3 hours ago, Malcador said:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-privately-shown-serious-interest-us-ground-troops-iran-rcna262176

I'm guessing the thinking is going that since Venezuela was so easy, this will be too.

He believes in many things that aren't real, so yeah it's concerning about their strategic vision for Iran.

17 minutes ago, rjshae said:

He believes in many things that aren't real, so yeah it's concerning about their strategic vision for Iran.

as likely to happen as being distracted by the new ballroom plan

it is pointless to try and catch up with the stupidity of usa now

Split off from previous thread....

"Then I'll sign it. A pen! Und stratz mit ze uldensackt. I'll sign it! Und stratz mit sei öldensackt, il der, der flutens... , der... , der... , und strippensackt! A pen! I'll sign it. Napaloni, de grosse peanut, de cheesy ravioli. There!"

-Adenoid Hynkel

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)

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

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)

it can get a lot worse if iran mine strait of hormuz

with big red button within the reach of moron and lunatic

one could only hope they are delusional enough to retreat and just say they win

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.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/09/trump-iran-war-end.html

Would be on brand for the US to walk away from this and just leave everything inflamed.

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

19 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

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.

Yes, I was expecting mining as well, but perhaps that's too indiscriminate. It wouldn't surprise me if they allow passage of China-bound vessels in exchange for Chinese military aid. That would cause redacted's head to explode.

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.