How long until the US navy just starts hijacking these tankers out of Iranian range and redirecting them to the west because they can't otherwise break the blockade? Trump will make a big show of saying he's paying the Chinese for the oil so they're not losing anything and it's totally not piracy.

Many US ships do have anti-missile systems. It would need to be the right kind of ships obviously, carriers can perform this obvious, aegis cruisers are specialized at it so they can as well. And enough or the right kind of missiles can get through much of the time.

It will be really interesting to see if Iran can make good on its threats in a sustained way. If they can the US is in a pretty bad spot in a lot of ways. Still I expect the US will goad a couple of ships to try, if even some ships get through Trump will be leaning heavily on those countries to keep the ships running even if they're taking losses. At a certain point the countries will likely get a spine and explain ship replacement lead times are too much and they have to stop sending them because if they don't they'll be stuck with inadequate shipping capacity for years after this conflict. At that point we really enter the cool zone.

It's not really possible given China's green energy sector and massive internal economy that can support their equally massive industrial base.

Industrial base needs petrochemicals, needs stuff derived from oil. You can get power elsewhere but how to make a lot of essential chemicals including plastics (yes bio-plastics exist, but China doesn't necessarily have the agricultural conditions for replacing all their oil plastics with those and even if they did it would take years).

It doesn't matter.

The US knows it missed its window.

So the next best plan, perhaps a better plan is on. That plan is cut China off and isolate it from allies, put it in a position where the west can squeeze its economy, decouple as much as possible, gain as much leverage as possible.

This includes ability to shut off their oil (which will hit them sooner or later no matter their reserves size, it's just a matter of a year or two). And then have the option at the leisure and pleasure of the west of attacking them once they have no friends (because the US took them all out, see Venezuela, see Iran, see Russia still unable to finish Ukraine and could be stuck bogged down in that into the next decade and less able to render China assistance and if not that there's always a re-armed Europe to attack them directly in a suicide by cop move). It's a classic US play and it forces China to fight the US on the high seas, to mount expensive, taxing, painful expeditionary warfare against established US strong-holds and choke-points which have strong existing logistics chains backing them up vs China's inexperience. It lets them paint China as the aggressor. They simply instigate in Taiwan, force China to react militarily, propagandize, slam down an embargo of some sort using US economic power and so on. If China can't be drawn on Taiwan they'll manufacture something else.

The date has been moved to the 2030s when the US and allies have re-armed, have extensive experience in the drone warfare age, extensive data, extensive new weapons, systems, tested systems while China does not. And battle-hardened troops with experience against again Chinese troops who have not seen combat. This gives the US a great edge and time to turn up the pressure on China as their growth is slowing and they hope actions they take can further slow that and drive up discontent at home.

I'm on nothing ever happens gang on Iran achieving anything. All the people cheering the collapse of the US, insinuating oil prices will go sky high and blow up the western economies/inflict pain on Americans and so on I just am not sure I see it.

And the reason I don't see it is Iran has no appreciable control of their skies.

They're not able to remove American air superiority in the form of drones like these hunting down and removing their offensive capabilities. If they had land power, if they could send raiding parties out to inflict pain on the gulf states it would be one thing. But their only form of leverage, pressure, etc is these launchers and their supply of advanced missiles and drones.

Take them out, suppress enough of them and it doesn't matter if the US runs out of interceptors because a few strikes that occasionally get through and pound empty airbases and hotels full of expendable fodder and occasionally isn't-real don't matter, they can take it and roll with the punches while they bomb Iran into a failed state. Failed as in no infrastructure, ruined hospitals, no electricity, broken water mains, problems with food, hollowed out shells of buildings exposed to the elements where people still live, gray dust over everything and no military capabilities to help regional allies. Castrating them as a regional power basically then going home and declaring victory. Maybe after attacking Lebanon and moving to destroy Hezbollah once and for all since they've been on the back-foot since the decapitating strike on Nasrallah and the pager attacks.

The difference between Iran and Ukraine is America and its European vassals are more armed, more capable of bringing widespread ruin to Iran and much less restrained from the get-go (outright unhinged really) compared to Russia. Ukraine has been able to wage a long drone war against Russia thanks to outstanding outside suppliers, small workshops, and Russia pulling its punches for years as well as the west providing effective air defense for Ukraine that prevents Russia from having the same hunt and destroy ability that the US has in Iran. Also Russia's intelligence is not as good as that of the US/NATO/zionist entity.

In fact the Russia/Ukraine war is instructive. Look at Russia's position after 4 years while forced to wage a war of long range missile strikes against an enemy they can't achieve operational freedom for air operations over. How Ukraine was able to freeze the lines and improve their position with drones making gains slow, careful, and hard fought. In this case Iran is like Russia but also in a worse position because they have no ground option for pressure at all. And of course because their enemies aren't a restrained Russia that sees them as misled brothers but unhinged fanatics who see them as subhumans.

So I'm not sure what end-game I see for Iran. The US isn't going to declare victory and in actuality surrender and go home without something from the Iranians Trump can parade and something which satisfies Satan-yahoo's desires to weaken Iran for the meaningful future if they can't achieve actual regime change (the zionist entity will call Trump out and make him look weak by leaking and shouting to the media if Trump pulls out without something substantive and material I think and Trump knows this). Iran's outcomes seem either be pounded into a bombed out husk with misery and death for their people (who were we must remember already suffering under sanctions that made life difficult) or become compradors for Trump, bend the knee, give him control of the oil, give up the nuclear program at least temporarily and give Trump a win like Venezuela did and in doing so lock in American control of global oil markets with which to use as a tool to ensure dollar hegemony and another pressure point in hybrid warfare.

It's definitely possible interceptor stocks run out soon enough and Iran is able to inflict enough pain on the zionist entity that they ask Trump for a pause and he and the Iranians come up with some deal that doesn't give that much but which saves face for Trump. But removing Iran is a long-term, overriding strategic goal the zionist entity's project, for the greater zionist entity project, for its own hegemony over the region, and as revenge against a long-standing enemy, the only one in the region who doesn't bow. So I think the government might be willing to take quite a bit of pain (settlers will riot and be angry but I don't see them bringing it down as a result). And I am not sure I see Iran responding in a way that actually brings the entity to its knees because it's an unhinged settler state with nukes. So I'm doubtful they try and take out the zionist entity's water supply for example because Iran doesn't have nukes. It's original sin and problem is not getting nukes in the 2000s and that failure reverberates down in the way they are constrained when facing nuclear armed, unhinged, fanatical enemies without any morals or scruples. A group who in all probability don't use nuclear weapons only because it might encourage other countries to get them which would weaken their own power rankings and ability to exercise influence over others.

Hope I'm wrong and the entity and US are weaker than I think and Iranians rack up that scoreboard in the meantime right or wrong.

US smuggled Starlinks into Iran amid riots – WSJ

Not really news to most here but here they're admitting it and saying it was about 6000 units: https://www.rt.com/news/632389-smuggled-starlink-iran-riot/

Interestingly they claim they did this AFTER the internet was cut and I was under the impression that almost immediately there were terminals operating. So is that a deception? Or did they really rush more in there to provide cover for the zionist supplied units already smuggled in which Iran was using to pinpoint spies? By handing out 6000 of them they'd give their spies and valuable assets some cover among a sea of civilians foolish enough to use these things as I doubt they had 6000 agents who needed uplinks so some of that had to be either for a later use or to provide cover.

Israelis charged with using Iran war secrets to place bets

Looks like they found who those polymarket betters who predicted the Iran strikes were: https://www.rt.com/news/632400-israel-charges-bets-iran-war/

That attitude had to piss Epstein off because his whole thing is networking powerful people to get more powerful people around to blackmail some of them to get access to more people to blackmail and Elon being all like "oh I don't care to go just to see some UN people and help you network and advance your agenda" had to push him towards the shit-list and the ghosting by Ghislaine we see in the later emails. Elon literally being entitled about the child abuse network and refusing to do the cover story stuff like all the others, just incredible energy.

Zionist entity sought to kill Khamenei according to a TV interview in the entity Source: Russia Today

Apparently they weren't able to because he went into serious hiding. He didn't contact or accept contact with any of the new people who replaced the assassinated IRGC generals. There was a report a day or so ago about there being problems reaching him for negotiations because he didn't have any comms where he was and it was difficult to get to him so I believe this and this also shows the lengths the entity will go to decapitate its enemies. If he'd been a little less serious about protecting himself and remained in operational command they'd have dropped a bunker buster on his head just like Nasrallah IMO. This also I think is a serious threat in the near future if Bibi gets another indictment dropped on his head or whatever and would likely lead to the war they desperately crave which would force a US intervention. They said they'd do it without US approval too. Iran needs air defense.

Trump: Prepares for war of aggression, talks aggressively of containing China, inherits island chain forward operations encirclement from decades of American policy of encircling and hemming in China with bases and partnerships including missile deployments and forward bombers and radar. Arms separatists on Taiwan, violates the basis of diplomatic relations, is president of incredibly war-mongering empire with long history of aggression including wars against three neighbors (Vietnam, Laos, Korea) in the past 75 years. Has think tanks openly plan wars of aggression against China and talk of how long they'll have military supremacy against them in a war.

Xi: Sees this stuff happening and prepares for purely DEFENSIVE war against this incredible and long-telegraphed aggression which he and previous administrations have done everything in their power to delay including taking economic hits and keeping their heads bowed to keep trade up between the powers. Talk is very diplomatic in tone, attempts to resolve tensions diplomatically, encourages trade and interconnectedness and globalization to decrease chances of conflict, talks of win-win cooperation, has exactly one foreign military base and its a tiny one in Africa next to a much larger US one.

Bourgeois propagandists: These are exactly the same, this is all coming down to aggression from BOTH sides (but really those sneaky Chinese who are forcing us to do this).

Very interesting they're letting him actually do this. I would think the bourgeoisie would not like this kind of hit. He still has time to do "incredible deals" whereby these countries agree to buy $100 of US goods and he drops the tarrifs while tooting his horn but things do kind of look like the bourgeoisie (those near levers of power anyways) are serious about forcibly decoupling and reshoring pronto to be able to fully enact the plan of isolating, blockading, sanctioning, and trying to turn up the pressure on and destroy China or at least prevent their rise and displacement of US power.

I mean it's either fail children running the show which I still can't buy because they'd love their enemies to think them more foolish and incapable than they are and we don't have that luxury OR the whole plan for drawing back, child labor, small yard, high fence, using the sword of empire to attempt to force the world to buy more US stuff to displace competitors OR they're on some sort of dark enlightenment trip and think capitalism is over and the only way to avoid socialism is turning the barbarism machine way up and trying to create some sort of techno-feudalism or something else at home.

Why does it matter? Well if they're just incompetent then indeed the fall of the US is in order in the near future but options 2 and 3 spell very, very, very dire times for those in the imperial core as it's a very orderly managed decline that's liable to be able to potentially draw it out many more decades into the future and inflict incredible amounts of suffering on those of us stuck here in the mean-time (beyond just treats being more expensive).

Just imagining it now: "I spent over a year as a guest of Hamas and all I got was this lousy t-shirt"

No, they're going to coach at least a few of them into making up stories about horrors and atrocities and put those obviously staged and coerced "stories" on blast in the western news media. And if they can't coach any into that they'll just make it up like theremoveds and the western media will keep repeating it and using it to bash pro-Palestinians over the head.

On a related note. Bets on whether this ceasefire results in the ICC/ICJ washing their hands of the whole thing or the US managing to lean on South Africa enough to drop the case? Because I just can't see the west not pulling out all the stops to brush this whole thing under a rug and say it's in the past.