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Comment by Cyph0n | Hacker News Reader

> Freedom of navigation is a core global principal

And Iran has been respecting that principle for decades. So why exactly did the US and Israel (and GCC countries) think that the status quo would remain even if they keep antagonizing Iran? Imagine getting bombed during negotiations - not once, but twice in a single year! Their sovereignty was being disrespected, so now they're understandably establishing a new status quo.

And btw, if Iran and Oman cooperate, there is no threat to "freedom of navigation" under international law.

In a nutshell: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

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Moreover, USA has been the first who has stopped respecting the freedom of navigation, by implementing a blockade of Cuba and preventing the oil tankers to reach Cuba, already since February, before the Iran war.

USA does not respect any international law, but it demands from others to do this.

Panama's canal, anyone?

> Iran has been respecting that principle for decades

May 2022: two Greek Tankers seized by IRGC commandos

2023: Tankers Advnatage Sweet and Niovi seized by IRGC commandos

Jan 2024: St. Nikolas seized by Iranian Navy

Apr 2024: MSC Aries seized by IRGC commandos

During the Tanker War 1981 - 1988: Iran was responsible for approximately 168 attacks on merchant ships

July 1987: Kuwait tanker MV Bridgeton struck by Iranian mine April

1988: USS SAmuel B. Roberts nearly sunk by Iranian mine.

2019 Limpet Mine Attacks

July 2021: Iranian drone strike on MT Mercer Street

Nov 2022: Pacific Zircon struck by Iranian drone

You forgot:

February 2026: USA blocking all oil tankers from going to Cuba, which has caused much more damage to the ordinary citizens of Cuba, than isolated incidents have done to other countries.

Whataboutism doesn't save your argument about Iran "respecting international law" being proven wrong.

Iran has been funding and arming groups which threaten maritime security for a while now. They also have been obviously attempting a nuclear weapons program while saying if they achieve their aim that they will do crazy shit.

I guess the games you think are stupid depend immensely on your priors.

Are you referring to Ansar Allah? Do you know why they decided to shutdown Bab Al Mandab?

So we are going to ignore the JCPOA? Also, the rumor is that there is another player in the region who has undeclared nuclear weapons and refuses IAEA inspections. Should we bomb them next?

Israel and the US are both nuclear armed and are doing crazy shit.

is that really reason to go to war though?

the US has been doing that in the gulf of mexico; should we be destorying the american civilization as a result?

> is that really reason to go to war though?

Funding armed groups to essentially make war on your behalf does seem like a valid reason for the person being targeted to go to war.

As a general rule, if you shoot someone they will shoot back if capable.

What other option is there?

I don't approve of war (and Trump didn't handle it well). However I also don't approve of what Iran has been doing.

There are two crazy nations I know that can nuke without morals. Hint: Not Iran

Nukes is irrelevant. If someone dies it doesn't matter at all if it was a nuke or a conventional weapon. Nukes can do a lot more damage in one go, but if you are killed by something else you are just as dead. Iran was clearly working on killing people by non-nuclear means as well.

Iran has been keeping it open to avoid attacks. Their first order of business if they get nuclear weapons would be closing the strait and implementing a far more massive toll. They already have ICBM capable of hitting Europe. This isn't really America's problem though, the price of oil won't go parabolic, it will fracture. That's what the current price action is leaning towards. So cheaper oil in the Americas and vastly more expensive oil in Europe.

Oil is fungible, so the cost will find an equilibrium regardless of source (excluding quality differences).

Well that depends on a supply of tankers to transport the oil though. The tanker availability is already constrained. If hundreds are trapped in the strait and transit there is slowed you lose a lot of capacity. So the fungibility drops. It's possible we see demand destruction in areas that maintain their price due to export.

Absolutely none of that would happen. It's in Iran's interests to keep the oil flowing at a fee that everyone can stomach and that doesn't offend the sensibilities. $1 a barrel for a year of unprovoked war crimes costing them hundreds of billions of dollars, with the cost effectively shared by all, fits this description. Nor has Iran responded with the kind of zero-sum, suicidal, totalitarian foreign policy that is always attributed to them by their enemies. Serious commentators have all remarked at how restrained they've been during this war. It's almost as though sane people who intend to come to a realistic agreement that everyone can live with are running their foreign and defence policies.

> play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Yeah, the game Iran is now trying to play is called “Pipelines and Pirates”.

There’s actually a ship deployed to the region right now named after the standard US response to this game, the USS Tripoli.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War

Any idea why they decided to shutdown the strait for the first time in decades? Or did they just suddenly wake up one day and decide that piracy is their calling?

And that deployed ship will do nothing. The only way forward is a negotiated agreement.

No dude you don’t get it, Iran == bad, USA == good

I’m no expert, but I think this is a matter of international politics. Imagine if Iran had closed the strait last year. I suspect a rather large coalition would have shown up, quite quickly, to do their best to reopen it. But instead almost every relevant player is pissed off at the US and Israel and has no desire to join in the hostilities.

Not to mention that Iran did not want to have thousands of fancy missiles and bombs lobbed at them, but since that happened anyway, why not close the strait?

> But instead almost every relevant player (...) and has no desire to join in the hostilities

Almost correct, but days ago there was an UN meeting where a resolution to bring forth a naval response from many countries to reopen the Strait by force was voted, and it was vetoed by China and Russia (IIRC also by France).

That news became old very quickly, but it was a move done to force USA to concede a ceasefire because it made the US the only player who could make an offer with Iran to reopen the Strait, even if in undesirable terms.

The fact that this meeting happened and a resolution was blocked made Trump and the US incapable of blaming the EU of not helping reopening the Strait.

Oman isn’t the only country in the region, and any country should expect their ships to sail peacefully. Last I checked it’s the US and Israel at war with Iran, not others - no justification for charging transit fees.

Second, you’re ignoring decades of history and picking an arbitrary point to say that’s when some animosity started. Nobody forced Iran to build all these missiles and to try and build a nuclear weapon or kill their own people or fund actual terrorist groups as designated by the United States and European Union. If you drag out negotiations long enough you never get bombed! What a thought lol.

First, look at a map. The strait is entirely contained by Omani and Iranian waters.

Second, I don't have much else to say to you if you actually think that assassinating a head of state in the middle of active negotiations is anything but vile & uncivilized behavior unbecoming of a "civilized" superpower.

Ultimately, this is going to be a major strategic loss for the US and Israel. They have achieved none of the goals stated at the outset of this "operation", outside of perhaps diminishing the Iranian missile manufacturing capabilities & stockpile.

> First, look at a map. The strait is entirely contained by Omani and Iranian waters

The UAE has a stake, too.

> don't have much else to say to you if you actually think that assassinating a head of state in the middle of active negotiations is anything but vile & uncivilized behavior unbecoming of a "civilized" superpower

This statement weakens your argument. (It's also not in line with this forum's guidleines around arguing in good faith.)

I am not talking about stakes; I am talking about territory.

Uh if you say so. Can you point me to the rule stating that I need to keep engaging in a discussion I am not interested in having?

> I am talking about territory

Yeah. As you suggested, "look at a map." The UAE controls most of the Musandam Peninsula.

> that I need to keep engaging

You don't. But you also don't need to storm off.

Just came back to this. In what world is Musandam mostly controlled by the UAE? Can you point this out on a map?

>"Nobody forced Iran to build all these missiles and to try and build a nuclear weapon or kill their own people or fund actual terrorist groups"

Sounds exactly like the US with the exception that they prefer to kill other people, not their own.

> Nobody forced Iran to build all these missiles and to try and build a nuclear weapon or kill their own people or fund actual terrorist groups as designated by the United States and European Union

Iran has absolutely run its strategy as a basket case. But proxies aside (which is a big aside), they were fairly self contained until we started hitting them. At least this time around.

Fairly self contained is an understatement. They proved time and again over the course of the past few years that they were not only pragmatic, but also a much more rational actor than Israel and the US.

> They proved time and again over the course of the past few years that they were not only pragmatic, but also a much more rational actor than Israel and the US

When? When they drip fed Hezbollah's missiles into Israel's air defences? When they left their ships in port to get bombed? When they convened an in-person meeting at the Supreme Leader's residence? When they didn't even reprimand Hamas after October 7th?

Iran has acted according to its regime's interests. But I wouldn't say they prosecuted their goals rationally, pragmatically or even particularly effectively.

Who directly in this war has conducted them rationally at at all times? Did Iran drip feed missiles to Hezbollah and Yemen, perhaps. That sort of tactic was used at a much larger scale when US provided arms to Iraq against Iran in their war in the 80s. Israel attacks against it’s neighbors and caused mass refugee flows is also mostly a result of UK, US and France’s foreign policy in the early 20th century when Israel was being established. Israel funded by US of 300 billion dollars is also a kind of proxy.

It’s hard for most people to have actual objective views and see things from multiple perspectives and your statement is showing clear bias in this regards.

> Who directly in this war has conducted them rationally at at all times?

At all times? Nobody. Until last summer, the most strategically buggered was Hamas. Their miscalculations directly lead to a weaker position and a negative return on their goals.

That changed following last year’s airstrikes—then it was Iran. (Though in relative terms, probably still Hamas.) Since this war, it’s might be the U.S.

> That sort of tactic was used at a much larger scale when US provided arms to Iraq against Iran

We didn’t maintain Iraqi arms as a deterrent against Iran. Drip feeding arms into a war of attrition to be a pest has strategic rationale. Drip feeding arms, arms meant to intimidate through the prospect of overwhelming force no less, into air defenses below replacement rates is just dumb.

> Drip feeding arms, arms meant to intimidate through the prospect of overwhelming force no less, into air defenses below replacement rates is just dumb.

That probably depends on the cost of the arms, the cost of the interceptors, and any number of other externalities or indirect goals. If you can reliably induce high end interceptors to fire against cheap rockets (granted, that's a big if) you are definitely winning the immediate economic exchange.

> If you can reliably induce high end interceptors to fire against cheap rockets (granted, that's a big if) you are definitely winning the immediate economic exchange

Tactically sensible. Strategically foolish.

The deterrent value of Hezbollah’s arsenal was in overwhelming Israeli defenses and causing loss of life. That is what democracies, first and foremost, respond to. (Second being cost of living.) Spending a potent deterrent to play economic attrition with Israel, a rich country with a richer friend, was stupid.

Iran is liked about as much as the US and certainly more than Israel.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/america-has-lost-arab-wo...

Iran has fomented discord in a number of countries, most notably Syria and Lebanon. I think they are “rational” in the sense that they are pursuing their goals of eliminating US influence over the Middle East - but many other states in the MidEast would see that goal as “irrational” in itself.

> But proxies aside (which is a big aside), they were fairly self contained until we started hitting them.

That “big aside” is an understatement, on par with ”but CIA-funded death squads aside the US has been pretty hands-off with Latin America”.

Oh absolutely. But being an idiot with proxies isn't really reason to threaten total war. You go after the proxies and maybe hit ports and production facilities in Iran that arm them. Then commit to keep doing that every time the proxies act up. Nobody needs to liberate Lebanon or Yemen. And nobody needs to try and change the regime in Tehran.

>Nobody forced Iran to build all these missiles

Saddam did.

Their missile program is a direct response to the section of the Iran-Iraq war where Saddam flew long range bombers for terror raids (hmm who does this remind me of?) and Iran had no answer beyond shelling border cities with 155m.

And if Sadam did, then by proxy the US did.

I mean sure the US provided intelligence, financial assistance, conventional weapons, and the ingredients for chemical weapons to Saddam for this war, but the US was also the one selling Iran missiles in response to Saddam. Though admittedly we weren't doing this to help Iran, we just needed the money to help narco terrorists.

>and any country should expect their ships to sail peacefully

Tbf the US seized plenty of theirs, others and such.

>Last I checked it’s the US and Israel at war with Iran, not others

The US bases and provided landing spots and ports, etc kind of speak otherwise and they don't have other ways of getting money from the US I believe.

They’re still not getting money from the US. Those aren’t American ships sailing through the Strait. Striking military bases is legitimate morally though Iran’s “government” should just surrender and turn themselves in, but it doesn’t provide justification for launching indiscriminate strikes against other countries.

> Imagine getting bombed during negotiations - not once, but twice in a single year!

All other problems with the Iran war aside, there's absolutely nothing unusual about this, this is standard. Countries that go to war with each other are almost always mid-negotiations. Usually negotiations of some level go on throughout a war as well.

They bombed the negotiators who were in a third country who were hosting negotiations.

That's totally different from war continuing while negotiations take place. That's more like something the bad guys would do in a Game of Thrones plotline.

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