Zoraptor

'Share' (at the bottom of the newsbit) does generate a unique url which links directly to the newsbit. Seems that for some reason the forum insists on embedding it as a 'live' thread though, instead of as a standard hyperlink. eg https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cx2lr40g17kt?post=asset%3A31eeddf8-3347-4e96-8612-776d7d42dd46#post links to a specific newsbit if you c&P into a browser. If you let it be converted to an embed it shows as: BBC NewsTrump says he's 'not happy' with UK after Starmer says it...The US president repeats his call for other nations to assist in securing the Strait of Hormuz, after saying it would be "very bad for the future of Nato" if allies don't help. Of course. And you hear from them constantly because they want to talk to the media, and they're exactly the sort of person the media wants to hear from. Indeed, if you listened to the media they're the only people who exist in Iran (except those who are part of the 'regime'. Which is, in itself, biased wording). You don't hear from those who support the clerics though. They won't talk to the BBC, or CNN, or Le Monde or whoever. Who also aren't really interested in hearing from them anyway. There's always far more interest in hearing from those who reinforce what you already believe. That gives a massively distorted view, along with, well, defining a bunch of Iranian entities as terrorist so you can't show anything 'promoting' their views.

I don't think there's any realistic scenario in which Russia nukes Ukraine even if it were not as taboo. The trouble with Trump is that he's Trump. No one really knows what he'll do in a no win situation. It wasn't a reasonable decision to attack Iran either, it wasn't a reasonable decision to do so with-seemingly, and it's a pretty solid seemingly- no apparent plan for anything apart from blowing stuff up and when that doesn't work, blowing more stuff up. The ultimate end point of that 'strategy' is, well, nukes. Not really the logical end point, but we're far beyond applying logic to someone who appears to have had no consideration for how the other side might react. I don't really think Russia believed the local populace would rise, just that the Ukrainian army wouldn't fight effectively. Western media, and probably Intelligence, appears to suffer from classic Confirmation Bias. And really, White Knight/ Hero complex as well. If you watched/ read only the BBC* you'd think that every Iranian opposed their government. Because they all say they do. But, every time I see or read a BBC interview with an Iranian I remember that the type of people who would say things the BBC doesn't like would simply never be interviewed by them- they'd never talk to the BBC in the first place. People who had changed their mind post bombing wouldn't risk anything to berate the BBC knowing that they'd probably not get covered. You'd never know that from the BBC itself though. You can also see it with the Iranian women football players. They make the free choice to stay in Australia, but have to be being pressured into deciding to return to Iran. There's a fair chance they just turned on the news, and decided that actually their government was not wrong about some things. Even if they don't like their government they may well hate being used to justify attacks on their country. This is the ultimate problem with all these sort of things; you have the media- and Intelligence- talking only to the people who say what they want to hear. Since they hear nothing else from people, except state media who you can easily dismiss, you end up Believing what you want to be true is true. Personally, I also always remember the old Chomsky response to a reporter who didn't like Manufacturing Consent: ~"..if you asked those sort of questions, you'd never be employed as a reporter in the first place". *or just about any other western source really. But the BBC is handy, has a live stream and a veritable plethora of articles and newsbits talking to Iranians, and BBC 'Persian' (sic; that it isn't BBC Iran or BBC Farsi shows who it's aimed at) exists.

There's a non zero chance Trump does try to 'win' this with nukes. Apart from the narcissism he gives every impression of not just being a "if I have a hammer, every problem can be solved with nails" type guy, but also a "if I have a hammer it has to be used, or it is worthless" type guy. You can stick pretty much anything on a civilian ship, with enough work*. In that case, you'd presumably lift a vehicle with it onto the ships then take them off at the end to swap onto a ship going the other way, which seems simple enough. Though given the information on its effectiveness comes from the manufacturer some mild skepticism about its stated capabilities is warranted. Especially so if it's actually been rejected (given it's microwaves, is it massively less effective if it's, well, raining for example?). We have no idea how the system copes with swell (probably ok, on a big tanker, on a smaller cargo ship though?) and especially salt water. Which will mess things up far worse than fresh water might. *Germans stuck ~light cruiser level load outs on modified freighters in WW2 for example, and they had to be clandestine. Good enough that the Kormoran sank a heavy cruiser, albeit they wouldn't have had a chance if the cruiser had been sensible.

Bunch of reasons for that. The EU has designated the IRGC+ as terrorists, so that takes out a lot of Iranian (and Lebanese) media- by design and intent. The US and Israel also systematically target media, of course. Iran has shut down the internet. There's a 12 day (lol) delay on getting updated satellite imagery (of targeted US/ Israeli assets; not Iranian of course, they're fair game for immediate dissemination) after those THAAD radars got hit and publicised. There's till about 4 days to go before you get new updates, and they will be +12 days out of date so not so interesting. The Gulf States are also arresting anyone taking video or photos of attacks and damage; and Israel requires everything to go through the Military Censor as well. The great irony is that the place with the least filtered flow of primary source material involved in a major conflictat the moment is Russia, as every attack has someone videoing and uploading it. Just about everywhere else you'd end up in prison for it.

I have to admit there's a certain amount of grim amusement to be had from Trump now begging other countries to send warships to Hormuz. The combination of the great unilateralist going cap in hand when the going gets tough asking those he's spent the last year insulting to bail him out and all his recent pronouncements about how great things are going- including telling Britain not to send ships as it would be ~"joining a conflict we've already won"- has slightly more than a scintilla of irony. Also probably the closest we're going to get to an admission from Trump that if the USN actually does start trying to escort ships they're going to take losses. He would, of course, far prefer those losses to be from the countries he insulted the dead of less than two months ago.

Seems the US has had a very bad time with their refueling aircraft. One crashed, another damaged over Iraq and according to the WSJ a further five (!) hit on the ground in Saudi*. Iran/ pro Iran Iraqis had claimed the ones over Iraq, with a fair bit of (justified) skepticism being shown. Be a hell of a coincidence if the other hit was proven, though it's difficult to think of a plausible scenario unless the US has re-entered Al Asad in Iraq (which is close to where the one which crashed crashed, but the US is meant to have left and there's no information suggesting it's still in use). The one that landed in Israel looks eminently repairable in the mediumish term and supposedly the ones (supposedly) hit in Saudi are repairable, but given they are huge volatile fuel carriers that swap combustible for explosive when empty you would suspect that won't be true for all of them. Not exactly crippling given the US still has about 150 in active service. *Yes, that is the same Saudi that is definitely not involved in the strikes, and cannot understand why it's being targeted... though it was obvious from Trump's lack of outrage cf Britain and Spain that their facilities were being used, whatever they claimed.

Almost definitely is a scam, at least insofar as you'd be getting anything that you couldn't get from the general internet or by asking chatgpt. Shame you have to donate or you could have a lot of fun signing up for that under false names. The ability to say that sort of thing with something approaching a straight face was probably why he got the job. Along with all the ruthless aggression fratboy posturing and possessing the demeanour/ intellect of a Fox & Friends presenter. (Hardly an isolated sentiment/ incident though, no matter how awful Hegseth's presentation is to those cursed with woke DEI flaws like critical faculties. We got pro Russian shrubbery and Putin ordering troops to hold their ground to give the illusion they weren't retreating in Ukraine for example. There's definitely a subset of people who will take that sort of thing at face value without the slightest thought given)

While I know it's been extensively reported he was I'm less than convinced that MBS was pro war. Very obviously risky for him and his country, and he had the experience of the Houthis embarrassing his army and air force- and hitting his oil facilities with cheap drones, and having difficulties sourcing patriots to defend from their sporadic attacks- for ten years to fall back on. Being willing to allow the use of facilities when it's inevitable is a bit different to actually advocating for it as Netanyahu assuredly did.

The leverage Iran has is 100% tanking the world economy by shutting the straits, and tanking their neighbours. They don't really have any reason to stop- whatever Trump says- before they've proven they can; because otherwise Trump and Israel will be back for annual 'mowing the grass' exercises. The only way Iran stops that, is to make it clear what the consequences will be. Otherwise, they just get steadily weaker. It may seem odd that Trump doesn't understand that given that pretty much everyone else did, but that's the problem with being a massive unempathetic narcissist being egged on by sociopaths like Netanyahu and grade a certified cretins like Graham. Not only do you believe that people will do what you want them to because it's you doing the telling and believe circumstances will fall into line because it's you needing them to- the narcissist part- but you also think other people will behave as you would in the circumstances. ie do anything to preserve themselves, in the way you'd do it were the circumstances reversed... surrender. Pretty much everything Trump- and to be fair, the broader US and West in lesser part- has done for 20 odd years leads us to this place. If Iran is cut off from the western economy, then crashing it has no real disadvantages, for them. If they have no navy or ability to send their own ships, or oil capacity they have no reason to keep the Straits of Hormuz open. You've killed the father and most of the family including children and wife of the new leader. If the US has bombed them twice in the past year they need a guarantee it won't happen again in nine months when Trump needs a distraction from the disastrous midterms or whatever. The only way they get that, and make him enforce that on Netanyahu, is by making it very obvious what the consequences will be if it happens again. They do that by taking things beyond the 4 days grace releasing some emergency fuel grants.

While classic mines are the epitome of indiscriminate a lot of the mine adjacent stuff- slow moving, long endurance drones, remote activated non classic mines etc- would be pretty selective. It's pretty hard to hide the movement of a tanker, they're slow, large, and tend to catch fire rather nicely if you make a hole in them. You wouldn't need to hit every one either, just demonstrate you can. Or yeah, use a missile/ rocket though they'd be better saved in case Trump really is dumb enough to send the US Navy into a constrained and hostile area. The targeting of their refineries and storage just gives them even more incentive to be indiscriminate though. In the end, China and pretty much everyone else is going to blame the US for the issues even if they get grumpy with Iran in public, since they started things off. When the Gulf States start running out of food, most of which is imported, by ship, they're going to start shouting at the US very loudly behind closed doors because the cliché about every society being three meals away from revolution is not far off, especially for one that is massively spoilt like the average native Gulf citizen. It'd be even more worrying for somewhere like the Emirates, where something like 90% of the population isn't Emirati. They'll shout at Iran publicly; but that hasn't really changed Iran's behaviour over the past week+, and they know it won't because causing them issues so they cause the US and others issues is 100% the point. And domestically, while their leadership may be ok* with Israel and the US attacking Iran they cannot be seen to be joining in with Israel to attack fellow muslims. *Ultimately the problems they'll have with Trump's approach is that he's constantly thrown them under the bus and in ways that a rational actor wouldn't. He's even given the lie to them being 'neutral'. Contrast Trump's reaction to Spain, or the UK to the Gulf States. Public vitriol for not being onboard for the former, crickets for the latter.

Trump being Trump he then spent the next hour contradicting himself about it ending soon.

That's been gone through 1515616855311653156156516 times that Ukraine claimed that without actual evidence, let alone proof; and the numbers they claimed barely shifted the dial. The point of the claim was simply to muddy the waters so people would state it as fact. No other reason. Indeed, it's very easy to tell that the vast majority are genuine dead Ukrainians. Ukraine tried to renege on the body swap deal back in June 2025, and was forced to back down when Russia started publicly listing the identification of those they were going to return. Which of course Ukraine objected to, because it'd make it impossible to reject them; and because it generated enough outrage from the relatives that they had to back down. That would hardly work if they were actually all unknown soldiers- and especially would not if they were unidentified Russians. You'd have heard nothing but shouting from the Ukrainian side about how the Russians were publishing false lists and they'd trot out families non stop to complain; all shown in great detail in the western press. Which simply has not happened. They just said it was fake and hoped that would be enough. The whole point of Russia returning them is that Ukraine simply will not pay out benefits for 'missing', only dead, so they have an absolute motive for returning genuine and identifiable bodies. It costs Ukraine a great deal of money.

Wouldn't be all that surprising if Iran already has mined the Straits. Or at least, 'mined' them. There will be a lot of drone type developments at play that will be broadly indistinguishable from 'mines'. Indeed, there are multiple varieties of 'mine' that have very little in common with the classic floating porcupine design. Iran is known to have rocket propelled mines, that are seabed deployed and effective from ~200m depth. The- pretty obvious, to anyone with two brain cells to rub together- negative of sinking Iran's entire navy is that there really isn't any drawback to denying the Straits to everyone in response. It's also pretty obvious to anyone following Ukraine that a country without a conventional navy can still do a lot of damage unconventionally. Shame Trump and Hegseth have to share the same brain cell, really.

Oil prices at $108 p/b. Gulf countries starting to wind down production as they've run out of storage. Mojtada Khamenei appointed to succeed his father. Absolutely no apparent means to deescalate. Trump must be getting sick of so much pure and unadulterated winning. (Perhaps the only positive is watching hasbara vainly trying to maintain their narrative against a veritable tsunami of anti Trump invective. Well that and all the people poking fun at Operation Epic/Epstein/AIPAC Fur(r)y)

The body return figures are only really interesting because Ukraine claims to have recaptured a lot of land over the past few months, but the ratio of bodies returned remains in 20ish to 1 territory against them. And they have recaptured a lot of land, though much of it is land Ukraine and pro Ukraine mappers never admitted to having lost; but still, for these purposes Russia definitely hasn't been advancing at a 20:1 type ratio since maybe August(?). I agree with most of the rest- attacking Iran is actually a disaster for Ukraine for multiple reasons; and even the positives are mostly rubbish, eg people saying Russia won't be able to import any Shaheds any more when Russia hasn't imported them since early 2024. But, Russia was never selling oil at 40USD, that's not all that much above the break even point for Saudi's sweet light oil. They'd literally literally have been losing money on every barrel pumped, not just selling below the theoretical/ nominal break even point. That figure comes about by subtracting all the costs from the list price, then saying it's being sold at a $25 discount. That's double dipping, since you don't subtract those costs from anyone else. Most of the info is that it's being sold at roughly a $5 discount to India, which is more than enough on the amounts shipped for them to have pretty blatantly ignored the US down to saying they didn't need a sanctions waiver because they'd never stopped buying Russian oil yesterday. It's a billion dollars ++ p/a that Russia isn't getting, but that certainly ain't a third of their income.

Yeah, that article is a bit... over positive, perhaps even verging on Hegsethian. Draws some very long bows both in how well things are going and for the interpretation of statements. “The US retains formidable economic strength and possesses unparalleled military power globally,” Zheng Yongnian, a Chinese political scientist who has advised the Chinese government at different levels, was quoted recently by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. “Despite numerous issues within its political and social spheres, we absolutely must not underestimate America’s capabilities.” That statement essentially states that the analyst thinks the US is in decline- 'retains' is, after all, a term used for something that is diminishing, not increasing or being maintained at the same level. He doesn't say it specifically about the military, but then you can find plenty of US analysts who think China is catching up there even if the US is still a decent amount ahead.

Not really that easy. Iran doesn't have anything specialist that has the range and numbers, assuming the US isn't stupid enough to park their carriers a hundred or so km from Iran's shoreline at least. No oniks/ zircon, no YJ## except maybe some old silkworms. Some home grown stuff with unconfirmed claims and details is all. Indeed, if you want a reason for Trump's 'vibe' that Iran was planning to attack the US them nearing a deal with China to buy something that could hit carriers (CM-302s) is a decent bet. It would certainly have made them far more vulnerable That leaves drones of various types, and ballistic missiles. Even though ballistic missiles are fast a ship may have moved multiple km in their flight time, if you even have an accurate idea of where they were at launch. Giving them the guidance and manoevrability needed to hit a moving target is also Difficult. Drones are slow and typically don't have much payload. Mostly though, if the US actually does attempt to escort ships through the Straits they'll have plenty of targets, and in a far more vulnerable position. Don't think there's any doubt that Netanyahu lied to Trump, extensively. From his pov even if Trump woke up to the fact- unlikely, he's hardly the sort for self reflection- once it's started it's started. Even if Trump wanted to he can't back out now without antagonising everyone.

The fundamental problem with evil choices is that they're so often just chaotic stupid. Not even moustache twirling cliché (alt keys back, I can once again let my pretentiousness run wild), just out and out psychopathy for the sake of being able to say there's choice. No doubt it's partly due to developers knowing that most players will never pick evil choices, so putting less effort in, but still.

Iran War could reopen debate on Russian Natural Gas Norway says. EU ambassador not allowed to inspect damage to Druzhba oil pipeline – FT. Absolute lols. Countdown to NordStream repair being 'strategically essential' starts in... Really, whatever the platitudes most European leaders are spouting they must be absolutely livid behind the scenes. Norway- which has followed the US lead on pretty much everything including a lot of military adventurism and is Europe's largest gas producer- floating the idea of buying more Russian gas rather than less is a pretty clear indicator there's no willingness to reward the US for getting Qatari gas shut off with more gas contracts*. One thing you have to say about Trump, he has at least found a positive about that blancmange Keir Starmer: he most certainly isn't Winston Churchill. *for extra lols, the government here announced a plan to build a LNG terminal, last week. Sums up their competency perfectly. Funded, of course, by a levy since it makes zero financial sense and no private entity in its right mind would build it. Entirely done to pander to Trump; now looks even more stupid.

Only KDP are pro Turkey. Or really, pro Barzani getting massive kickbacks from Erdogan's son in law for selling him oil at a discount (same son in law that was buying ISIS oil a decade ago; not just Trump who has a dodgy relation by marriage). That's 40ish% of 'the Kurds' in Iraq. PUK is about the same size, but- broadly- pro Iran. They were the ones who refused to fight the PMUs in 2017 after making an Iran brokered deal, leading to the KDP running away inside a day. Everything suggests even the KDP will not help, because they really don't want to end up fighting the pro Iranian PMUs. The other problem ought to be obvious to anyone with any ability to think empathetically. So it wouldn't be a surprise if Trump misses it. Soon as you start sending in ethnic militias from another country you're going to get capital letter National Resistance because it's trivial to frame that as the US trying to break up your country. Trump has already proven many of the accusations leveled at him by the Iranian government as true- Israel's poodle, negotiating in bad faith etc- and getting KDP or Azeris or Balochs or MEK to invade reinforces that. Indeed, it'd be more than enough evidence to suggest that the only thing Trump and Israel wants is to cause perpetual regional chaos.

If the americans actually believe that they're fricking bonkers. The Houthis effectivedly closed the Bab al Mandab despite literally not having a navy nor 5% of the resources Iran has; nor even physically holding the coast near it- Hodeidah is around 200km away. And the Bab al Mandab is far less constricted than the straits of Hormuz. Absolute lolz. The largest anti Iran faction of Kurds that is active in Iran is PJAK, a sister organisation to the YPG in Syria. The same YPG Trump stabbed in the back barely a month ago to utter silence from the same media who trumpeted their bravery at Kobani 12 years ago. Unlikely to get the backing of the PUK either, whatever platitudes they may make. So, he'd be relying on bribing Barzani Iteration to use the same Kurds that ran away from the Iranian backed PMUs at Kirkuk in 2017 instead. Sums up Trump's shambolic foreign policy about as well as their incoherent messaging has*. Also one of the best indications that Netanyahu got him on side by spouting bollocks about how easy it'd all be. *I mean really, the Trump admin has been disorganised and messy before with messaging, but this has been absolute next level.

Not the same guy. Easy mistake to make since even the Danish royal family has a more imaginative and varied naming scheme than the Pahlavis. Reza Pahlavi (I, long dead, generally referred to as Reza Khan/ Shah for reasons that will become obvious) got into power in a coup and got chucked out by the Soviets and British during WW2. He got succeeded by his son, Reza Pahlavi (II, died 1980?, generally referred to as Muhammed Pahlavi to distinguish him from his dad and son) when he abdicated. He was the Mossadegh coup, SAVAK death/ torture squads etc guy who managed to convince Iranians that Khomeini was a better alternative than him. His son Reza Pahlavi (III) is the current iteration currently wandering around praising Bibi and Trump for blowing up his countrymen.

Yeah, I guess I could see that. He did need to constantly reinforce his glamour on Celebrimbor and it seems his loss of influence on Galadriel is permanent. It seems unlikely that most men would be able to shake off that sort of influence though. The only real issue with that is that canonically he only really needed to subvert the eminently subvertable Ar-Pharazon to dominate Middle Earth. Which is in some ways a bit of a problem with the source material. If Sauron wanted to dominate ME, why send the Numenoreans off on what he must have known was a suicide mission to attack the Valar instead of just using them for the job? Because that's what happens in epic sagas, same as the perils of magic rings...

Netflix did not want WB's gaming division at all; their bid was specifically for studio and streaming assets. So it would have been sold off very cheaply or- probably, given its main assets are linked to WB IPs- shut down. Though it's unlikely Paramount specifically wants the gaming part either their offer is at least for the whole thing.

There's zero chance of there not being a succession plan for Khamenei especially. He's old, and not in great health.