I hope I'll be long dead before Jake Paul enters office.

3 hours ago, Gorth said:

You can almost visualize the phone conversations between Netanyahu, MBS and Trump played out.

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.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5780543-us-oil-prices-trump/

A bold marketing ploy, it might work.

10 hours ago, Malcador said:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5780543-us-oil-prices-trump/

A bold marketing ploy, it might work.

Yeah, no

Oil companies will make great windfall profits but for everyone else cost of living and inflation goes up with sustained high oil prices

https://abcnews.com/Politics/hegseth-worry-strait-hormuz-us-time-counter-irans/story?id=131036790

"The only thing prohibiting transit in the strait right now is Iran shooting at shipping. It is open for transit should Iran not do that."

Still amazed this guy has a job.

https://newrepublic.com/post/207749/donald-trump-selling-national-security-briefing-details-fans

"In a fundraising email, a Donald Trump–affiliated super PAC offered the highest bidders “unfiltered updates on the threats facing America.”"

How can this even be real.

53 minutes ago, Lexx said:

https://newrepublic.com/post/207749/donald-trump-selling-national-security-briefing-details-fans

"In a fundraising email, a Donald Trump–affiliated super PAC offered the highest bidders “unfiltered updates on the threats facing America.”"

How can this even be real.

sound like a scam

right now gulf state might be the highest bidder

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.

2 hours ago, Malcador said:

"The only thing prohibiting transit in the strait right now is Iran shooting at shipping. It is open for transit should Iran not do that."

Still amazed this guy has a job.

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)

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.

kharg island hit with most likely 10 million barrel of oil on it

soon there will be burning oil well all around like kuwait

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.