I agree on the idea of a certain scale being necessary for self-defense. Otherwise the west chokes you out easily using multiple methods. That or the US weakening significantly. Any division is exploited by the west. Sadly many peoples split and divide themselves over often petty historical differences, drama, religion, etc which makes the job of the west easier.
Is there an article to go with this? What has happened in Lebanon today exactly? Is it just more battles and invasion and the national military not resisting or what?
China can definitely withstand this situation for much longer than the US without even considering a direct armed conflict.
Huh? China has reserves but the US is the biggest source of oil and gas in the world at this point more or less. Taking out competitors will make gas more expensive for Americans as well as goods due to rising transport costs but American energy companies will be obscenely rich and if American companies need oil their own government isn't going to block it. Meanwhile the US might use oil and gas as leverage and withhold them from China if China tries to buy from the US.
China has some reserves but long-term the US situation is far more stable as they can supply their own. A lot of China's supply comes via sea shipping out of Russia which is under threat of interdiction by NATO due to sanctions and the fact the ships depart from the far west of the country and travel not the arctic route around their own country (not enough icebreakers or something) but down south around Europe and either through the middle east or around Africa making the journey long, the chances for interception very high, and the costs high as well. It will take years to build more cross-Russia pipelines to the far east to deliver significantly expanded supplies to China as these pipes would have to traverse the length of Russia more or less and be under constant threat of Ukrainian terrorist drone bombings.
I mean even remove NATO interdiction and you still have Ukrainians being trained by NATO to use sea-drones and aerial drones to take out Russian shipping. They're very serious about this and Russia has no practical counter at scale.
Because the US doesn't make many things higher priced petrochemicals used in making plastics and various chemicals used in manufacturing doesn't really impact them, they only get hit by higher transport costs. China on the other hand gets hit with higher transport prices on an export reliant economy that also needs those imports for manufacturing. And when manufacturing prices go up factories shut down because the market can't always bear the price increases for some of these goods which leads to economic pressure on China.
Real "we'll send in soldiers AFTER a ceasefire" for Ukraine hours. Just baiting the public and allies with nice sounding promises contingent on a solution that's not going to come.
But not the upselling for the premium model using the better hardwoods with the titanium handles with the finer interior details including mini-bar and gold inlay.
I presume limited means strikes limited to transport facilities. Trying to destroy ports, rail stations, rail bridges, etc as part of Trump's conceived blockade. Also quite possibly add energy to that in order to get Iran to take out competitors to US oil and gas in the gulf region.
Additionally many of them are deranged enough to think AI and robotics are on the cusp of replacing workers so those pesky annoyances won't be a problem much longer anyways and won't have money to spend anyways either.
Interesting thought: US and zionist entity attack Iranian energy production. Iran makes good on its own threat, destroys gulf energy production. US can then afford to just blockade goods to Iran or lift the blockade entirely. US is now in this scenario in near total control of global oil and gas supplies. It will be the supplier of last resort and can extort Europe and Asia whatever it wants to charge for its oil and gas and make demands of fealty in other ways in addition to money part of the contract. Interdiction of Russian ships will continue. Ukrainians will try with US help to blow up Russian export sea terminals and infrastructure to further cut off global supply especially to China.
If that goes through then the US plan is working beautifully as it will take months to repair some of the types of damage inflicted and Iran will do the work the US cannot be seen doing (bombing their own gulf vassals who supported their petrodollar and regional hegemony).
Right now the strait is not necessarily closed. It won't remain closed to everyone.
It won't remain closed to China, to India, to occupied Korea, to Spain, France, etc if they all agree and pay and don't support the US.
This is a nightmare scenario for the US because they suffer, everyone else dumps them due to the pressure. By closing the strait they change it from the smart thing being abandon the US and pay Iran to you must join the US in fighting Iran because if you don't we'll blow up the world economy. Basically a "no you can't take the US down alone, if we go down we insist the rest of you are under our hands as we sink to the bottom". Because the alternative is fighting the US and that's not possible for these countries to do if their Atlantacist liberal brains can even conceive of it.
As per Medhurst's video the US will not be blockading with Iranian range. They have a bigger navy, they have satellite live recon, they have aerial recon, they have hackers inside every global system for money, transportation, insurance, etc. They can sit out off the coast of Africa and interdict there using Diego Garcia.
By doing this, they are ensuring that no country can cut side deals with Iran for oil/gas/helium/fertilizer deliveries. I think they fear diplomatic normalization and the establishment of neutral (from the US POV) payment mechanisms more than the Hormuz being shut entirely.
Precisely. As Richard Medhurst's recent video outlines US plans to control global supplies of gas and oil to the maximum extent possible and to use this to deindustrialize vassals/allies as well as attempt the same eventually with enemies while enriching itself, moving capital back to it, and gaining total leverage over them by being their sole supplier of gas/oil. Europe cutting deals with Iran or starting to in order to get past the blockade with payments was driving a wedge between Europe and the US and threatening the leverage the US established by provoking the war with Russia and bombing Nordstream.
This leaves Europe with limited choices just the way the way the US wants. Europe can:
It's global blackmail gambit by Trump "everyone join me in attacking or at least leaning on Iran to get the strait totally open or I destroy the global economy". Remains to be seen if the bourgeoisie will rein him in or not.
China could technically do something if they want to attack the US navy directly and get in a hot war but that would serve Trump's interests and wants at least in forcing a hard decoupling at speed. Russia is in a position where they could fairly give Iran long-range missiles capable of attacking US navy ships in retaliation for US and Europe giving Ukraine ATACMS/Storm Shadows which have been used on Russia. Russia could thus force the US out and re-open the strait. But Russia will never do this because the US would retaliate by lifting its own limits on the abilities they give to the Ukrainians and Russia still seeks a rapprochement with the US as well as realizing only the US can force Ukraine to the negotiating table though I personally think the US intends to leave Ukraine burning for quite some time so they can use Ukrainians to knock out Russian gas/oil supplies to China to complete their ability to squeeze China and control its critical supplies in an uno-reverse of the rare earths situation.
Nah I'm not sure I buy this.
Bombing railroads is much easier than building them. All the US has to do is bomb some big stretches, use some really big bombs to alter the landscape and the cost goes up significantly trying to fill the land back in and all that. I mean the US and zionists I think can afford to send a single plane every 3 days to bomb their rail bridges with 1-2 munitions. That won't cost them anything compared to a continued actual aerial bombing campaign on Iran. Iran can maybe do the Vietnamese resistance thing of rebuilding very, very quickly but they won't get a steady flow of shipments through. I mean they don't even have to risk pilots, this can be done by drones of via ship-launched cruise missiles.
Also US can start targeting Iranian trains not just the rails but the railyards, the locamotives, the repair and maintenance facilities and those take considerably more materials and effort to build than putting some rails and ties together and fixing some land.
Fact is you cannot move MEANINGFUL amounts of oil or other raw product overland. There's a reason we use these massive ships. Floating on the ocean means you don't have to fight gravity and the mass of your cargo as much as you do on rails or roads and the sheer volume you can carry in a few tankers cannot be replicated using a single rail line even with constant back to back trains.
Iran "CAN" make a deal with Turkmenistan but they haven't. That's cope. Until it happens it's cope. The US also "CAN" lean on Turkmenistan HARD to not make a deal and maybe they'd fold, maybe the US would clandestinely bomb it like they did with Nordstream and like with Nordstream no one is going to hold them to account. They're bandits, they're pirates. No one is going to slap their face.