Israel Strikes Oil Facilities in Iran
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The platforms/news orgs must all be getting pretty serious orders on reporting, because even Gulf Wars I and II had more getting out.
We are commenting on a submission linked to the New York Times.
The reason why isn't really a mystery: Iran has never been exactly welcoming to Western media, and internet access there was intentionally shut off after the recent protests. There's plenty of coverage- it's front page everywhere- but a paucity of information.
It's all over social media, but hardly any of that is from Iranians in Iran, it's just people outside it like you and me mostly just yapping. Occasionally you'll hear something second-hand from someone with family in Iran who managed some brief connectivity.
Internet access in Iran has been spotty after the massacres in January.
Also, even Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza-Lebanon news and "OSINT" is tightly controlled - the legal, logistical, and technical tools needed to limit access and control of information are well in the reach of any nation now, and even most police departments across much of the world.
Well at least one person hates the free flow of information enough to plant their flag of choice on this very comment thread, if not many others.
I suspect it all means it doesn’t look very good for the US
>The attacks, seen in videos circulating on social media and verified by The New York Times, appeared to be the first on Iran’s energy infrastructure since the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran last weekend.
The ecological and health impacts of this are going to stay with the Iranian people for decades to come.
Edit: https://x.com/mamlekate/status/2030587809371668685?s=20
Left side is vinegar. Right side is rain. PH of 3
I cannot wrap my head around the current crisis except that it serves as a (deniable) mechanism for hindering China’s ability to stockpile oil, thereby stalling an invasion of Taiwan. Total guess.
edit: As a hypothetical. I’m not suggesting Iran has nuclear weapons.
Is there any chance this invasion has ~anything to do with Iran having nuclear weapons?
Nor does Iran have nuclear weapons.
Are we really back in "trust me they have WMDs" territory? How many times we gonna fall for this?
A nuclear armed Iran could hold oil and gas shipments in the Straight of Hormuz hostage indefinitely. It could also threaten U.S. bases and warships in the area. It could threaten regional allies with a nuclear attack.
> Are we really back in "trust me they have WMDs" territory?
Irrespective of everything else going on, it’s well established that Iran has a nuclear program in the advanced stages of development. There was a whole UN program around inspecting it.
Personally, I don't care about the profit margins of oil and gas companies, and I will vote against any politician that partakes in sending my fellow citizens to die for the profit margins of oil and gas companies.
I also don't particularly care about the plight of regional allies, particularly ones that have a bizarre tendency to constantly poke the bears around them.
That's why they were able to develop nuclear weapons in the first place.
Ukraine has invaded Russia here and there during the war even though Russia has nuclear weapons.
The argument is weak, because in general the countries that have nuclear weapons wouldn't be invaded even if nuclear weapons did not exist.
It shouldn't matter if a country's territory is occupied or not if nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent.
Even the US - Israel's main backer - basically treated Egyptian and Syrian war aims as legitimate.
There is a widespread belief that Israel would have used nuclear weapons if the Syrians and Egyptians had broken through to Israeli territory, and that this was one of the major American motivations for resupplying the Israelis during the war.
However, there is now messaging (on social media and on the NYT) from the US far right about how Iran has WMD. Take us back to 2003...
The middle eastern states are somewhat unique (and perhaps this is what inspired the end of history Western convergence school of thought in the late 90s geopolitical theory) in that they cannot survive without trade/exchange with the West. Your Asian powers like India/Pakistan/China/DPRK are all perfectly happy to be isolationist states to pursue autarchy and nuclear freedom but all of the middle eastern countries (including those like Syria/Libya) want to cosy up and trade with the West instead of going full autarchy. My theory is that it's because they are stuck in the oil resource trap and its just too easy to print money with oil than having to work and innovate.
Then again Iran is fractured internally, there's a lot of traitors within selling out the country to foreign powers. If you have Persian colleagues, ask them about the Iranian "Mossad jokes". They have a lot of funny jokes about the regime and Israeli intelligence.
A nuclear Iran would mean a nuclear KSA, UAE, Qatar, Turkiye, Egypt, and Oman.
We literally had a war between two nuclear armed states barely 1 year ago (India-Pakistan) [0], and a standoff [1] that almost became a war [2] between two other nuclear armed states (India-China) barely 5 years ago. Additionally Iran and Pakistan had a border conflict barely 1 years ago [3] as well that also almost spiraled
The world is already crazy enough as it is - more states with nuclear capabilities would dramatically increase the risk of an actual nuclear war.
Edit:
> Not sure if North Korea is a good example, but is that not a detente? Bad for the NK people, but not a geopolitical crisis.
The PRC has committed to denuclearizing North Korea [4] in order to unlock a trilateral FTA between the PRC, SK, and Japan, which led NK to become closer to Russia in order to build second strike capabilities against both the US as well as China.
At some point, this will force SK and Japan to seriously consider going nuclear, which incentivizes Taiwan and potentially even the Phillipines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam to join the scramble - and would cross multiple red lines for the PRC.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_co...
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%...
[2] - https://theprint.in/defence/nearing-breaking-point-gen-narav...
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Iran%E2%80%93Pakistan_con...
India-Pakistan only ended because the US and the Gulf intervened after India struck PAF Nur Khan which is located barely a couple hundred feet from the Pakistani Army's GHQ as a warning about decapitation strike capabilities after Pakistan launched Fatah-IIs.
India and China didn't go to war because Gen Naravanne unilaterally decided against firing artillery at Chinese positions in Rechin La and Russia intervened to mediate between China and India.
MAD is truly mad. What can happen will eventually happen, and the more countries have nuclear capabilities, the harder it becomes to push back against their use, becuase at some point someone will decide to press the button.
Nor does it actually reduce conflict - it instead incentivizes proxy conflicts between states, as can be seen with Myanmar (India and China both meddling), Afghanistan (India and Pakistan both meddling), Syria (Russia versus NATO+), Libya (Russia versus NATO+), etc.
That doesn't make up for the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of American capex at risk in the Gulf, for example Exxon's tens of billions of dollars of capex in Qatar's LNG supply chain or Chevron's monopoly as the sole upstream producer in Kuwait and the KSA.
Any potential profit they could have made from North American extraction (which itself is questionable due to the significant processing requirements for North American crude) would itself have been eaten away by losses that have already been incurred in the Gulf.
The ONG industry has very low net margins (around 4% for integrated ONG), which means any shock is catastrophic, let alone a crisis such as the current one.
No.
> Not sure if North Korea is a good example
It's not in an instructive way. Iran has killed thousands of people outside its borders, directly (e.g. the AMIA bombing [1]) and through its proxies. If we exclude South Koreans, Pyongyang has killed maybe half a dozen people, and those were under Kim Il Sung (the Rangoon bombing in '83 and Korean Air Flight 858 in '87).
No. The fanatic muslims in charge of the government in Iran are already targeting civilians (not military bases) in UAE, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, etc.
Can you imagine if they had nukes?
In this century, excluding Nukes (in most cases), no other reason comes even close.
The reason this matters beyond the immediate swap: Ukraine has two years of operational experience defeating the Shahed-136, because Russia fired hundreds of them at Ukrainian cities. Ukrainian forces learned the radar signature, failure modes, intercept geometry -- paid in blood and electricity.
So the loop is: Iran manufactured Shahed drones, sold them to Russia, Russia fired them at Ukraine, Ukraine learned to defeat them, Ukraine now exports that expertise to fight Iran's drone attacks on Gulf infrastructure.
It's a rare case of a weapon being turned against its own manufacturer through distributed battlefield learning. And it creates an interesting new trade currency: specialized anti-drone knowledge for air defense missiles.