US launches new strikes on Iran | Hacker News Reader

US launches new strikes on Iran

ft.com

Oil price below 100 USD, some possible route towards negiotiations, potential for an exit out of wasteful military operations.. Sure, start all over again and go back to square 1. Or am I missing something here? Like a big picture, which makes a strike at this moment in time inevitable?

"Iran launched missiles, drones and small-boat attacks at U.S. warships near the Strait of Hormuz, and that the U.S. responded by intercepting the threats and striking Iranian military sites responsible for the attacks."

Iran attacked, the US blocked and countered, attacking the source of the attacks.

Per centcom:

> “Iranian forces launched multiple missiles, drones and small boats as USS Truxtun (DDG 103), USS Rafael Peralta (DDG 115), and USS Mason (DDG 87) transited the international sea passage. No U.S. assets were struck.”

Step 1 appears to have been US ships entering the strait. Iran claims they fired on a tanker but who's to say.

Right. Iran attacked US ships in international waters.

I guess you could say the "first step" was the the ships being there to be shot at, if you were trying really, really hard to spin it as the united states being the aggressor.

During the short stint of "Project Freedom", the US claimed to have attacked seven Iranian ships. Which is still not the first time the US has attacked Iran during a negotiation or ceasefire.

If by "attacked" you mean "repelled attacks by," then sure.

They simply want chaos. This distracts from their corruption and authoritarian actions, it enables grift and market manipulation, it worsens conditions in other western countries which benefits them, oil price being high benefits their friend Putin, the list is long and grim.

I also believe some in the administration want chaos. But also consider that Iran is legitimately hard to negotiate with and the negotiators have no experience with highly technical negotiations around nuclear enrichment. Like, I don’t think Trump wants chaos, actually.

I agree Iran must be hard to negotiate with but they haven’t even tried. Obama’s nuclear deal took years of work and involved multiple countries. When Vance didn’t get his way in a single meeting he quit?

Also maybe Trump doesn’t want chaos but I doubt he runs the show so much at this point.

Anything to obfuscate the Trump-Epstien Files™ Chaos is trumps baseline.

the entire war was looking really pointless and trump was left looking like a chump. none of the negotiations would let him walk away with anything looking like a win. a resumption of hostilities at least paints the illusion of progress towards..something

The thing he wants least of all is to appear to have lost. Unfortunately for many, he thought he could bomb the Iranians into submission.

I wonder how much what Trump wants matters any more w.r.t. Iran. Trump kicked a hornets' nest. Now it's the hornets' turn to decide when (or if) they'll let him walk away.

I mean, what's Trump going to do? Murder Iranian leaders harder?

> But also consider that Iran is legitimately hard to negotiate with

It is really strange how when you offer to negotiate with the leaders of a country as a pretext to assassinate them... twice... it becomes difficult to negotiate with those who replace them.

Nobody could have seen this coming.

It also harms US' Asian allies, which makes them more dependent on US energy, increasing US leverage to push them toward proxy war with China. Very similar to the situation in Europe!

Can you please describe this proxy war against China. I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt but you seem to also be implying that the US made Putin invade Ukraine.

There was no real route towards negotiations. The two sides remained quite far apart on issues they considered non-negotiable, and neither side is desperate enough yet to make major concessions.

The US strikes on Iran were paused temporarily because Kuwait and Saudi Arabia refused permission to use their bases for that purpose. Now permission to use those bases has been secured (probably in exchange for protection guarantees and other political concessions) so the strikes can resume.

(I'm not claiming that any of this is a good idea, just explaining the state of affairs.)

Think of it less like a consistent foreign policy and more like the biggest insider trading grift in American history.

> Or am I missing something here

Iran is a terrorist state

Why are you being downvoted

It's a low-quality comment.

I think what you’re missing is there was never any real progress.

* Oil futures (not spot price) have been completely detached from reality, with credible evidence of corrupt insiders making money by front-running Trump’s social media posts

* Negotiations never went anywhere; despite Trump’s social media claims (see point 1), they barely even got to the negotiation table

* There is no potential for an exit that doesn’t leave us worse off than where we started, because Iran is control of whether the conflict continues, not the US, and it’s in their best interest to continue the conflict until they get major concessions (like permanent ability to tax the straight)

In short, the Trump administration is a clown show whose only really competence is corruption.

To be fair, they are extremely competent at that.

Seems to have had a few titles currently: Middle East war: US and Iran clash in Strait of Hormuz as ceasefire comes under strain

https://archive.is/arpYH

> China talks going well!

yeah, the strait will remain closed/blockaded until 2028 after election

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