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Comment by empath75 | Hacker News Reader

The most likely situation is continuity. They just pick a new supreme leader. The second most likely situation is a civil war.

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There is also a possibility of a Venezuela-style cooperation.

Adding Iranian oil back to the market will lower prices everywhere, including Russia. I'm not so sure the extra-heavy Venezuelan oil will be affected as much.

Anyone know?

India used to use Venezuelan crude before the 2019 sanctions [0][1]

India only shifted to using Russian oil in 2022 [2] after Venezuelan [3] and Iranian [4] oil sanctions were enacted, which was when both began increasing engagement with China.

It's a similar story for South Korea [5] and Japan [6].

This helps reduce prices for ONG, as India is shifting back to Venezuelan crude which gives slack which South Korea and Japan can take advantage of, as India, Japan, and South Korea represent 3 of the 5 largest oil consumers globally.

[0] - https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/ongc-awaits-instr...

[1] - https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/reliance-venezuel...

[2] - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65553920

[3] - https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/india-and-venezuela-gro...

[4] - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/trump-tightens-sanctions-...

[5] - https://eastasiaforum.org/2019/09/13/south-korean-oil-refine...

[6] - https://mei.edu/ar/publication/japan-and-middle-east-navigat...

Reminder: extra heavy oil means that there is more processing required to get useful materials out of it, which in turn becomes higher operational cost. So, if Iranian oil entered the market, prices would go down making Venezuelan oil non competitive (I believe the break even price for Venezuelan oil was close to 80$). At this moment the numbers don't add up to make companies go back into Venezuela given the price, uncertainty and past expiriences.

It is too early to know what "Venezuela-style cooperation" looks like. It hasn't even been 6 months since the US kidnapped Maduro; the base case is that Venezuela's leadership does more or less what they were going to do anyway under US diplomatic pressure.

The US actually did something fairly similar in Iran; Trump had Soleimani blown up back in 2020. As we can see from the present situation, it failed to influence Iran in ways that the US thought were acceptable. It is rare for assassinations to have positive geopolitical ramifications.

Unlikely, large proportion of population is brainwashed for 40 years. They will elect a "moderate" supreme leader, then business as usual.

In Romania it took some 10 years to reach some degree of functional democracy after the fall of communism and the execution on Ceaușescu, who coincidentally, just returned from the crowning of Khamenei, while learning, dictator-to-dictator, how to suppress a revolution: 1006 killed, though most of them not by the initial "Revolutionary Guards" reprisal but in the semi-civil war that followed.

And that in a country/region without Islamic radicals trying to take over. So far, apart from Israel, no Middle East country has managed to function as a democracy. Turkey, the only Muslim majority who has the faintest chance of joining the European Union, only keeps stuff under control due to the army enforcing a secular state, which the liberal patsies in the West can't take, because authoritarianism is bad and diversity in accepting radical Islam creeping into our homeland is our strength.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Kosovo won’t get into the EU?

Forgot they aren't already in EU.

Also I'm getting downvoted and don't really understand unless I fall back to experience from 30 years ago, after the Romanian revolution and fall of =~ 50 years of dictatorial regime (not that before that was much better, with small interruptions).

At that time (1990), when everything seemed possible and a quick path to democracy and all that it brings (in the imaginary of the poor, oppressed people that we were) along with it, this guy came along: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Ra%C8%9Biu

He ran for president in the first free elections and made some 0.5% or something. I remember him for his words which go along the "it will take 20 years at least, for democracy to settle in Romania". He was right on. Now, 30 years after, we have a strong, frile democracy. Everyone can run for president but not everyone can win, even if they could: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4x2epppego

All things considered, I live a much, much better life now than 30 years ago during the communist dictatorship. Perfect? Far from it and perfection is a moving target. But we're definitely a solid democracy, and also definitely, it's a miracle the first 5-10 years didn't erupt in a full scale civil war. And the despised "revolutionary guards" had some involvement in making sure it didn't happen, so as much as you hate them, you need them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_clashes_of_T%C3%A2rgu_M...

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