> Why would Netherlands do this

Maybe the Dutch are willing to risk it all to annoy the libs so they will elect and transfer all the power to a complete clown and attempt to make some money on the stock market and betting sites in the process.

I don't think parent is arguing that is a wise or prudent thing to do, but merely that violence is very much accessible to the state as an option. Just because it is not exercised with reckless abandon like, especially more recently, in the case of US, does not mean it suddenly does not exist.

<< For now the best assumption is that USA is in a league of its own when it comes to imposing its will on other nations.

You are wrong in general on this point. European countries in general have a long and exciting history of imposing its will upon others ( unilaterally and not ).

> For now the best assumption is that USA is in a league of its own when it comes to imposing its will on other nations.

I don't think that is a correct take away.

assuming that this ceasefire holds (big fucking if) it proves that the US is unable to defend it's self and allies against sustained drone attack.

Part of the reason why the middle east's US allies are allied is the implicit deal that they won't fuck with the oil supply, and the US will protect them against their enemies.

In the 90s, the USA would park a few carriers in the gulf and project complete air superiority. They can't do that anymore, and now needs land bases controlled by allies who the USA openly despises.

China doesn't need to bomb places to make its will felt. It's slowly and subtly built out bases over the south sea, effectively fortifying areas that are not chinas. They have also pretty much compromised most of the telecommunications infra through the various typhoons. (I've also heard rumours that intelligence agencies are leaking like a sieve as well.)

Part of the reason that WWI happened was because a massive military power tried to crush a "primitive" opponent, they fucked it up and demanded help from its allies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cer this then dragged everyone into a massive fuckup.

> For now the best assumption is that USA is in a league of its own when it comes to imposing its will on other nations.

It literally lost and wasted huge amount of resources in the process. Everyone else politely nodded until insulted too much, but otherwise ignored what USA wanted. When insulted, they exchanged some words while continuing to practically ignore what USA wants.

I've been waiting for people to have common sense in this domain for decades. The short term always wins

China also benefits that demonstrated its influence (by persuading Iran to negotiate) and from its supply of cheap Iranian oil:

https://x.com/shanaka86/status/2041682779948380317

It helps the discussion if you would correctly restate what has been agreed. The first obvious mistake is that the US have agreed Iran can charge tax on ships passing the strait; at 32000 ships a year and a nominal $2M, that amounts to $64B alone, doubling their revenue from oil exports and making any foreign currency they like appear in their accounts.

And no, Europe and others definitely do not owe you any debt for this catastrophic war of choice (that still, they enabled! good luck flying there without them!). You will permanently lose many of the ME states to China.

Not sure which world you're in, but Iran has put forward a 10-point demand plan, and it looks like the US (or rather Trump) will likely accept all of them instead of getting stuck in a quagmire before elections.

> Europe and even China owe a great debt of gratitude to the US

Absolutely not, USA actions harmed Europe and Europe knows it.

> Putin will be absolutely furious, since he's now betrayed by both the EU

In what alternative universe?

If we're being honest, there are no winners in war but since we live in a world that likes to have winners and losers, a loss for the US is a victory for Iran.

Not only has Iran managed to survive being battered by the most powerful military in history, it has:

1. Created a global energy and economic crisis.

2. Effectively demonstrated that it can control the Strait of Hormuz even without much naval and air firepower. In doing so, it showed that the US Navy is not capable of controlling the seas anywhere and anytime.

3. Caused the US and its allies to spend billions of dollars worth of advanced weapons systems (many of which were already in short supply) to defend against much cheaper drones and missiles.

4. Incited Trump to lash out at the European countries that have historically been America's biggest allies, accelerating the trend of America's now possibly irreparably damaged relationships with these countries.

5. Baited Trump into publicly and belligerently positioning the US as a hostile state willing to threaten war crimes/genocide to get its way.

> That people thought the sovereign waters of a nation were not their sovereign waters absolutely blows my mind. Is it poor schooling, some kind of warped world view?

Because they are not? Oman clearly shares a part of it.

its also the sovereign waters of oman as well, its just oman outsources its military to the USA, who didn't have the ability to enforce its sovereignty.

But this was a know risk, and there are at least 20 years of plans, thoughts risk assessments for the Strait of Hormuz. Had the state department not fired everyone, or the DoD not fired all its strategic advisors, they'd have been able to tell the exec all of these problems.

> As far as non-parties to the conflict are concerned, Iran's toll is literal highway robbery.

Yes.

But before the US started this stupid war, everyone knew that Iran had strategic control over the strait, and Iran reasoned that if they were to impose a toll on ships passing the strait, the rest of the world would gang up and bomb the shit out of them, removing their strategic control of the strait. So it was kept open.

But now the US went in and bombed the shit out of them anyway, whereupon Iran discovered that despite that, the US wasn't able to secure the strait. What they previously feared turned out to be manageable. They can close the strait, and the cost of stopping them is much, much higher than the US, or any other country wants to bear.

So the rest of the world is choosing between joining the US' illegal fiasco of a war in Iran to help open the strait, or simply paying the comparably tiny toll the Iranians are asking for, in return for oil shipments resuming immediately. So far, everyone is choosing #2.

As a bonus, Iran has also discovered that they can break through the defences of the other gulf states and legitimately threaten their oil facilities, desalination plants, and other infrastructure. Previously, the mostly US-supplied missile defences they had was assumed to be 100% effective, but by testing it, Iran now knows that they're not.

And all of this because the US, in its hubris and arrogance, assumed Iran was as defenceless and vulnerable as Venezuela, and that it would work out splendidly like that time. Idiocy.

Another question is, how is Iran going to enforce this?

It doesn't seem Iran still has a navy that could board ships and force them to stop without actual violence.

What happens if a tanker decides to not pay and chance it? Will Iran sink it? That would constitute an act of war (a reprise of the war). Hard to pull off politically (even if it's easy to do technically).

$2m is the current toll that Iran has already successfully charged any ships it allows. It amounts to an extra $1/barrel, so it's a trivial tax in comparison to what the supply shock is causing in fluctuations. China has already paid, and will happily pay going forward if it stabilizes the supply chain.

Expect it to go higher as negotiations cement Iran's highway robbery. Which, yes, it is highway robbery, but it's robbery no one is able to stop without invading and occupying Iran to execute proper regime change... which no one, least of all the US, is stepping up to do.

The U.S. has lost all negotiating leverage. It's been demonstrated that they're unable to militarily impose their will on Iran, and they're far more sensitive to economic disruption than Iranians are--who are, as I type this, forming human shield rings around vital bridges and facilities, ready to die if the U.S. bombs them. Negotiations are, at this point, about the U.S. coming away with some face-saving outcomes.

Look at a topographic map instead, this is a mountain range that goes up to 1934m.

Ships aren't going up there in this century.

Why dig a whole canal when you could just set up a pipeline for much less money?

If you consider the topology, it is way less viable.

If you go through UAE (the narrow part) you are attempting to build a canal through mountains and desert.

Any other route (the non narrow parts) would just be 3-4x the length of the Suez Canal but through a desert, but since its not sea level the whole way, with locks (which means more water... again, desert), and at the end forces you through an even narrower strait at the end (Bab-el-Mandeb). The Houthis in Yemen have blasted Israeli-affiilated ships in that strait before, and they are Iran-backed.

Now imagine how the international community feels about the US starting a war of aggression against Iran without even consulting with its allies and trading partners beforehand.

The whole situation further isolates the US globally (they were already isolated before the war due to threats of taking Greenland, making Canada the 51st state, leaving NATO, etc.).

> so we don’t have to pay a toll for an international waterway

I don't think it was international. I think it was 50% Iran's and 50% Oman's.

This is mostly true, but I have to push back against the 30k number. That's a number that only the US regime has been touting. HRANA has verified about 7000.

To Trump, when someone else does something, it's worthy of reproach, but when Trump himself does it, it's the cleverest 4D chess anyone could ever imagine.

My point is that you can't bomb a country into submission. You can use strategic air power in addition to other methods, but the bombing alone was proven again and again to fail. More often than not, it hardens the enemy's resolve.

Bombing Britain failed. Bombing Germany failed (except for dragging the Luftwaffe into a war of attrition). Bombing Japan failed on its own until Japan had no navy left afloat, and the Russians savaged their army in China. The bomb accelerated a victory achieved through other means.

In Korea, Americans levelled cities and infrastructure until there was nothing left to bomb. That did not win the war.

In Vietnam, Linebacker failed. Linebacker II bought slightly more favourable terms for the US in negotiations, but in the end, North Vietnam won.

Even the Desert Storm curbstomp would not have worked without boots on the ground.

I'm just rehashing a better post on this exact topic: https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower...

> This weakened Iran would have no ability […], close the strait, […]

Here is where we disagree. And i think this is the only point which matters.

I agree with you that the US always had the ability to destroy Iranian civilian infrastructure. I agree with you that doing so would cause catastrophic economic damage, civilian unrest, regime overthrow etc. It would seriously disrupt their nuclear program for sure.

What it wouldn’t do is reopen the strait. As long as some ships pay the toll those monies can be used to pay the “warfighters” and their weapons. It is relatively cheap to do so. Ukraine demonstrated this with their unmanned surface vessels. This they can do even if the whole hinterland of Iran is in flames and turmoil.

In fact the more their economy collapses the more lucrative this coastal piracy “business” relatively to other opportunities becomes. People who “before the bombing” had better things to do will find that shaking down foreign ships is still doable “after the bombing”. Some of it will be out of ideology and hate for sure, destroying all the civilian infra of a country tends to whip up emotions in people. But fundamentally they can keep doing it because it is a business which pays.

And regime overthrow won’t help with this either. In the absence of a strong central coordinating force you might get multiple separate pirate outfits camping at different parts of the coast trying to take tolls. That obviously wouldn’t improve their economic success, but would increase chaos and hinder transportation even more.

In short while the USA could destroy Iran as a nation, doing so would not eliminate the threat to shipping in the region.

Turning Iran into another Afghanistan would not have been a win for anyone with a memory longer than the last two election cycles.

"Without ability to manufacture missiles, Iran would be unable coerce people to buy into it's Hormuz transit toll system, and the strait would reopen."

You don't need missiles to keep Hormuz closed. Cheap drones, naval mines and such are enough, and those don't require that much production capabilities, especially if you get some help from Russia. It's enough to hit a ship every now and then, which keeps the insurers away.

Even without any infrastructure IRGC could wage a guerrilla war for a long time.

Putting aside the fact that the humanitarian disaster you envision would not produce the simple result you expect, it's quite disturbing that you have completely glossed over the fact that destroying Iran's ability to produce electricity is a war crime.

Committing an act of genocide against a country of 90+ million people would be the death of the US as we know it.

Nobody with any slight acquaintance with history could believe any of these.

Well yes, if cruelty is the goal, bombing civilians is cruel.

If I'm not mistaken, the Obama administration was about to accomplish every single one of those goals with a treaty, which the Trump administration cancelled. Bombing a country into accepting terms that they had already agreed to is not that impressive.

[dead]

The issue is that everyone is using the template of a “US President” to do the heavy lifting when analyzing Trump.

Trump is performing the act of what his voter base thinks a President should appear to be doing.

He has a group of people who have hitched their cart to his, and feed into his beliefs.

Underlying that are the rank opportunists and the people who were waiting for this chance to change the nature of the American system to better combat the impact of science and “out of touch ivory tower liberals”, or whatever term of the day is.

Looking for the Emperor’s new clothes is always going to suggest that there is a pattern, since it depends on your ability to believe there is method to the madness.

The Saudi & UAE pipelines combined can only carry around 9mbpd and are already maxed out, compared to an average of 20 through the Strait.

That has a capacity of 7M barrels a day, so not an alternative. It'll lessen the blow a tiny bit but that's all it does

Ok. This is getting silly and on par with 'the straight is open; it is only closed, because Iran is blocking it' quip from Hegseth. Tensions are high, because there are trapped hips AND there is no viable alternative.

Wait until you hear about the Houthis.(or the fact that the pipeline is only a small fraction of the capacity of the strait).

True, if the presence of active terrorist organizations is beneficial then this is a win.

Politically it might suit Israel to have overt enemies. I'm not sure it's necessarily advantageous to the population, but that probably doesn't matter.

I suspect one clear outcome is that Iran now completely understands the importance of cheap, effective, munitions (drones and missiles) and so will likely build those up quickly. That might affect munitions targeted at Israel.