> 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.