I think the real threat is that if you tip the Iranian conflict over into asymmetrical warfare, then nobody can stop it - ever. It seems to be almost the intent with the US and Israel especially announcing explicit intent to keep removing anybody who attempts to form a system of government.
So you'll have a permanently aggrieved population with nothing to lose saturated with know-how and materials for building missiles and drones who will just keep taking pot shots at ships and possibly commercial airliners. They don't have to "close" the straight - just make it hazardous enough that it becomes permanently very risky to sail through there. They can go dormant for 3 months and then send 30 drones at a single ship.
I'm not sure who in the strategic planning decided that no system of government for 90 million people was a good idea, but it seems quite insane to me.
> if you tip the Iranian conflict over into asymmetrical warfare, then nobody can stop it - ever
It's already asymmetytrical. And it could last as long as the current regime is in power. When the power structure will fall money will stop flowing too.
Huthies in Yemen look undistructable because they are supported (with moneny and weapons) by Iran. Who will bank-roll IRGC fighters when the government will collapse? China in theory culd but they depend on oil so will not contriube to prologed closing of the strait.
> I think the real threat is that if you tip the Iranian conflict over into asymmetrical warfare
We're there already. We've been there. There's nothing symmetrical about this war.
Israel is basically unscathed in this war despite Iran launching barrages of missiles and drones. They were already fighting Israel asymmetrically by supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. They knew they could never fight a fair war against the US and Israel.
This has always been the US way of doing things, going back to at least WWII: Get to Berlin, kill Hitler if required, and after that, uh, yeah, we'll get back to you on that. This is why things mostly kept going under continuous carpet bombing but fell apart completely once the bombing stopped and the administration was decapitated with noting to replace it.
The US then repeated the mistake in Iraq, take a population of 45 million, with most males having military training and a large percentage of the population dependent on government jobs and/or handouts, then remove the government. Who could possibly have predicted what would happen next?
Yes, doubling the price of oil, and setting random maybe-not-enforceable tariffs and embargoes, is a net positive because it has the unintended effect of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
China is using more coal, gas, and oil than ever. They went from using 1.5 billion tons of thermal coal in 2000 to 4.6 Billion tons today and they will reach 4.7 Billion in 2027.
They did "pledge" to "limit increases" in coal, but there is a big difference from limiting increases to "moving away from" coal.
As for oil, it is a similar story. Oil use doubled from 2005 to 2025, but they pledged to "slow increases" of oil to something less than the 7% annual increases per year that were the last 10 years average (over the business cycle).
Natural gas has tripled from 3 to 9.3 billion cubic feet per day from 2014 to 2023.
The prescient part was building a pipeline to deliver oil and gas directly from Russia as well as building trade routes through Russia and the central Asian nations that give them a direct route to their energy suppliers (Including Iran, which can supply China without ever going through the straight of Hormuz).
Energy security is very important, and China has invested heavily to build pipelines and trade agreements that keep the oil and gas flowing, and they have moved away from buying Australian coal to increasing their own domestic coal production, reaching 4.8 Billion tons mined and on track to hit 5 Billion tons in the next few years.
Renewables... and coal. If shit hits fan it's not just hammering EVs (including trucking/freight) but hammering coal to liquid/olefin to make diesel and plastics. This not talked about much, long term strategic hedge / resource autarky looks like electrify everything, and domestic coal+oil for industry/petchem. If Hormuz long term, PRC going to be ramping up coal for industrial feedstock including fuels, even if it's much more polluting or expensive, but expensive is relative, $80 barrel oil = coal + extra processing becomes economical.
EU rollback on reducing gas liability, especially the widely debated rule on « no gas car after 2030 », feels now laughable. Maybe the reason why « technocrats » are good rulers is because they use science and data to do it.
- The USA eventually declares some arbitrary "victory" condition.
- Iran will be left even poorer, and much less able to defend itself conventionally, but will remain under the same regime. Very likely they give up cooperating with atomic energy inspectors and do what North Korea did to a acquire weapons.
- Israel's ability to dictate US foreign and military policy will be degraded long term. What many commentators do not see is how anti-Israel younger consevatives trend in the US now. It will be decades or
before a serious anti-Israel republican candidate will be fielded, but it is inevitable, and even your typical greatest-ally-wall-kissers will have to moderate themselves.
Will be very interesting to see what the mid terms bring. Some on the American right are already talking about voting democrat to protest - MAGA was specifically sold to them as an antidote to necon middle eatern entanglements.
The problem the US and Israel now have is that no amount of preemptively declaring victory and withdrawing will make it safe to pass through the Straight of Hormuz again.
The US can't win without taking control of Iran's nuclear materiél. They can't do that without ground troops. And any ground invasion of Iran is going to be a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
Seems like tankers passing through the straits will always be at risk so long as the IRGC (or any irregular faction) remains intact with access to drones.
Seems like the only options are reaching a deal with whatever the new regime is or occupying the coastal areas.
Putin’s war ambitions profit most from the scare around Hormuz. His sanctions get removed to provide alternative supply, he can charge exorbitant prices, and he gets leverage. Since he is also providing targeting information for Iran to shoot at, it feels like this is an avatar joystick war for him to distract from his Ukraine disaster.
Always strange how the Trump administration’s policies always seem to have a benefit for Russia… Just a fluke coincidence that keeps happening I guess.
Putin mainly benefits from the increased price of oil - black-market oil prices are a discount relative to standard-market oil, so he'll have a much healthier budget, even if his sanctions stay "airtight".
China benefits here - they import Russian crude oil over land, so their costs won't increase as much as the international market (unless Russia uses the leverage to absorb all the benefit, which I doubt), but more crucially: the alternative to oil fuel is renewables, and China dominates renewables so a spike in demand for solar/batteries will be a godsend for them.
Paul Warburg on YouTube is a geopolitical analyst. His video from this weekend[1] walks through the many reasons why the energy market is resilient and adjusts to issues like Hormuz being temporarily impassable, ship insurance risk, the geopolitical uncertainty of Iranian leadership, the price of oil/gas and how changes in the supply/demand curve cause other wells elsewhere in the world to take up the slack, etc.
Closing the strait of Hormuz is worse for Iran and China than anyone else. Natural gas to Europe but not as big of an issue compared to Russian energy supplies. The Saudis and others have pipelines to bypass the strait. Many countries who sell oil obviously benefit from the increased price. I'd almost see how the U.S., Russia, Saudis and even the current administration in Venezuela would be fine with the oil price increase if Irans supply is taken off the market for a long time.
Seems to me that a conglomerate of oil companies could have funded a canal and reduce this risk a long time ago. Just around this choke point in global logistics.
It's not a big threat to the US. The US is a net oil exporter, has the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and, if absolutely necessary, Trump could make up with Canada so those oil imports restart.
Taiwan, Japan, and Korea, though - totally dependent on imports for oil.
Something that most pundits have missed: unlike all other US wars since Korea, the US can't end this war by pulling out. Iran, unlike all US combat opponents from Vietnam to Venezuela, has the demonstrated ability to strike well beyond its borders. This war isn't over until both sides say it's over.
The US is a net exporter of petroleum (crude oil plus refined products) but from what Google tells me it is still a net importer of crude oil. It also tells me 75% of what goes through Hormuz is crude.
Also, domestic crude of mostly light, sweet crude whereas many US refineries are designed to deal with heavy, sour crude. Google is telling me 80% of the crude that goes through Hormuz is heavy, sour crude.
Does any of this raise the impact disruptions of Hormuz would have on the US?
> It's not a big threat to the US. The US is a net oil exporter
The US being a net oil exporter doesn't make the domestic market independent of the global market (especially over the short to intermediate term), for a large variety of reasons.
> has the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Which whille partial refilled from the 2022 drawdowns is still at rather low levels by historical standards.
> and, if absolutely necessary, Trump could make up with Canada
He could try (though I don’t think even that is in his character), that doesn’t mean he would succceed.
> Trump could make up with Canada so those oil imports restart.
Sounds like Trump hubris. Probably just what he'd expect. And then he'd accuse Canada of "behaving terribly" if things didn't go his way, and he'd reach for his tariff paddle.
> It's not a big threat to the US. The US is a net oil exporter,
The thing is that the US exported oil is sweet crude, and our own refineries are not made for that type of oil. So for the petroleum products used within the US need the heavy oil that is imported. So if the world goes tits up so that the US can only use the oil it produces, it would take time before the US could refine it.
The threat to the US is China feeling like they need to act. The loss of Persian gulf oil is an existential threat to the Chinese economy. This could end very, very bad.
Nah. Very little direct US trade moves past Iran. In a few weeks President Trump will declare the operation a success and end most kinetic strikes, regardless of the actual situation. Then someone else will have to deal with the aftermath.
Frankly this whole thing is worth it if it scares Taiwan and Japan into building new nuclear capacity. Taiwan has been suicidally turning off nuclear generation for a decade despite it being the last country on earth that wants to rely on naval imports of essential goods.
> It's not a big threat to the US. The US is a net oil exporter, has the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and, if absolutely necessary, Trump could make up with Canada so those oil imports restart.
The SPR is 58% full, so... not empty but also not all the way full.
Additionally, even though we're a net oil exporter, we're not insulated from the global oil market rates. Local producers aren't going to sell into America more cheaply than they can sell internationally, so if international rates spike, prices will go up domestically too.
If the Straight of Hormuz remains closed for an extended period of time, we'll definitely feel the pinch domestically.
Conceivably, the 50 tankers per day could move in batches with the protection of a Destroyer. It's hard to imagine a credible surface or subsea threat with current fleet presence so it's basically a question of missile defense. Some constellation of vessels can indefinitely secure the zone if any powers that be with a suitable Navy desire it, and there are at least a few that have plausible capabilities.
> unlike all other US wars since Korea, the US can't end this war by pulling out
From what I read in Kissinger’s Diplomacy, Vietnam was also a war they couldn’t just pull out of if they wanted to.
The public wanted deescalation, but the Americans under Nixon had to escalate the war to get enough of an advantage to pull out without it being a bloodbath.
Hence part of Nixon’s infamy: he defied public opinion and escalated an unpopular war, precisely to end it more cleanly.
Trump announced yesterday they will murder anyone who takes leadership. They don’t want it opened, they want China and India to suffer while establishing themselves as alternative energy supplier.
US itself has huge reserves, and recent move with Venecuela further expands it.
Middle East countries are too blind to see it, they’re being thrown under the bus to hurt Iran.
Yes, a decade or two down the lane, all of middle-east will regret that they didn't do anything to check the US backed Israeli aggression in their region. The lack of political foresight and political will is really astounding (and surprising). And this is after the US Ambassador to Israel openly said that Israel has the "Biblical right" to all of middle-east, and the US is fine with that!
[+] [-] zmmmmm|24 days ago|reply
So you'll have a permanently aggrieved population with nothing to lose saturated with know-how and materials for building missiles and drones who will just keep taking pot shots at ships and possibly commercial airliners. They don't have to "close" the straight - just make it hazardous enough that it becomes permanently very risky to sail through there. They can go dormant for 3 months and then send 30 drones at a single ship.
I'm not sure who in the strategic planning decided that no system of government for 90 million people was a good idea, but it seems quite insane to me.
[+] [-] citrin_ru|22 days ago|reply
It's already asymmetytrical. And it could last as long as the current regime is in power. When the power structure will fall money will stop flowing too.
Huthies in Yemen look undistructable because they are supported (with moneny and weapons) by Iran. Who will bank-roll IRGC fighters when the government will collapse? China in theory culd but they depend on oil so will not contriube to prologed closing of the strait.
[+] [-] ajam1507|23 days ago|reply
We're there already. We've been there. There's nothing symmetrical about this war.
Israel is basically unscathed in this war despite Iran launching barrages of missiles and drones. They were already fighting Israel asymmetrically by supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. They knew they could never fight a fair war against the US and Israel.
[+] [-] Jordan-117|24 days ago|reply
They just accidentally killed them all.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/world/middleeast/iranian-...
[+] [-] pseudohadamard|22 days ago|reply
The US then repeated the mistake in Iraq, take a population of 45 million, with most males having military training and a large percentage of the population dependent on government jobs and/or handouts, then remove the government. Who could possibly have predicted what would happen next?
And now they're doing it again in Iran.
[+] [-] jaybrendansmith|23 days ago|reply
[+] [-] entwife|23 days ago|reply
[+] [-] widenitnow|23 days ago|reply
[+] [-] standeven|24 days ago|reply
[+] [-] carefree-bob|23 days ago|reply
They did "pledge" to "limit increases" in coal, but there is a big difference from limiting increases to "moving away from" coal.
As for oil, it is a similar story. Oil use doubled from 2005 to 2025, but they pledged to "slow increases" of oil to something less than the 7% annual increases per year that were the last 10 years average (over the business cycle).
Natural gas has tripled from 3 to 9.3 billion cubic feet per day from 2014 to 2023.
The prescient part was building a pipeline to deliver oil and gas directly from Russia as well as building trade routes through Russia and the central Asian nations that give them a direct route to their energy suppliers (Including Iran, which can supply China without ever going through the straight of Hormuz).
Energy security is very important, and China has invested heavily to build pipelines and trade agreements that keep the oil and gas flowing, and they have moved away from buying Australian coal to increasing their own domestic coal production, reaching 4.8 Billion tons mined and on track to hit 5 Billion tons in the next few years.
[+] [-] maxglute|23 days ago|reply
[+] [-] kortilla|24 days ago|reply
[+] [-] 0wis|24 days ago|reply
[+] [-] LAC-Tech|24 days ago|reply
- The USA eventually declares some arbitrary "victory" condition.
- Iran will be left even poorer, and much less able to defend itself conventionally, but will remain under the same regime. Very likely they give up cooperating with atomic energy inspectors and do what North Korea did to a acquire weapons.
- Israel's ability to dictate US foreign and military policy will be degraded long term. What many commentators do not see is how anti-Israel younger consevatives trend in the US now. It will be decades or before a serious anti-Israel republican candidate will be fielded, but it is inevitable, and even your typical greatest-ally-wall-kissers will have to moderate themselves.
Will be very interesting to see what the mid terms bring. Some on the American right are already talking about voting democrat to protest - MAGA was specifically sold to them as an antidote to necon middle eatern entanglements.
[+] [-] crooked-v|24 days ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|23 days ago|reply
[+] [-] cosmicgadget|23 days ago|reply
[+] [-] cosmicgadget|23 days ago|reply
Seems like the only options are reaching a deal with whatever the new regime is or occupying the coastal areas.
[+] [-] dzink|24 days ago|reply
[+] [-] conception|23 days ago|reply
[+] [-] Qwertious|24 days ago|reply
China benefits here - they import Russian crude oil over land, so their costs won't increase as much as the international market (unless Russia uses the leverage to absorb all the benefit, which I doubt), but more crucially: the alternative to oil fuel is renewables, and China dominates renewables so a spike in demand for solar/batteries will be a godsend for them.
[+] [-] unknown|24 days ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] thephyber|22 days ago|reply
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2rgVaTofGQU
[+] [-] treebeard901|22 days ago|reply
[+] [-] subscribed|21 days ago|reply
[+] [-] alwayspossible|23 days ago|reply
[+] [-] pibaker|23 days ago|reply
"Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
[+] [-] thatmiddleway|23 days ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|24 days ago|reply
Taiwan, Japan, and Korea, though - totally dependent on imports for oil.
Something that most pundits have missed: unlike all other US wars since Korea, the US can't end this war by pulling out. Iran, unlike all US combat opponents from Vietnam to Venezuela, has the demonstrated ability to strike well beyond its borders. This war isn't over until both sides say it's over.
[+] [-] tzs|24 days ago|reply
Also, domestic crude of mostly light, sweet crude whereas many US refineries are designed to deal with heavy, sour crude. Google is telling me 80% of the crude that goes through Hormuz is heavy, sour crude.
Does any of this raise the impact disruptions of Hormuz would have on the US?
[+] [-] whatever1|24 days ago|reply
[+] [-] reliabilityguy|24 days ago|reply
Yep, now if IR survives, I see no reason for them not to double down on even longer range missiles. Like, why not?
[+] [-] beached_whale|24 days ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|23 days ago|reply
The US being a net oil exporter doesn't make the domestic market independent of the global market (especially over the short to intermediate term), for a large variety of reasons.
> has the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Which whille partial refilled from the 2022 drawdowns is still at rather low levels by historical standards.
> and, if absolutely necessary, Trump could make up with Canada
He could try (though I don’t think even that is in his character), that doesn’t mean he would succceed.
[+] [-] tejohnso|24 days ago|reply
Sounds like Trump hubris. Probably just what he'd expect. And then he'd accuse Canada of "behaving terribly" if things didn't go his way, and he'd reach for his tariff paddle.
[+] [-] dylan604|24 days ago|reply
The thing is that the US exported oil is sweet crude, and our own refineries are not made for that type of oil. So for the petroleum products used within the US need the heavy oil that is imported. So if the world goes tits up so that the US can only use the oil it produces, it would take time before the US could refine it.
>Trump could make up with Canada
I'm sorry, did this suddenly become a comedy?
[+] [-] testing22321|24 days ago|reply
Like hell he could.
- every Canadian
[+] [-] idiotsecant|24 days ago|reply
[+] [-] nradov|24 days ago|reply
[+] [-] bpodgursky|24 days ago|reply
[+] [-] ncallaway|24 days ago|reply
The SPR is 58% full, so... not empty but also not all the way full.
Additionally, even though we're a net oil exporter, we're not insulated from the global oil market rates. Local producers aren't going to sell into America more cheaply than they can sell internationally, so if international rates spike, prices will go up domestically too.
If the Straight of Hormuz remains closed for an extended period of time, we'll definitely feel the pinch domestically.
[+] [-] westcoalst|24 days ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mkoubaa|24 days ago|reply
[+] [-] kev009|24 days ago|reply
[+] [-] mikrl|24 days ago|reply
From what I read in Kissinger’s Diplomacy, Vietnam was also a war they couldn’t just pull out of if they wanted to.
The public wanted deescalation, but the Americans under Nixon had to escalate the war to get enough of an advantage to pull out without it being a bloodbath.
Hence part of Nixon’s infamy: he defied public opinion and escalated an unpopular war, precisely to end it more cleanly.
[+] [-] onecommentman|24 days ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] void_ai_2026|23 days ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DrProtic|23 days ago|reply
US itself has huge reserves, and recent move with Venecuela further expands it.
Middle East countries are too blind to see it, they’re being thrown under the bus to hurt Iran.
[+] [-] thisislife2|23 days ago|reply