> Why would Iran not want to build nukes now? It would be suicidal not to.

I feel like we have enough examples to be clear on this now, would you rather your country be treated by the major powers like Libya, Ukraine, Iraq... Or like North Korea.

> (I say this with no sympathy to the Iranian government, just looking at reality.)

If we look at reality we see China is very active in Africa, and so also has undersea network cables (PEACE & 2Africa). If China allows this precedent to occur, they encourage any African nation nearby such cables to pull the same tricks on them. Hence a rational player in the shoes of China wouldn't allow this to happen. China should hint Iran that perhaps it should start addressing its real problems instead of making their problems someone else's problem again.

The past couple years have really brought into focus to me the asymmetry, if how easy and cheap destruction and ruining things is, and how much harder maintaining and defending and protecting can be.

It seems like a wild claim to me to make that no, Iran can't make some small/medium underwater drones to go harass and destroy underwater cables. Protecting miles of lines splayed out across a big hard to get to area seems like a hard challenge.

(Big years for pests everywhere. Really really coming out in legion force.)

The lack of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz says otherwise. If Iran can successfully blockade the Strait in the face of the full military might of the US, certainly they can cut an undersea cable.

>What makes Iran believe unilateral fees on subsea internet cables would be paid?

Presumably because they will attempt to destroy them if the fees are not paid.

What do you think daddy NATO would do about your little network cable? You are living in a fictional world.

They’d simply tell whoever’s crying to start using dynamic routing protocols and accept the few more ms in latency.

they can increase the fees until building infrastructure outside of their water/air/land becomes more economical, which means a long way to go. We will probably have a treaty at the end covering that strait too. And looks like it will have some fees in it. Until of course somebody delivers a crushing military defeat of Iran. And while technically i think US is capable of doing it, I wouldn't bet though that this pair of a pompous self-dealer and an incompetent alcoholic would be able to do it.

Same thing stopping Trump from randomly making up tariffs on allies or threatening to invade them.

The question for us is, do you side with the small bully, or the big bully?

Just another "mafia" that the world can do without ...

> The thing that mystifies me is that U. S. war planners "theoretically knew" this, too; at least, I would assume.

They would have, because this has been wargamed and written about for decades. It's playing out exactly as expected, which is why no US administration until this one was willing to go to an outright hot war with Iran. Unfortunately, this war dept and admin has a staggering amount of hubris, incompetency, and a strange devotion to carrying out every whim of a certain semi-allied state I won't name directly but can be inferred.

The argument goes that, given the general disposition of Iran towards the US, its allies, and basically anyone who's not a Shiite Muslim, it wasn't a choice between war with Iran or no war with Iran. It was a choice between war with Iran now, or war with a stronger, possibly nuclear-armed Iran at some unspecified point in the future.

Personally I disagree war was inevitable; time can change a lot of things and it doesn't seem like there was any imminent threat, but I also don't see why you would find it so hard to believe others might disagree with that assessment.

In the time of their declining empire, the US got late stage Nero instead of Marcus Aurelius.

I suspect they knew if oil can’t move out of the gulf, then US oil will gladly step in. Republicans have always had to be Oil company supported. Just look at the number of oil tankers leaving the Gulf of Mexico: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-86.3/cent...

The current regime is staunchly anti-intellectual and regularly believes things are false solely because scientists say they are true.

14-month old article headline, but hasn't aged a bit:

American Foreign Policy Is Being Run by the Dumbest Motherfuckers Alive

(Daniel W. Drezner https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/american-foreign-policy...)

We have reporting on this leaked by people who were in the meeting.

Netanyahu told Trump they wouldn't block the strait. The US military said they would. Trump went with Netanyahu.

It is, after all, well-documented that the current U.S. president ignores, or frankly is unable to pay attention to intelligence briefings. So it is almost irrelevant whether any analysis of risks and benefits took place. The U.S. president admits that his decision-making process is a seat-of-the-pants “feeling” about things.

Remember all those senior military officials being fired right before things kicked off?

They knew.

But all it takes is Trump and Hegseth YOLOing past them and all that institutional, historical knowledge counts for nothing.

I vacillate between two potential rationales:

- there is a concerted effort to target and topple oil producers which China relies on as a form of containment of the Chinese economy. Venezuela, Iran, eventually Russia in a more direct way. The current administration is willing to accept economic pain for just about everyone because they see the transition from petroleum to green energies as the death knell for US superiority. They see this as their last chance to derail China, so they are taking it. It provides incidental value (like giving pre-text for increasing domestic repression).

- they thought it would be easy after Venezuela and Trump was flattered by Netanyahu and pressured by evangelicals into doing it.

> The thing that mystifies me is that U. S. war planners "theoretically knew" this, too; at least, I would assume.

The other administrations you mentioned operated on the principle that the President should listen to his advisors and was ultimately accountable to the American people should his decisions result in poor outcomes.

This administration operates on the principle that the executive branch of the US federal government is now the Trump Organization but with access to taxpayer funds and the state's monopoly on violence. Since DJT was the undisputed leader of the Trump Organization, he was never questioned there, and he's not questioned now, whether it be about decisions to bomb Iran or about anything else.

These people wanted to do things like "keep their jobs" and "be able to receive a pension", so they went through with the orders from a man who is almost 80 years old and shows both declining cognitive skills and personality disorders.

Ideally, you have a judicial and legislative branch that would punish this behavior, but those people also want to keep their careers/lives. So the majority party, his own, cows to him as well.

It's always the same with the US, the US always overestimate raw military power and underestimate local and strategic conditions.

All the previous wars got lost the exact same way.

Trump is losing the same way the US lost in Afghanistan, Irak, Vietnam, Korea... Just faster than any anybody else.

it's even more simple than that

Israel talked him into it, just like he has no interest in anything until the last person in the room whispers ideas into his ear

Lindsey Graham is this term's Rudy Giuliani and he was flying back and forth to Israel briefing their version of the CIA on what to tell Trump to get him to do this

Personally I think another aspect is once he realized American oil companies became massively profitable overnight for months now at $100+ a barrel, he just took a cut somehow

Remember it took Obama's team YEARS to get Iran to sign something, this is not ending this year or next for any number of bombs killing their innocent civilians, Iran doesn't care, executions are at an all time weekly high there

It's death-cult vs death-cult at this point, we all lose

The purpose of this war is to distract from the Epstein files, and it's been very successful

They were not acquired, they were always there. Only fools didn't see them, and US 3 letter agencies are many things but usually not fools.

But what can they do when potus gets manipulated into war by netanyahu with quick win promises, despite many people around him telling him its a bad, bad idea. US has a weak president now and parts of the world are using it to the fullest.

Persians are and always were smart, not some sheep herders you can bomb into oblivion without a worry, rather educated engineers and similar level. I went there cca decade ago during more quiet times, and stroke random conversations about physics, chemistry or philosophy in parks. Not probably going to happen in say US.

What's the difference between the two?

And a lot of oil has been well and truly stopped!

The strait was open and without fees before the Israel/U.S. attack.

Lol, the USA is the one who creates havoc and started this mess in the first place. What international order?!

Please, lets end this lie about the "international order". It's always been a lawless world where rich and powerful nations did whatever they wanted. Now they've just stopped bothering to hide it.

Both things can be true: A lot of countries may suffer if the US is not a guarantor of their safety or an enforcer of safe passage through waterways. The USA can also suffer economically from no longer being a trusted partner and responsible actor. As an American, the problem for me is people who got so little benefit from the previous status quo that they don't care. I think of it like the unemployed and the pensioners who voted for Brexit. They just didn't have a lot to lose.

The US has pivoted to enforcing international disorder.

>the US is the one that has been enforcing international order so far.

I'd be with you here if the US CIA wasn't the one who overthrown the democratically elected Mosaddegh and replaced him with their puppet Shah, triggering the Islamic revolution.

But I'll give you a pass since I heard they don't teach this part in american public school history curriculum.

"While folks here are quick to jump to blaming the arsonist for this, it's also worth noting that the arsonist is a firefighter and was responsible for putting out numerous other fires."

I mean, yay?

You can very specifically blame Trump for not understanding this at all. Possibly a symptom of being born rich, he acts as though America's standing in the world is a given and he has infinite political capital to spend any way he chooses and every other president was a moron for not doing it first. Obviously America has abused/misused their authority many times, but this is really the most humiliating in how quickly it unfolded and how very foreseeable the outcome was. We had a solid deal 12 years ago and instead we now have a mess and it's entirely due to one man's hubris.