The president added that he has “instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas.”

  • 2piradiansOP
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    4 months ago

    Fuck sake, now he’s threatening third-party vessels with his malevolent idiocy. This is a big misstep of an escalation, no?

    • protist@retrofed.com
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      4 months ago

      This is a big misstep of an escalation, no?

      Always has been

      In all seriousness, is he expecting the US Navy to fire on civilian vessels? I’d bet we’re nearing a point of mutiny on some ships

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        4 months ago

        I don’t think there can be 30 hour laundry fires on a US Navy vessel without at least a little bit of mutiny.

        • protist@retrofed.com
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          4 months ago

          From a geopolitical perspective, attacking a Venezuela-registered fishing boat is fundamentally different from attacking a Chinese- or Indian-registered oil tanker. Most of the boats they’ve attacked in the Caribbean were actually stateless and weren’t registered anywhere

      • 2piradiansOP
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        4 months ago

        How is it smart? Honest question, because it strikes me as pissing off the countries that charter those ships as well as the oil companies (boo hoo, but they have pull with all their money).

      • disorderly
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        4 months ago

        It’s the sort of move that might look like a clever reversal, but ultimately has a very steep price tag.

        A blockade is an act of war, and this one is clearly pointed at the rest of the world, not Iran. It’s predicated on the same faulty assumption that Trump’s administration made when invading Iran: our military is unanswerable, and they will take it lying down.

        Escalation paths from this are all bad-- what if an EU ship ignores challenges from a US Navy vessel, or China sends a military escort with a shipping fleet? Are we really about to start another shooting war, or will we stand there with our dicks in our hands as they sail by?

        I’m thinking this brilliant idea is abandoned in a week.

      • givesomefucks
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        4 months ago

        That doesn’t make any logical sense…

        The only “smart play” is fucking off and leaving Israel to deal with the chaos alone.

        Which is the inevitable next step the evangelical extremists will want with Israel. They’re trying to bring about Armageddon and the last step in their myth is for all of Israels neighbors to unite and wipe them off the map.

        They want Armageddon in their lifetimes, their support of Israel has always had a baked in end date. Because Israel getting destroyed is required before they think they’ll be raptured.

        • officermike
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          4 months ago

          If Israel becomes a smoking crater and there’s no rapture, will the evangelicals finally come to the realization they’ve been living in a fairy tale?

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            4 months ago

            trump already has a weird insistince they all wear the same shoes…

            I’m just saying, there’s a very real chance if they’re not “called to heaven” that they take the initiative to ringing the doorbell on a mass scale.

            Like, I don’t know how far you’ve looked into their rabbit hole, but there’s lots of wriggle room around “suicides don’t go to heaven”. Something like going 150 on the interstate and letting go of the wheel could easily be rationalized as “this was always God’s plan”. Or just some version of Russian roulette, any random chance can be seen as God’s hand.

            This isn’t the first time a doomsday prophecy falls thru, it’s gonna go like it always does.

            • GuyFawkesV
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              4 months ago

              This isn’t the first time a doomsday prophecy falls thru, it’s gonna go like it always does.

              Yeah but I feel like the scale of this one might be a smidge bigger than the others. Combined.

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                4 months ago

                Only because you’re living thru this one, which is the same logical fallacy as when 2,000 years of Christians have all been convinced Jesus is coming back in their lifetime, and so will the next 2,000 years of Christians.

                Shit that’s happening around us currently always seem like a bigger deal, because to us it is, because it’s happening to us right now.

                Zoom out and start thinking as “humanity” and not “I” and none of this shit is really that new.

                • GuyFawkesV
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                  4 months ago

                  Yeah but I’ve lived through several others that never felt this big - Y2K, Mayan calendar, lots of smaller groups or religious zealots, probably other shit I’m forgetting. I think the big difference was that none of them possessed the means to bring it about themselves if they were sundowning. Which is a distinct possibility this time around.

        • First_Thunder@lemmy.zip
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          4 months ago

          Question is, if you’re Ronald McDonald and simply pull out, and Iran keeps asking for a toll, you just get a pure loss. A blockade is the only way, that maybe, you can improve your negotiating position for “cheap”. It will backfire for sure though

          Obviously the smart play was not to invade at all

          • givesomefucks
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            4 months ago

            A blockade is the only way, that maybe, you can improve your negotiating position for “cheap”

            Negotiating position for…

            What?

            Everything trump wants, he already had.

            What he wants now is the strait to be open, it’s only closed because they’re attacking Iran. If they stopped attacking Iran and fucked off, why would Iran keep blocking the strait?

            No one, especially Iran, want the strait blocked. Iran is blocking it because that’s their leverage to get the war to stop

            If trump blocks the fucking strait, what do you think his condition is? You think he’s gonna demand Iran that they stop being attacked? Iran already wants to stop having war crimes committed against them, they can’t want to stop the war crimes anymore.

            Where the actual fuck are you getting any of your information on about this conflict?

            • First_Thunder@lemmy.zip
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              4 months ago

              Try to think like the great dumbass for a minute:

              Iran has said they want to keep the toll system in place after the war

              Therefore if you just leave now, everyone will be very mad at you at toll

              Therefore only way out is escalating. An invasion is expensive, unpopular, and unlikely to work. They’re already bombing Iran, so not that.

              What remains is a naval blockade. Because they’re dumbasses, they didn’t just decide to block Iranian shipping, but instead essentially block all remaining shipping.

              It’s less dumb than other options, and less war crimes and killing civilians

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                4 months ago

                I’d say it’s the only somewhat smart play he has left

                That’s what you said, that is false.

                I’m worried you’ve rambled on for so long you’ve forgotten what you’re even trying to defend

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                  4 months ago

                  When I said somewhat smart the emphasis was on somewhat, and I meant, the least dumb option that he was likely to take (am not counting just exiting, cause he is who he is)

          • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            There is another smart play.

            Give Iran something it wants that actually benefits Americans.

            You might think there isn’t anything but there is one:

            Stop supporting Israel fully.

            But they won’t cause the Epstein class is either compromised or in on it.

    • WesternInfidels@feddit.online
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      4 months ago

      Everything he does makes sense, if you can accept that he sees the United States itself as an rival for the attention and praise that is rightly his. Commanding other people’s attention, redirecting it to himself, has been the only trick behind his falling-up success, his whole life. This is what they mean when they say “all publicity is good publicity.”

      Now we’re not talking about Iran, we’re not talking about America’s future, we’re talking about him.

  • Australis13@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    I’m not an expert here, but considering that he is literally threatening other nations’ vessels in international waters, I’m wondering at what point the actions of the US Navy to “interdict every vessel” would constitute an act of war.

    Hopefully the rest of the world increases the pressure on Trump and the US since it looks very much like he’s completely to blame for the rising oil costs around the globe.

    • takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      I don’t think that was a terrible idea. Iran set up an AyaTOLLah, if US would stop the ships that Iran allowed Iran wouldn’t be able to charge ships for passing. It would also be hurting by this closure and motivated to have the straight open.

      But that would make sense to do it 5 weeks ago not now.

      And before that if they would provide insurance for carriers immediately as well, preventing movement from stopping maybe it would prevent the closure altogether.

      But trump instead lifted sanctions on Iran and Russia for some reason.

  • MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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    4 months ago

    Jesus Christ, this guy is a god damned lunatic. He doesn’t want to lead the free world, he yearns to be a banana republic dictator. And he’s trying like hell to turn us into exactly that.

  • Furbag
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    4 months ago

    This doesn’t hurt Iran at all, it just makes the problem worse for everyone else. All this will accomplish is loading more international pressure on the United States to end the conflict immediately with major concessions to Iran.

  • reluctant_squidd@lemmy.caBannedBanned from community
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    4 months ago

    I’m kinda sad we used “Stupidgate” the last time he was impeached multiple times. This kinda relates to gatekeeping and is muchly stupider.

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      This is Stupid Iraq. Mind you, Iraq was incredibly fucking stupid to begin with.

      This is like that, but much, much stupider.

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        4 months ago

        Or they know it can happen because they’ve done it themselves and maybe even put down ten toes down on a mutiny charge…

        But I’m sure you’ve got a lot of experience with the process and know all about how it works.

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            4 months ago

            I mean this is just a fundamental flaw in logic…

            The same bigots always fall back:

            If not all of ____ are bad, why are some ____ bad?!

            Do you understand that as a larger point?

            Not a lot of hope here, but this is a very big thing and lots of people seem to be missing those these days

            Like, that’s not even getting into how when someone refuses an order, you don’t hear that there even was an order.

            You just have no idea what you’re talking about, or any frame of reference.

            Just opinions and an internet connection

            • chosensilence@pawb.social
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              4 months ago

              i literally don’t know what you’re talking about. you seem to be responding to something else entirely with your own interpretation. you said that “they know it can happen,” i replied with “then why hasn’t it yet when it should have?”

              are you alright

        • dizzle18@lemmy.zip
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          4 months ago

          Yeah, I don’t have experience with this kind of stuff. But I am an American citizen with a working pair of eyes. And I see a military gleefully carrying out ALL of the orders of a fascist, domestic enemy of the state who has been corrupted by multiple foreign powers. If the military had even an ounce of moral conviction, we wouldn’t be in Iran, and we wouldn’t have extrajudicially kidnapped the leader of Venezuela. But they don’t, and here we are. But hey, thanks to the very VERY few who did the absolute bare minimum.

          • givesomefucks
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            4 months ago

            And I see a military gleefully carrying out ALL of the orders

            No, you only see them following orders, because the system is built so no one sees when someone doesn’t.

            But hey, thanks to the very VERY few who did the absolute bare minimum.

            Again, you’re assuming you see everything happening at all levels of our military, which is such a naive take, anyone making it (even if they themselves are high level military) would be so naive and uninformed, it’s not just dangerous to listen to them, it’s dangerous to let anyone listen to them.

            Which is why I’m bothering to type these replies knowing most people still won’t understand the specifics.

            It’s worth the effort even tho I know it’s not likely to work.

  • Substance_P
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    4 months ago

    Yep, Sunday fits Trump’s weekly stock market manipulation cycle. I have an uncanny feeling a team with a combined portfolio of real estate development, private equity, and venture capital interests didn’t go into this with true diplomatic intentions.

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    There you go, my new brilliant plan, that should solve the problem easy peasy.
    It will be so funny when China or France or any other country don’t even complain about it because of how brilliant I am.
    -Trump.

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    4 months ago

    Trump also said the U.S. was ready to “finish up” Iran at the “appropriate moment,” stressing that Tehran’s nuclear ambitions were at the core of the failure to end the war.

    Good thing we completely decimated their nuclear program many months back. That should make it much easier to finish the illegal war.