Tariffs hit small importers harder. It is a great way to remove competition.

The US actually does do that. The issue is that shipping companies do not actually want to risk the life of their crews.

I would have thought somebody would have offered a life chaning sum to some sailors for the journey. That is entirly possible since oil is above $100 barrel and a very large crude carrier can transport 2million barrels of oil or so. So even with a crew of 30, you can still pay everybody a million for the risk and make insane profit, since oil is nearly free inside the Gulf.

Every progressive would be able to answer honestly, that they are against genocide in general and therefore against both those in Gaza and Sudan. It therefore just does not work as a strike against progressives at all.

It works against Arab nationalists however. So interesting, that this triggers you.

It is just crazy how little is reported about this. There is a good chance that the most deadly current genocide is not happening in Gaza but in Sudan. The US special envoy said that over 400k have been killed by the war. That would be 4X worse then Gaza and this makes this even worse.

According to South Korean and Ukrainian officials, more than 6,000 North Koreans were killed in intense fighting.

That is only a bit lower then US losses in Iraq and Afghanistan combined…

That sort of happened. The IPCC was founded in 1988 for example. The issue is that it so far has not worked. Going smaller scale to develop some stronger treaties might help though. Especially if it includes some enforcement mechanism and punishments for countries, that do not go along. Like say carbon tairffs for example.

There is an easy fix. The host qualifies automatically. So just replace the US with Italy and we are done.

Iran and the US went to war in 1988. The US military is not that stupid, that they would not have planned to go to war against Iran since then. But that is just what capable militaries do. They make plans simulate them and then look what works and what new capabilites they need, if attacking is a good idea and so forth. Basically everybody who is capable in their jobs did call out that attacking Iran was a bad idea. That is why the US did not do it for decades.

This is getting the bribe money. Insider trading on Trump is going to be much better then under say Biden. He also makes the rich even richer and especially the oil and gas industry in the US.

If the US leaves NATO, it would be even better. Seriously that would clean up a lot. Also the US bases in Germany are legally NATO bases, so they loose their biggest bomber base doing that.

We kind of know how Trump sees international agreements. I very much doubt any such deal is actually going to last, especially with Israel really wanting to bomb Iran.

Obama was black. It was therefore obvious that his Iran deal was worse then what Trump come up with /s

How do think a ground invasion of Iran, the famously impossible to invade area for literally thousands of years, would go?

There were a couple of mongol and Turkish invasion, as well as the Islamic Conquest. Last century the Soviets and British invaded Iran rather easily during WW2 as well.

Do you think that it would be like Iraq where the USA blitzkrieged with tanks through to the capital?

You use helicopters and paratroopers to take an airport close to Theran and then land troops with planes. That is how the US would invade. Iran has lost its air defense, so that is possible.

I honestly have very little doubt, that the US can take Iran, if they wanted too. The issue is leaving it is a decent state after the war. However Israel does not care about that.

The US is “just” bombing Iran right now. Take for example Pakistan. They launched missiles against each other two years ago. It would be relatively easy for Pakistan to invade Iran and get support from the US and the Gulf states for that. Iran controls some islands in the Strait of Hormuz, which the UAE claims to be theirs. The Azerbijan and Iran also are not exactly friends.

A ground invasion could seriously dethrone the Islamic leadership.

Most of these countries are probably low key happy about the war. It distracts the US from invading Greenland for example. The only big issue is that the strait should be open, so the oil price does not go even higher.

The line is:

We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait.

That is not quite the same thing as safeguard. Appropriate efforts can just be working on peace in the region and brining in some minesweepers to clean up the strait after the fighting ends. My understanding is that most of these countries have ruled out opening the strait by military means.

Which I think is silly given the obvious first continental divide to go would be the Eurasian one that only exists for historical reasons.

America makes sense for historical reasons as well. After all it is a massive settlers colony of different European nations. The Spanish influence very much connects both continents, if you want to do that.

This is about shifting media attention away from Iran. When Miami gets shelled, then the Gulf becomes boring.

Not just that, but Europe is able to pay the oil price, although Russia getting it is a problem. At the same time oil consumption is half of the USAs and falling due to BEVs and heat pumps. It is probably a lot cheaper then to go to war.

Why do you have to kick Netanyahu out of his bed?