Just constant burying heads in the sand, and believing in models where the prior assumptions are from a bygone era.
Own up to it. This is solely on the US. The rest of us had it handled until you came along.
Fixing the budget hole to pay for that spending without resorting to giving many people living in Monaco the Eichmann treatment as a side effect (which is untenable on account of French security guarantees to Monaco) would need some kind of government of hardcore believers who could also do math.
Everyone except the Iranians and maybe the Israelis were flat-footed by this, and the things that can be done about it are largely on the years/decades scale.
[To be clear, i dont 100% agree with this argument. I think there is a little truth to it but also things are much more complicated than that and it ignores the geopolitical tension in the region that was going to explode one way or another even without usa]
Wut
> they speak Persian languages
As a lingua franca, sure. By some very twisted semantics maybe, but really, no.
Until quite recently, “the US sticks its dick in the chainsaw” wasn’t a “within reason” scenario.
Reason dictates having redundancy in place. Having prepared scenarios for what to do. A lot of countries clearly don't have that and they are operating on the assumption that no major disruption is going to happen.
Depending on resources coming from historically unstable locations and not having plans to prepare for such instability is just foolish.
The UK doesn’t have a strategic oxygen reserve in case the atmosphere disappears.
It’s both implausible and not really something they can do much about.
Trump is that sort of scenario.
Cuban tankers have hardly left the island’s shores for months. Oil-rich allies have halted shipments or declined to come to the rescue. The U.S. military has seized ships that have supported Cuba. And in recent days, vessels roaming the Caribbean Sea in search of fuel for Cuba have come up empty or been intercepted by the U.S. authorities.
Last week, a tanker linked to Cuba burned fuel for five days to get to the port in Curaçao but then left without cargo, according to ship-tracking data. Three days later, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a tanker full of Colombian fuel oil en route to Cuba that had gotten within 70 miles of the island, the data showed.
While President Trump has pledged to halt any oil headed to Cuba, the Trump administration has stopped short of calling its policy a blockade.
But it is functioning as one.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/world/americas/cuba-oil-b...
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/30/americas/us-russian-oil-tanke...
Of course international law is not worth the paper its written on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade
> Blockades restrict the trading rights of neutrals, who must submit for inspection for contraband, which the blockading power may define narrowly or broadly, sometimes including food and medicine.
They would be allowed to blockade neutral ships going to enemy ports (e.g. Israel) subject to a bunch of rules but that doesn't seem to be what they are doing.
I dont even think Iran is claiming this is a blockade. They are claiming its part of its territorial waters, and they are claiming that they dont recognize the UNCLOS which would give vessels transit rights (but at the same time they are claiming they recognize the part of UNCLOS that allows claiming 12 miles out as territorial waters). At least that is what i got from https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-legality-of-irans-closure-of-th...
Oman is before the strait begins.
I dont think hosting a US base would necessarily make them non neutral unless that base was used offensively. According to international law, Iran would also have to justify their exercise of self-defense rights was porportional, which even if you accept hosting a us base made that state non neutral, i think it would be difficult to justify their response against states simply hosting a us base met the porportionality requirements of int law.
However even if they were enemy states, Iran would have to declare all of these countries as being under blockade, which they haven't as far as i am aware.
> Oman is before the strait begins.
How is the Oman port of Khasab before the strait begins?
Firing on neutral shipping is not the same as intercepting it and inspecting it for war materiel or other contraband. Preventing shipping from reaching or leaving Kuwaiti ports is not the same as inspecting it for war materiel or other contraband.
Ships that don’t stop get fired upon. That’s what happens in a blockade.
Kuwait is a US ally and hosts American military bases. Stopping shipping to there is very clearly legitimate.
Wikipedia is defining what the term blockade means not what constitutes a legal blockade.
Medicine is not allowed to be blockaded. Food is not allowed to be blockaded if there is a shortage.
Relavent parts of the san remo manual:
> 102 The declaration or establishment of a blockade is prohibited if:
> (a) it has the sole purpose of starving the civilian population or denying it other objects essential for its survival; or
> (b) the damage to the civilian population is, or may be expected to be, excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade.
> 103. If the civilian population of the blockaded territory is inadequately provided with food and other objects essential for its survival, the blockading party must provide for free passage of such foodstuffs and other essential supplies, subject to...
> 104. The blockading belligerent shall allow the passage of medical supplies for the civilian population or for the wounded and sick members of armed forces,...
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/san-remo-manu...
You're correct that blocking oil would be allowed (barring situations where the civilian population needs it to survive, which doesnt apply here) if this was a legal blockade. However Iran is not complying with the other rules around blockades, which is the issue.
We had a good thing going, and you fucked it up.
One thing is correct though that UK security services have not anticipated such outcome and politicians have not done anything about it.
Since the inauguration Trump has supported physical seizures of many different kinds of Russia-aligned merchant shipping and the economic degradation of Russia's allies. Given all of this, we can assume that the Russian asset angle is a much less accurate explanation for Trump's behavior than the alternative theory where he is highly suggestible to the most recent person to heavily compliment him in-person which used to be Putin and has subsequently changed to some mix of Rubio, Vance, Hegseth, Netanyahu and the Trump family.
This war might be dumb but it was also predictable. Why were these no contingencies? Or to quote Churchill "If you want peace you have to prepare for war".