An eerie quiet hangs over Ras Al Khaimah’s industrial port. Usually a thriving maritime hub of the United Arab Emirates, now ships stand docked and silent. Not far out along the hazy horizon, a backlog of hundreds of tankers have lined up in recent days, halted along a waterway flooded with danger.
Any vessel heading past Ras Al Khaimah out to the Arabian Sea must traverse the world’s most treacherous strip of water for shipping today: the strait of Hormuz. Just over 20 nautical miles from Ras Al Khaimah, two oil tankers heading for the strait were attacked by Iranian missiles this week, one catching fire.
It is one of the many consequences facing Gulf states as they are pulled deeper into a war that they did not start and had diplomatically tried to prevent.
For decades, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Oman have allowed US military bases, infrastructure or access on their soil, and have been among the largest buyers of American weapons and technology. In return, the US has stood as the Gulf’s closest and most significant military partner and protector.
But now, Gulf states have growing concerns over the relationship, analysts say, after Donald Trump was seen to wilfully torpedo peaceful diplomatic negotiations in favour of starting a war in the Middle East.
The Gulf states and the Saudis didn’t start the war, but they have long been lobbying for an attack on Iran. They just didn’t want their military personnel in the line of fire. They’re either useless or, in the case of Saudi, too busy committing genocide against Yemenis.
I think Trump’s best course of action is to take the loss, pull out and try to sell it as a “mission accomplished” at home, which might just work for the redhats.
Then he still has to hope that the mullahs take the win and leave it at that, not trying to avenge the old Khameini any further.
And he still has to hope that he hasn’t permanently damaged the alliances with the Gulf states.
And he still has to hope that the economic chaos he’s started doesn’t escalate and it doesn’t take too long to return to normal.
Etc.
I.e. the US is very likely fucked in the long term. But all other options seem even worse.
Those countries have been directly funding Donald Trump and are all littered with American bases. They are absolutely involved.
I met several US Navy servicemen when I was living there.
As someone who grew up in Dubai I want to tell them to go fuck themselves. They made their bed, now sleep on it.
I’d submit their beds were made using slaves.
And I hope they require a cloud connection and it is severed, meaning they will overheat and their angle will be uncomfortable.
I hate to say this but as a former US military officer I am 100% behind Iran. The Mango Mussolini started Operation Epstein Fury as a distraction and the buzzards need to come home to roost. I am sorry people are getting killed but Iran is not going to stop now that their leader and 180 little girls have been killed.
Protection for Petro dollar oil dies here. Trump is destroying American dominance on the world stage, it’s wild to see.
Petro dollar is worthless.
Seriously tho 🤣 Iran bombed the fuck out of them and now they can’t sell oil. Sorry I can’t find my compassion for the petrostate dictators. May they lose all their ill gotten gains.
Let me cry crocodile tears and play the worlds smallest violin for the poor lil ole petrol states
Maybe stop allowing America to use your country as bases to terrorize and control your neighbors?
They fucking love America. How do you think they can move $100 million cargo ships full of oil around on a daily basis!
You were talking about a bunch of dictatorships that use their Neighbor slave labor to suck oil out of the ground and concentrate trillions of dollars in the hands of a few people
Australia needs to cancel our leases of American bases in Australia. Even if you think we should be aligned with the US only having Australian bases on Australian soil is in our best interests. This war has shown that any host country of American bases will be subject to attacks not only on those bases but on the host country’s own military and civilian infrastructure.
Yanks out!
Let’s not forget the last prime minister who tried that was Whitlam, and what then happened to him is no coincidence. The CIA reaches far and wide unfortunately.
Every single one of you were buddy buddy with Trump to America’s detriment. I don’t give a single shit what happens to you.
The beatings will continue until America is great again. Apparently the strategy is to lower the bar on what “great” means by dragging the entire rest of then world down.
So the middle east countries paid top dollar to get the US ‘president’ to do all the things they wanted, and he ended up screwing every single one of them. When you get in bed with trump, he will eventually shit the bed, and you will have to lie in it with him. You deserve the stupid choice you made.
Rules for Being an Evil Overlord, #22: “No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.”
What a creepy image.
I love touching glowing balls…
They got in bed with a rational USA, and the USA shat out Trump and ruined the world.
Didn’t they give him a plane or something?
No they got into bed with Trump. He has mucho dinero from the Gulf nations.
The reason that every other US president has ruled out war with Iran is exactly because of this tactic. It takes a group of really ignorant, egotistical, and foolhardy leaders to melt through the layers of decision making that underlie such a course of action.
The more Trump screams on social media and Hegseth bully pulpits while whining about media coverage, the worse this war is going. Look for more avoidable Air Force and Navy incidents, more dead American soldiers, and a civilian bloodbath that will take decades to unravel the implications of.
Fuck the Americans involved in this war,nobody asked them to join the army and they’re aware who and why they are fighting for
Joining the US military is just signing up to murder brown people at the direction of the oil industry and war profiteers. Been the way for at least half a century.
“I was a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism”.
-Smedley Butler, 1935
Meh. A lot of kids join for college money with the belief that
That’s not very class conscious of you.
why
In a society where higher education is paywalled, I can’t look down on people who use the military to get pass the paywall.
You would if they killed your daughter while she was at school
Not only that but if it wasnt for the US military then Russia would control Ukraine and would be advancing into Europe.
Or China would have already invaded Taiwan.
Or North Korea would control South Korea.
The problem here isn’t the US military. It’s the leadership.
But the foreign bots brigading lemmy want the US military weaker so those nations can advance their geopolitical goals.
What exactly did the US military do to prevent Russia from progressing their invasion in Ukraine? If anything, this administration has done anything possible to allow Russia to progress, which despite their effort, they don’t seem to be able to on a larger scale.
Fuck em. They can read, they know what this leadership is.
What if they signed up before the current regime came to power?
When Dick Cheney was making the world safe for Halliburton? Yeah, there’s no comfort there.
This goes way before the “current” regime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
You think the US military was out there distributing flowers before Trump came along? They’re all scum.
Only possible valid defense.
I’ll cut a tiny bit of slack to the 9/11 sign-ups, it was harder to fact-check the various lies coming from the feds.
I heard a commentator describe it as “victory disease”.
Trump is in control of the largest and most sophisticated military in the world. He had a couple of one and done victories, its easy to see how he might start to feel over confident.
It was almost inevitable they would eventually pick a fight they couldn’t win.
That said, going in with absolutely no plan-b was really, really stupid.
The most ironic thing is if they had bothered to set up a practical plan and stated war goal, the US could have invaded and captured Iran in a matter of weeks.
It just that the largest and most sophisticated military in the world is completely useless if you don’t spin up and use its full potential, which you can’t really do without troops on the ground and congressional approval (not the literal declare war sense, just public support).
Of course they can’t actually justify a proper invasion (or a draft) without causing insane fallout in the US, so they used everything except ground troops which will accomplish nothing and get the US stuck in a forever war like Vietnam.
Even though China is facing eventual oil supply issues, they’re probably looking at this thing like prime cinema as the US expends its military global dominance on Iran, which will solve their Taiwan plans for them.
They didn’t even have a plan A!
They had a plan A: put the fear of god (aka USA) in Iran. This technique doesn’t work on most teenagers (as well as most countries)
What victories have they had???
Venezuela and the last strike on Iran.
Venezuela wasn’t a victory. And what strike in Iran is a victory? They killed 160+ children.
It doesn’t matter whether you think Venezuela was a victory. Trump certainly does.
The stealth bomber hitting the nuclear lab under a mountain through the vent tunnels.
It takes a group of really ignorant, egotistical, and foolhardy leaders to melt through the layers of decision making that underlie such a course of action.
Don’t worry. They asked
ChatGPTGrok if it was a good idea, and it said “You’re absolutely right”. And if the magical computer box that our entire economy now rests upon says so, it must be right.deleted by creator
Their president has started this war and one of his first moves was to bomb a school full of girls.
Then he goes saying that they will hit them even harder and allows the nazi jews of israhell to bomb targets that are causing hell to the civilian population.
You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t share the thought that what you describe will be “unfortunate”.
one of his first moves was to bomb a school full of girls.
a double tap, to kill the girls and then the first responders who came to save the survivors. Thats some straight up israeli level war criminality, but we did it directly this time. I think that is what Israel wanted-- us doing war crimes like they do so the world will have a hard time coming after them for it, and they can blame it all on the US from the start.
You want civilians to die?
No. But this is not unfortunate, this is another consequence of having elected him.
By now, a president must come with a disclaimer. Just like with medicine. “May cause wars. May cause economic collapse. Read full program before voting. Discuss this with your representative.”
We had that. For fuck’s sake, even The Economist, that capitalist tabloid rag, ran a cover story describing how Trump would ruin the economy, alongside an entire opposing campaign built around how he would ruin everything else that used the Republicans’ own literature as reference. People were warned, people knew, they don’t have any excuses.
Unfortunately? You guys voted that shitbag
can you back that up?
Personally I’m amazed it hasn’t already happened.
This is possibly the one thing that will get Cheeto to pay attention. OPEC oil boys getting mad
Nah, they’re learning the lesson that they should have learned the first time he was president. He will stab EVERYONE in the back. No one is safe from him backstabbing if he thinks it’ll get him something better.
Not after he declares himself Acting President of Iran
