Zoraptor

There is no border weirder than Oman and the UAE. Two Omani enclaves*, one with an Emirati enclave inside it. Whoever came up with that must have been taking the mick. The most likely scenario for Trump using a nuke is so he can claim he's 'destroyed' any Iranian nuclear material. By distributing it and a bonus amount over a large area of Iran, but still, it's Trump. Tactical nuke, not a strategic one. Plenty of people around who think they're fine [for their side] to use, and it's very likely Trump and Kegseth are two of them. Which is why it might be an actively good thing if Trump is bored. *as demanded of a true pedant: one is technically an exclave, since it borders the sea. Quoting myself as I forget to mention: also rather begs the question that if that AWACS is just 'damaged' what other stuff labelled as 'damaged' is, well, missing the equivalent of a third of its fuselage and all the equipment essential to its role. Labeling that as 'damaged' is actively damaging to PR, since it's very obviously destroyed to all practical purposes.

Another bunch of refueling planes and an AWACS (! total loss, couldn't have been done cleaner with a Ginzu) appear to have been hit at Prince Sultan Air Base by Iran. This is separate from the incident a while back where half a dozen were hit, and separate from the collision (or 'collision') that killed one of the plane's flight crew. That's as much as 10% of the total fleet out of action now, and even though they're being replaced a completely unsustainable rate of loss. (one might opine that it was highly incompetent leaving a dozen or so planes in a beautiful ordered formation on the tarmac after the experiences of Russia and Ukraine... but it probably isn't. If you don't have hardened shelters you don't have them; and they're big planes. Does make you wonder if a site as well defended as Prince Sultan is getting hit what other places are as well that we aren't seeing)

If Trump really is 'bored' by his war then at least the chance of him using nukes is at least reduced to negligible. He'd be more likely to just declare victory- for the howevermanyth time- and tacitly leave the mess to everyone else. Then invade Cuba; or Canada or Greenland. Given it's Trump those ors could easily be ands instead. If he decides to send in the troops there's a decent chance he'll take the inevitable fp drone videos of marines getting gibbed very personally* indeed. At that point things may get interesting. *not on behalf of the dead soldiers of course, but because it's politically embarrassing for him and will inflame both the pro and anti war sides of his voter base

So, the 'big gift' Iran gave Trump was allowing ten ships (from friendly to Iran countries) through Hormuz. Or in other words Trump just got manipulated into admitting Iran controls the Straits. By a strategem that's barely better than 'pull my finger' or giving him a big beautiful gift of updog.

Yep. They probably thought they were safe due to Russia not targeting all the western assets that Ukraine uses- which are also legitimate targets. That rather ignores that if Russia were in a similar situation to Iran is rather than Russia is... well, she wouldn't be, due to having nukes. ie the US would be trying to explain why the Ford was atomised rather than had a 'laundry fire'. Plus of course and inevitably there's an extremely long list of all the times the west bombed 'non belligerents', targeted the economies of 3rd parties etc. Indeed, every single point is a lesson in double standards. Perhaps best summed up by quoting an expert referring to the San Remo Manual. Which is specifically not binding, but in any case says: So yeah, you can legally target neutral ships running a blockade (though the binding legal framework for it is, iirc, from the 19th century). And of course, most of the people shocked and appalled at Iran Blockading the Strait aren't shocked and appalled at, say, Israel starving Gazans or denying them water via blockade; they're just shocked and appalled when it effects them.

Hormuz is conclusively Persian in origin already, and it's already the Persian Gulf so Trump might need to make another concession. Though one suspects Trump's idea of concessions would be offering to build Trump Tower Tehran. Really Bruce, even for you that's weaker than a homeopathic dilution drink. So the sole reason the US and Israel's attacks weren't cowardly was because they were not targeting Iran's economy explicitly? Well then, who bombed the Pars gas field first, Iran or Israel? Was that to cause economic chaos or not? The US and Israel definitely attacked a country weaker than them, without a declaration of war etc. But not cowardly because they didn't attack economic targets? Until they did, and most of Trump's rhetoric in the past week has been explicitly about economic/ civilian targets. Anyway, Iran's President has released a speech I'm sure everyone will appreciate. Source (Maybe not quite the Pearl Harbour reference Trump was going for with Takaichi)

'Cowardly' usually means you don't like the person/ group involved, and nothing more. Sitting in the Nevada desert or the Negev with a PS5 controller blowing up people thousands of km away on a video screen knowing you'll never face any consequences is hardly the height of bravery in any conventional sense yet people tend to label that as 'sensible tactics' and 'not giving a sucker an even break' instead. At this point I'm just assuming anything positive that comes out of Trump's mouth means he's doing market manipulation again. Whether the markets are really really dumb or just want him to be telling the truth so much that they still believe him who knows. (I wouldn't be overly surprised if someone is telling Trump they're talking as a way to at least delay him doing something monumentally stupid until his allies have some time to prepare)

Strange as it may seem oil may not actually be the biggest potential target or threat. Most of its infrastructure is fixable in weeks to months, some of it quicker. Qatari gas with a years long estimate is an outlier. OTOH, some of the Gulf countries have 90%+ drinking water from desalinisation. It's high for Israel as well. You simply don't have weeks or months to fix that, and having 7 million people in Riyadh without water would collapse Confidence almost instantly because there would be no chance of things going back to how they were. Absolutely a war crime to target it, but it's not like either side cares about that- given destroying power plants without a good military reason to do so would also be a war crime.

It isn't, that's the purpose of the military censor in the first place, and always has been everywhere it's been implemented. The state controls the flow of information to stop its own people and the enemy know what damage has been done. When that is not applied they either think it's in their best interests not to, or it's too big to suppress. What do you think they were censoring in those 2000+ articles, Bibi's receding hairline? 131 journalists killed in Gaza since 2024 out of a total of 204, so a shade off 2/3s. That is excluding those killed outside Israel and Palestine by Israel though; add those in and it's over 2/3. To put it in perspective, the number of journalists killed in Ukraine over that time was 4 (four).

Wasn't really a debate, you were simply told what the situation was. On average Israel censors more than 2000 (!) articles per year. That hasn't changed. Or if you prefer, and from the last couple of weeks: "Every reporter in Israel — and every member of the public — is subject to a military censor" Their actual censorship is more harsh than that of Russia. Maybe not quite as bad as Ukraine, since at least you won't get forcibly enlisted for breaking the rules.

The contrast of Trump insisting that the Iranians are begging for a ceasefire due to their military being 2000% killed while 186% of their missile launchers have been destroyed and near simultaneously threatening to blow up all their power plants if they don't reopen the Straits of Hormuz is even more telling than usual. It's very, very obvious that he wants someone, anyone on the Iranian side to start talking to him. That he thinks they will having torn up one agreement than started wars with them twice, during negotiations, is perhaps the definition of hubris. Or stupidity. Maybe both? The Iranians, of course, have a long list of targets to hit in response. Which will really stuff up the region long term. No drinking water for Riyadh would be quite interesting, in a very Chinese (well, 'Chinese') curse sense. Would certainly be interesting to see the European reaction to the US blowing up power plants. While presumably not a war crime due to rules 1 and 2* differentiating it from Russia hitting Ukrainian power plants might be a tad difficult to get through to other people. *(1) someone we like cannot commit a war crime (2) someone we don't like cannot be the victim of a war crime

A manpad missile has very little actual explosive in it, its warhead is usually in the 1kg range, they can still look very big on a thermal camera though. There could be other explanations, like some fuel igniting, but it's probably just the warhead exploding. (It has to be man portable- it's in the name, as they say- and be able to accelerate quickly up to 5000m altitude, and that requires a lot of propellant, a rocket motor, full manoevring suite, independent targeting electronics etc. There simply isn't much room left over after all that, and a bigger wahead --> less of anything else. 1kg will usually give a plane a very bad day and it's likely a write off even if it didn't crash. By contrast a Vikhr is very very barely man portable in theory, slow, only has to maintain level flight and thus can have a 10x larger warhead)

Going to be fun times when not only can poor countries not buy oil due to being priced out, but they can't buy fertiliser either. Something like 80% of the people alive today wouldn't be if not for the Haber Process making nitrogen fertilisers cheap, and that process Requires natural gas. Next largest nitrogen fixing process produces something like 0.6% by mass (and about 0.3% by nitrogen content) of Haber. The damage to the Qatari gas field will take three years minimum to fix.

Not the example I used above, but it's mostly energy costs and loss of big c Confidence that are the approaching needle. Though really, AI is an absolutely awful idea economically on base principle (simplistically, replace jobs with AI and who is going to buy the stuff that makes the actual economy run? AI?).

Not sure we're going to have to worry about it anyway, though I haven't used an nVidia chip since 2007(?) anyway. AI always looked like a bubble, and international events look very much like an approaching needle. If that bubble bursts then they have to pay attention to their more traditional markets rather than turning it all into AI.