Iran war wreaking havoc on shipping and air cargo, could create global delays

You get downvoted for saying something that's true, and it's not even a defense of the Irani theocratic dictatorship.

Namely: at least some of the support for the war (and for Israel) in the US is religiously motivated. Religious as in "fundamentalist". This doesn't make the US a theocracy, but it does mean many of the decision makers are making decisions based at least partly on Christian fundamentalist doctrine.

There are already some reports [1] of US troops complaining they are being told they've embarked on a mission from God. It boggles the mind.

> "One complainant, identified as a noncommissioned officer (NCO) in a unit that could be deployed “at any moment to join” operations against Iran, told MRFF in a complaint viewed by the Guardian that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ”

> "“He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth’”, the NCO added."

(This was just one report of many).

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran...

Edit: wow, downvotes for quoting a mainstream newspaper with evidence that US policy is at least influenced by Christian fundamentalists, and this without any real argument to counter this, just drive-by downvoting? Sheesh, is this what passes for debate in HN?

Given the 12 day war and now, it doesn't seem like they are putting much of a fight. The US air superiority has completely done them, it'd seem.

> Iran is firmly sided with China and Russia.

Doesn't seem like those two will move an inch.

Russia has their hands full with Ukraine and has failed in the past to protect other allies such as Syria.

China seems wise enough to provide some support to Iran while sitting out of direct involvement in the war. China has everything to lose with war and nothing to gain. If anything, they are signaling "stability" to the Global South -- something from which the US is increasingly drifting away -- and war is the opposite of stability.

> Meanwhile, the US is still carrying out precision attacks with expensive ordnance which they have limited supplies of.

I think they have more than enough, plus Iran faces an even worse situation. Limited stockpiles of their only effective weapons, missiles and drones, and quickly running out. What's worse, by not using those weapons in huge salvoes, they reduce their efficiency... they only work if they can overcome defenses, but if they spend them too fast they lose their only effective weapon.

I think the Islamic Republic will be overthrown, but this requires boots on the ground, and it'll become a quagmire like Iraq or Afghanistan. At some point the US will declare success and leave, and from the ashes of Iran countless warring factions will emerge, an endless insurgency, and possibly the next ISIS. We've seen this happen more than once, no reason to believe this will go a different way.

Russia and China cannot stop this.

Edit: rather than downvotes, I prefer debate. Be better, HN. I realize this is difficult in times of war involving the country where the majority of HN hails from, but I trust you can do it. Engage in rational debate please.

I wouldn’t bet on either approach working. But a good outcome in Afghanistan was always completely hopeless. A good outcome in Iran is merely unlikely.

Soooo, lateral move from 1999 with the benefit of the theocratic regime that rules over those states having a bit of hindsight this time and being keenly aware that they ought not to let themselves be exploited puppet or proxy for larger international conflict? I'm not saying Afghanistan on track to be a shining beacon of modernity in an otherwise backwards region but things are looking pretty up for them and I wish them the best.

An equivalent for Iran would be what? Next guy shows up in charge, promises a few token reforms. Bombs stop falling, protestors go home, business as usual resumes but with a little more normalcy toward the rest of the world.

In the end, that (plus their essential resource flows) only make them a more viable candidate for expansion of capital's machinic assemblage. The force of the market hasn't colonized all of the Earth yet; it yet has many peripheries. There's plenty of room for expansion in, say, central Africa. It'll get there eventually, but right now its focus is elsewhere. The assemblage will always weigh the costs/benefits, then select the next best space to expand into. That's what it's doing here. The goal is to convert some of its surplus value into ingesting a bit of its frontier, and make of it its own.

One of your "YouTube analysts" is a professor that developed one of the schools of realism, so maybe that's why he's using that "buzzword".

Edit: and varoufakis was the finance minister of Greece. I have no idea if he was any good at it or not, but your characterization is a little silly either way.

Would they be more credible to you if they gave 2 minute soundbites in between advertisements for drugs and gold on cable news?

He seems to have a good intuition, but he gives weak and often cherry-picked reasonings, to the point that many of his takes are completely unreliable.

For a channel called Predictive History, he made too many weirdly precise explanations and predictions that turned out to be wrong. Then, he'd look over the old failed ones to find new ones.

That being said, I'd say his macro level analysis is directionally correct, as well as his read on the incentives of each party involved. Watch his lectures, but be skeptical and double check everything he says, because he does indeed make factual mistakes... some of them are caught in the comments by other viewers, some are not obvious.

So yes to some extent it might be CCP propaganda, but that doesn't mean it's always wrong, and the alternative is western propaganda, which is also sometimes wrong

Specifically, India and France know this for decades.

The conservative business class, since literally before Marx wrote anything, will do whatever it takes to never ever ever ever accept even a tiny reduction in their handouts. They will burn America down and destroy their own revenue before they let us collect an extra dollar in tax revenue for the betterment of society.

being hypocritical would be not helping Spain out whos taking the sign down.

within canada though, there is a gigantic iranian diaspora and getting rid of the islamic regime brings out a ton of protesters in support.

It's difficult for someone on this forum to fathom how anyone would _want to die_, but that's how these guys operate. Killing Khamenei did nothing but to grant him exactly what he wanted. He was martyred at the hands of the enemy during the holy month of Ramadan. He had already delegated all his operations and stayed home, waiting for bombs to drop.

Assassinating him simply poured more gasoline to the fire. Decapitating extremist leadership doesn't achieve much (as we just witnessed), you can't kill an ideology like this with guns.

The other thing that I'll mention is about 30% of the population in Iran supports IRGC and within those 30%, at least _half_ of them are willing to die for the cause. in a country of 90M, that's millions of people..

So unless you're going to conduct a genocide, you're not killing all of them, and even if you do, the few that remain will grow again.

United States did a great job exporting liberalism to Iran over the past 40 years and some of those ideas were starting to take shape. However I feel like now they undid all that work and united all IRGC supporters because of the war.

I think TRUMP miscalculated Iranian's abilities to take over the regime. The diaspora celebrating Iran getting bombed are out of touch with the reality of the country.

The US probably asked Israel to not betray the agreement, Israel as usual betrayed the agreement, said to the US 'we will attack during the negotiations', probably because it was effective the last few times they did, and the US couldn't force them to stop, so they had to preemptively strike.

Not, if you start calling US+Israel an Epstein coalition (forces). :-)

In the first unprovoked attack they killed an important religious leader of a big part of the population of the area (not only Iran) and a bunch of civilians (160 children in a school between them).

But the assesment is that 'is Iran who is threatening and targeting bystanders'. No surprise that we are in the mess we are.

i'm no geopolitical expert but the most likely outcome of bombing bystanders is more enemies and fewer bystanders.

iran could easily be keeping air defenses hidden in caves waiting for the right opportunity

It is cheap and neither cares about civilian deaths. That is why. Both countries show it both in rhetoric and action. The leadership literally brags about not caring about civilian deaths.

> That’s how you end up with wide scale civilian deaths.

Has Israel ever shown restraint wrt civilian deaths?

Lots of cruise missiles, but not short range guided bombs.

It appears that b-52s are being flown over to the middle east now, which means they must be fairly confident of air superiority

This is true, but as with the start of the tanker wars:

> Initially, the Tanker War led to a 25 percent drop in commercial shipping and a sharp rise in the price of crude oil.

currently something like 90% of shipping is stopped.

But your general point about moving around it is valid, assuming that Iran doesn't attack refineries and distribution points. Last time Iran had to use artillery to attack shipping, this time they have better weapons

What do you think the possibility of Kurds getting a piece of land from Iran?

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/politics/cia-arming-kurds-ira...