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Self-sufficiency is a myth. Even if you wanted to try and be energy independent, for the short and medium term (and maybe longer, who knows?) you will be dependent on China and all the baggage that they bring because of their dominance of rare earth mineral processing. Need a new solar panel? Don't make a certain country mad (whether that's your local Ayatollah or CCP official).

And that's just energy. What about pharmaceuticals? Financial markets? Who protects your shipping lanes? Who builds your semiconductors? Where do those factories get their energy from?

I support the diversity of energy sources because they all have strengths and weaknesses. We've got to figure out climate change. But we also can't have, even if you want to somehow "move off of oil" a single country run by lunatics who can decide whenever they don't get their way that they get to seize 20% of the global oil supply. We can't have China dominating rare earth processing either. For some others it may be a reliance on American military technology.

> Wether it's wind, solar or hydro, a underappreciated property of renewable energy is the energy sovereignty they provide.

If your sovereign territory happens to support them geographically. This is true for many, but not all countries.

Also, without large storage capacity, you might end up being self-sufficient during sunny, windy days, but find yourself very dependent on your neighbor countries for imports on overcast days or at night without wind.

The combination of all of this is especially unfortunate for hydro, where you're pretty much fully dependent on the geography you've been handed.

So I'd say the self-sufficiency story of renewables doesn't fully hold. They benefit from regional cooperation and trade just as much as fossil fuels, if not more. (In my view, that's not really a counterargument, but it does raise the importance of having a well-integrated, cross-border grid even more.)

It will be a boost for renewables, but hardly the end for natural gas. Keep in mind that while ~20% of natural gas was supplied via the Persian Gulf, that means 80% was not.

I expect that batteries will eventually solve the day-night cycle for solar, but for seasonal storage, natural gas is much easier to store, so this still looks to me like a mix of energy technologies, with renewables getting a larger share.

I'd love to believe this, but very recent history has shown (in the US at least) that we are moving backwards and trying to resist renewable energy.

There are still processes that we haven’t replaced petroleum for, like Haber-Bosch. China has already banned the export of fertilizer for this reason.

It's very helpful to understand energy density to evaluate what a shift to renewables actually entails or what is even possible. Vaclav Smil is a good source or for a less dense version Nate Hagens has podcasts about it.

The petrochemical industry is huge we've yet to find alternatives for it. Half the stuff around you was made with something derived from oil, and you can't replace that with wind or sunlight in the foreseeable future.

this misses the fact that petroleum is incredibly useful outside of the burn it to make electricity and burn it to make car move use cases.

The US just gave away a billion dollars to NOT build renewable energy.

It's not just this administration. Everything with the US military has been going clearly downhill since the Millennium Challenge 2002. [1] It was, appropriately enough, a wargame simulating an invasion of Iran. It was a major event involving preparation in years and thousands of individual operators. When it was carried out the invading force was defeated by unexpected resources and resourcefulness from the Iranian side, not entirely unlike what Iran has done during our invasion.

Normally this would have been the end of it, lessons would be learned, and strategic directions adjusted. Instead the game was reset and the Iranian side was handicapped to prevent them from doing various things, effectively imposing a scripted result. This led to the US winning by an overwhelming margin and somehow the results of this rigged game were used to align strategic initiatives moving forward.

In modern times we increasingly seem to have entered into an era where people are willing to believe what they want to believe, rather than what they know to be true. And while it's easy to mock politicians and the military for this, this is also a mainstay of contemporary political discourse among regular people, including those who fancy themselves as well educated, on a variety of controversial issues.

I don't know what started this trend, but it should die. At least in terms of war it's self correcting. The US can't handle many more botched invasions or interventions, and I suspect we're already beyond the point of no return in terms of consequences of these errors.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

You elect clowns, you get a circus.

The US has turned into a Wall-e society just getting off on entertainment and bored with civilized, thoughtful politicians. This is the end result of TOO MUCH prosperity for the average American.

They haven't experienced true hardship in generations and we (the rest of the world) is paying the price of their hubris.

Its what happens when you surround yourself with incompetent yes men.

Honestly, the way this administration has behaved makes me think someone there is obsessed with playing Total War and thinks that’s how the real world works. It’s all about winning battles and painting the map red, white and blue (Greenland, Venezuela, now Iran) with no thought to what they want to achieve beyond that.

I have been thinking about this scene a lot recently: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hj_4KIKHRFY&t=60s

America is isolating itself in so many ways. You could rewrite that scene and reach the same conclusion.

There are too many people, enriched by the status quo, who won't move until their personal discomfort erodes, even while they're watching it get closer and closer (in denial). People who are going to be jobless in 6 months carrying water for the admin because they're afraid of losing their jobs now. This isn't a hypothetical, because it has been happening continuously for the past year-and-a-half. Yours truly is not exempt, but it's certainly frustrating watching people hem and haw from the other side of the line.

I get that people like me have no pull because we're already designated losers, but it would be nice if y'all would just take our word for it.

The failed revolution a month prior may have been the US too.

It's after the ramp up in production of weapons used in the shooting war started.

"further radicalization,"

If by that you mean Iranians in Iran chanting "better our a-hole than yours", I'm not so sure that's radicalization.

Everyone knew the Iranians would close the strait and that it would take time to re-open it. That was the price the administration was willing to pay. Put differently, the regime's traditional deterrence did not work against this administration. You seem to think the administration would not have done this thing with what we know now. What makes you think that?

I see a lot of people throw this "no revolution" perspective around when everyone involved has been very clear to the Iranian people: that this is the time to stay safe and inside. People rising up will take time, and will be highly unpredictable. No one said otherwise. You imply "analysts already had this all identified" yet you are putting forward a supposition here that's just wildly unrealistic.

Perceived? US politicians are all mutli millionaires no matter what happens they will be golfing in Hawaii.

At least Roman emperors got assassinated by their own bodyguards.

Read on the martingale strategy. This is Donald Trump signature strategy. Basically, when something doesn't work, you double down; and it pays off. This strategy keeps working until it doesn't and completely bankrupt the player. Because the strategy has been always paying off for the them (djt & co), they thought they have some kind of a special skill/power that others don't; not realizing that they are just bad at math, geopolitics and strategy.

That's one way to make sure people living under aerial bombing firmly support a regime defending their sovereignty, hence legitimizing the islamic republic. Example: Taliban, with boots on the ground, didn't get any weaker at the end.

"There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war. Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet, and we shall see." - Sir Arthur Harris

The response is as applicable now as it was then. Time will tell.

Many of their military assets are underground out of reach of bombers. And you need somewhere to stage out of. Probably not the Gulf bases that are being wiped by missiles and drones at the moment. The aircraft carriers have been having issues and are being pushed back out of missile range. So it becomes more difficult and expensive to keep the bombing up.

> A war continuous until one side has caused the other more suffering than it can take.

The article is in large parts about how that's not true. It makes the point that the very existence of the Iranian regime hinges on its opposition to the US, to capitulate would mean for the leaders to lose all support, be overthrown and likely die: so there's no level of suffering that it "can't take anymore". And similar in the US, the leadership cannot survive politically to a capitulation. Hence endless escalation on both sides.

Adding they can hang out in bunkers that are 500 meters under the mountains for decades. US leadership come and go every few years and they know it. They need only wait them out. There are no bunker busters or nukes in existence that I am aware of that can do anything to the missile cities. I would love to be proven wrong by their actions ideally without sacrificing 15k ground troops which I believe is the current count on the ground not counting the 50k naval forces.

"Qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatetur" -Ennius, Annales, XXXI

Translation: "The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so”

> The Straight of Hormuz is open to any country willing to pay $2M per voyage. Any country except the U.S. and Israel.

The straight is not physically closed by Iran. It's closed by insurance companies which asking a very high war risk insurance premiums. Even if you pay $2M it unlikely will reduce the cost of insurance. That's why very few ships are choosing this option (and some of them are shadow fleet tankers which probably have no insurance).

Seems pretty unlikely that the Yuan is going to be the dominant world currency, given its capital controls.

It would legitimately be hilarious though if the result of this conflict was iran being the one to enact regime change. In terms of the global order

No one in the US asked for this. Such a dumb move from the current administration.

idk this move, along with firing missiles even to non-combatant countries, is going to fuk-up iran...

I mean, even before the $2M toll, if you're kuwait/UAE/saudi/etc, what choice do you have? form a coalition against iran

now.. with that $2M toll, iran just learnt it can just toll the ships...

so what choice do all those strait-using countries have? pay $2M or more, even after US leaves?

nope... they'll form a coalition against iran

it's highly unfortunate that trump started the war, but iran's way of things are just making more enemies -- it'll pay with regime change within few months

But Iran let the International Maritime Org that anyone who is not US/Israel or not attacking or supporting attacks on them can pass through the strait of Hormuz. Is the $ 2M still a thing?

Excellent catch.

I also used this as an opportunity to reference the now archived[0] CIA Factbook[1] which does put the 2003 Iraq population at 25 million.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114530

[1] https://worldfactbookarchive.org/archive/2003/IZ

Its important to note that the US' mass murder statistics in Iraq are highly specious and the generally accepted number of murdered is way off base:

https://psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/body-count.pdf

Even still today mothers in Baghdad lose half of their babies to deformities caused by the US' criminal use of depleted uranium, so the murder goes on and on ..

> Every rusty trawler is a viable launch platform for Shahed type drones

And where exactly are you planning to operate that trawler out of? Or are you going to send it across the Atlantic on its own (well, with a couple of tankers accompanying it, but never mind that) and hope no-one pays attention?

> operational range ~2500 km per Wikipedia

I think you either added an extra zero or were looking at the hyped prototypes rather than the models in actual use. The Shaheds have ranges in the hundreds of miles, not thousands.

It's probably an accident, since I would normally expect them to claim responsibility and victory, but a refinery exploded in Texas the other day: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/valero-oil-refinery-explosion-t...

At present, gasoline prices in China have risen by 11% since the war started. In the U.S., they have risen by 33%.

The U.S. is dependent on oil and the oil market is global. Even if the U.S. is a net exporter of oil, Americans still pay increased prices for pretty much everything as a result and the economy suffers. The only way around this would be a scheme in which domestic oil producers are forced to sell to American refiners at pre-war prices, similar to the "National Energy Program" that was tried in Canada during the '80's. (Spoiler: It didn't turn out well.)

Yes, the U.S. is less likely to see its pumps run dry and U.S. oil companies are going to be very happy with the increased prices. However, unless it goes the NEP route, U.S. companies are going to export more oil creating shorter supply at home. Americans will pay the same high prices everyone else will be paying. As we're seeing now, the U.S. might actually see even higher price increases than countries like China.

China is a primary adversary for the US. Oil is a major resource for both countries, supporting economics and defense.

First, observe the top 10 oil reserve countries:

1. Venezuela: ~303–304 billion barrels (mostly heavy crude) 2. Saudi Arabia: ~267 billion barrels 3. Iran: ~208–209 billion barrels 4. Canada: ~163–170 billion barrels (mostly oil sands) 5. Iraq: ~145–147 billion barrels 6. United Arab Emirates (UAE): ~111–113 billion barrels 7. Kuwait: ~101 billion barrels 8. Russia: ~80–110 billion barrels (estimates vary) 9. United States: ~40–70 billion barrels (reserves fluctuate with prices/technology) 10. Libya: ~48 billion barrels

China is the world's largest oil importer. Stats are hard, things get mislabeled due to sanctions, but somewhere between 15%-20% of China's oil is-or-was from Iran+Venezuela.

In my view, this partially explains the move in Iran, considering a 3-10 year strategic timeline.

The article states that it's not important for any reason other than oil and shipping:

"The entire region has exactly two strategic concerns of note: the Suez Canal (and connected Red Sea shipping system) and the oil production in the Persian Gulf and the shipping system used to export it. So long as these two arteries remained open the region does not matter very much to the United States."

So it’s not about nuclear weapons?

I would not wager money on a revolution coming from this war, either. But if a revolution does come as a result of the war, it seems at least as likely to be in the United States as in Iran.

While I agree that a revolution in Iran is not impossible, I rather doubt that whoever comes next will be western friendly and moderate; after the indscriminate military action of the past few weeks they are probably more likely to get ayatollah'd again.

>On the other hand isn't this how the russian revolution happened?

It happened because Russian empire (and German empire) lacked state security apparatus adequate to the threat. It was fixed by most authoritarian states after that, so e.g. Soviet Union survived for 70 years despite many popular uprisings, which happened almost the whole time of its existence. It went down only when elites in Moscow destroyed it from within.

Actually, there are lots of revolutions in Europe after WWI, but keep in mind that in this case the populations were blaming their governments for starting or participating in an unnecessary war with monumental casualties. In this case, the Iran government has two useful scapegoats and any casualties could be easily ascribed to the idiots bombing girl schools and not to the idiots sending millions to their deaths under artillery fire.

Are we talking about Iran or US?

> While i wouldn't bet money on it, it seems at least possible that something similar could happen to the USA.

Fixed that for you.

I remember his protracted war posts, and ... indeed there's still a war going there, and fortunately it did not even get into the anticipated guerilla phase.

Can you elaborate a bit on what was unrealistic? (Maybe you have different posts or claims by him in mind?)

We saw regime collapses in the Arab Spring - it's not a simple or short process, most regimes survived (either directly or via reversion). Even when a regime was overthrown, the replacement was usually not more hostile to Israel. e.g. Syria isn't more hostile than it was. Thing is there isn't all that much 'fury' since Arabs already assume the worst of Israel, while reasons for relative peace remain as is or are actually strengthened by the revolution process (e.g. economy, desire for quiet following violent revolution, new regime wanting to establish itself, etc.)

"That would be catastrophic to Israel: they could face Iran from the air and Arab ground forces from multiple directions. "

Israel has little to fear from Iran in the air, the IRIAF has been destroyed and ballistic missile launches have tapered off.

In terms of Arab ground armies, only Egypt and Saudi pose much of a threat; the others are small, unintegrated and inexperienced and rely heavily on Western contractor support.

And if Israel, which has the most combat experienced air force in the World, somehow did struggle to defend against those forces, they always have the Samson Option of nuclear-tipped missiles from silos and submarines.

> This war could trigger regime collapses all over the Arab world and put populist leaders in charge who rise to power on the basis of Gaza genocide fury.

It would be a black swan event if this didn't happen.

This is exactly why the Saudi leadership have been quick to debunk Western propaganda about the Saudi's itching to join the war, despite Iran's strikes on GCC territory. The domestic blowback in the GCC states would be fatal to the political system.

The GCC elites there are living well, with escape plans, but the people know they are viewed as subhuman "arabs" by the Israelis, and are in line for the Gaza Method (which is currently being deployed in the West Bank and Lebanon).

No one who understood what Trump is believed him. You shouldn't have either.

I think he meant to write "not unimportant". His proofreading isn't perfect and he has typos or missing words in a lot of his work. I'm a fan of the work itself.

Trying to parse the whole sentence, especially the "but" afterwards, the most reasonable explanation is that there is a "not" missing.

He's speaking from a military, America-first perspective (which I suspect may be somewhat affected, because he is hoping to convince people who sincerely think that way). The people in these countries are not strategically important.

He emphasizes relative importance, he doesn't claim that the actual people are not important.

This guy is a weirdo that believes Jesuit illuminati run the world (listen to the end of his Breaking Points interview), his qualification is a BA in English, he teaches at the high school level, and holds discussions with manosphere figures like Sneako. Not sure I'd elevate what he says just because he has a good online presence and really don't understand why he would be at the time of this post in the top comment in this discussion.

N.B. The video is from May 2004 (during the Biden administration)

> a potential strike against China

I think this is understated in every analysis I've seen. I would bet good money this was part of the main selling point for the US. Just type in "China Oil" into any search engine or even filter the search to 2023 and earlier. China's oil consumption was surging significantly and they get a huge chunk of their oil through the Strait. It wasn't until 2024 I believe that they started reducing their dependence on oil; which I think suggests that they saw the writing on the wall and were worried about this exact scenario. China is America's number one adversary. If we're making large global moves, there's a high chance it's a strategic move against China.

The purpose of the war is to destroy the Axis of Resistance, Iran, Hezbollah and its allies, the only force standing in the way of US/Israeli hegemony in the region.

The ability of a state to run on energy pulled out of thin air is an obvious strategic benefit.

Surely the resources required to build and maintain solar panels, turbines, dams, and nuclear reactors are logistically more stable than oil has proven to be.

The ends don't necessarily justify the means. And it might just as well be a shift to nuclear energy instead, which greens are traditionally against.

I was just thinking how much this situation benefits China and their solar power industry.

Crazy how impatient people are while millions of people suffer, thousands die, and prices go up around the planet.

He wasn't particularly scathing about it - in the article it's presented as a decent solution to a difficult problem, just that in his opinion too much was paid for it - but that being so it should have stayed in place.

(are you talking about Qatar or Saudi Arabia?)

> It's so narrow that they can even hit ships with artillery fire.

I'm not a military export but it doesn't look like a very good option. To get accurate targeting information Iran will have to use radars. Radars can be detected and destroyed given that the US has air dominance. Also as soon as artillery will start to fire their position will be calculated by counter-battery radars (and they will be destroyed again thanks to air dominance).

So drones (both UAV and unmanned USV) are likely more viable options for Iran.

> This conflict lights a fire under the behinds of all nascent nuclear states. Iran would not have been invaded if they'd managed to build nuclear weapons.

Replace "Iran" with "Ukraine", the difference being that the latter gave them away.

> If they sink a ship at the right spot, the straight could become barricaded.

Just a minor point, but, the shipping routes are thin, but they are not that thin. It would take several ships to do that.

> Unfortunately, the straight of Hormuz gives Iran the ability to prevent Trump from simply TACO'ing out and proceeding to invade Cuba.

Iran already proposed a soft-victory condition that Trump could use to TACO-out. He can just claim it's Europe problem, so Europe deal with the toll.

It's Israel that won't allow TACO.

Agreed on your points. This conflict, just validated the North Korea style of strategy to all regimes out there. It does the opposite of what it is intended.

I hope things do get de-escalated soon, as this is not good for any party (apart Israel and Russia, which are the main gainers of all this mess).

Counter point to 4. The Israeli's wouldn't be trying to kill the Iranian leaders if they hadn't spent the last 40 years waging a proxy war against Israel.

Tehran "spent" 2T USD on the nuclear weapons program, which they could have spent on water desalination for example.

Yes having the deterrent is strategically beneficial, but working toward it paints a huge target on your back, while you need to pay for development, endure sanctions, etc.

Any state considering such weapons development already knows this. So this war is not new information.

And it's far from over yet.

Iran could very well end up cut off from the strait as rival gulf states build pipelines, rail, and drone defenses. (Sure this kind of long term thinking is not characteristic of the actors involved, but politics change easier around Iran than inside it.)

What makes you think they will give nuclear weapons to terrorists or use those weapons at all?

This does not happen even in the most insane examples like North Korea.

The more likely outcome would be that they would be able to avoid getting their schools/hospitals etc. bombed.

In your mind US should just nuke iran so there is regime change? Can you calculate how this would play out after that happens?

Donald Trump obviously doesn't care either, because every action he has taken during his two terms has increased the risk of Iran developing nuclear weapons.

JCPOA was highly flawed, but it was a lot better than nothing, which is what Trump traded it for.

If Trump was serious about stopping Iran's nuclear program, he would have made taking Isfahan a top priority of the initial strikes.

In all my years, I've never seen Iran care one bit about influencing or bothering any country outside of its sphere of influence. But I've seen Iran be antagonized nonstop and respond accordingly.

As an American who lives abroad and travels around the world, I've never had the slightest worry about "oh man what if Iran does something?" But I've had to adjust flight and travel plans several times, I've had cost of living surge, I've witness chaos causing terrorist splinter groups that attack countries around the world because Israel and America have started some stupid conflict and said "we had no choice bro we had to attack them because in 80 years they would've made a bomb that might've killed a civilian bro you have to trust me bro." And frankly, I'm done even taking those arguments in good faith. I simply refuse. The mess these two countries cause has caused far more death than even if Iran had a nuke, ten nukes, or one thousand nukes.

As the article discusses in detail, if the US actually cares about freedom of navigation, the war was a massive own goal because it looks extremely likely to grant the current Iranian regime de facto control of the Strait.

> the author seems to be subtly implying that America is a "stupid fascist nation"

He does nothing of the sort.

I can clarify for you: the mention of fascist countries being bad at war is a link to another article by the author, which explains that fascist countries such as Mussolini's Italy and Nazi Germany were very bad at a war even while they mythologized and romanticized it, and derived their "sense of nation" out of symbolic struggle and might. The article you linked to describes many fascist or fascist-like nations, like Putin's Russia, but does not mention liberal democracies such as the USA.

I recommend you read it.

So why did the author mention that article in this context? Because he wanted to explain that countries -- unless they are fascist countries -- have strategic goals for going to war, and so does the US in this case, and therefore it's warranted to look into those goals and whether they have a chance of being met.

Again, I recommend you read the article in question (the one about fascists being bad at war) before jumping to unwarranted conclusions.

Can you point out a better source or the major points that become invalid due to other circumstances?

> This kind of amateur analysis is not worth being front page of HN.

The author is a military historian and professor with a PhD, so not an amateur.

If you think this isn't high grade, or that it is mistaken, please explain how and why.

Nah it's good. It shows exactly how far you can get with just a modest understanding of what strategy actually is at the level of nation states plus publicly available facts from the news.

Especially in the heavily jingoistic american context, where all of the focus is implicitly on the military means and technology and execution, but people have lost sight of, maybe can not even state plainly, what the point of a military is, what considerations are part of deciding to use it to accomplish a goal.

If you're going to accomplish a strategic goal with a military action, that goal had better be achievable through military action and this one plainly isn't. A historian can see it, a blogger can see it, a programmer can see it. Why wasn't it seen by people whose job is ostensibly to see it?