruling the country and strike some balance between economic prosperity and maintaining his rule while Iran would want to see him removed and his government replaced by a theocratic regime. Naturally the UAE also wants not to be bombarded by Iran but the personal survival of the UAE rulers is a bit more important to them than that goal.

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nozzlegear 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> We have seen that the US ability to project power is great. We've also seen (and I don't think anyone didn't know that) that power has its limits. Especially when it comes to fighting fanatics with nothing to lose.

My unprovable pet theory is that the US would've had less black eyes if we didn't have incompetent people like Kegseth in charge, and especially if he hadn't been allowed to dismiss top brass across the military just because they were too woke/not "warrior" enough.

	▲	acdha 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Hegseth didn’t help matters at all but the problem started at the top. In past administrations, the various people leading the military & State would’ve pushed back against Netanyahu/Graham’s sales pitch that it’d be an easy war, identified actual goals, and planned ahead to achieve them (e.g. assembling a coalition like their counterparts did against Iraq twice) but everyone with backbone or independence was purged under the Republican’s new unitary executive theory. Hegseth was selected because he would never say “sir, that’s a bad idea” as happened so many times during Trump’s first term.