Trumps attack on Iran - 2026 edition

How will the upcoming attack on Iran go.

  • Total voters
    18
fillyboy said:
China aren't winning by losing their sphere of influence in the middle east, China aren't winning by losing their main and cheapest supplier of oil, they aren't winning by the Humous straits closing and choking their int'l trade and they certainly aren't winning by having it shown to the world that they've been backing the wrong horse for the last 10 years or more.

How do you think they're 'winning'?
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The bigger picture.

Iran was never an essential part of China's strategy. They always knew it was vulnerable. The cheap oil was nice. But it only saved them about $5 billion a year, which is peanuts to China. USA is blowing that every three days in Iran.

Trump has shown he can't be trusted. It's a massive diplomatic win for China.

The USA has demonstrated that it is a lot weaker than many expected. It is having to strip out massive amounts of equipment from Asia and ask countries from Ukraine to Australia to help, just to take on a weak country like Iran. It is US allies in Asia who are going to be wondering whether they have backed the wrong horse.
 
diy_fun_uk said:
I'm maybe wrong, might there not have been a cost curve that would eventually have been to the consumers benefit though? i.e. if we had ramped up our own extraction and refining processes decades ago, yes there's an upfront capital cost, and recurring to maintain/upgrade, however if we had essentially done it all ourselves, would that not have been better for us, both in terms of energy security and consumer cost? The answer to one or both might be 'no' of course!
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Possibly but, not since Victorian times have we done things with any degree of vision or future proofing.

It's live for this afternoon, not even live for today, it seems.....
 
diy_fun_uk said:
We had/have the North Sea, why decades ago didn't we just ensure we could produce the end product ourselves.

Too straightforward an approach no doubt. Not good enough an approach to ensure multiple people can make £££ profits. So here's an idea, let's conveniently overcomplicate the whole thing.
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The type of oil has changed as the North Sea has run dry. It used to be light and sweet but now it is heavy and sour. In the past we could refine it. But not any more. It is the opposite of the problem the US faces.
 
fillyboy said:
Oil companies are no longer interested in paying 95% tax for extracting North Sea Oil.
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They were happy to take all of the subsidies though (y)


And, no matter how much anyone would like it not to be the case, drilling in 100m, in some of the toughest conditions around, will always be much more expensive than doing the same on land.

Capitalism, Baby (y)
 
MNW67 said:
The type of oil has changed as the North Sea has run dry. It used to be light and sweet but now it is heavy and sour. In the past we could refine it. But not any more. It is the opposite of the problem the US faces.
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Which is maybe what we should have been and continued to do. Ok present day we might still be thinking 'time for a plan B' however we'd have had decades of direct security and financial benefit from DIY'ing it.
 
noseall said:
It would have prevented the inevitable tantrum. No one seriously expected him to start WWIII though.
Trump-baby for ya.
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The upside of his disastrous intervention (if there is one) is that he will be wiped out in 2028 such that even his hardline supporters can’t seriously claim the election has been stolen.
 
to keep petrol prices down in US, and reduce his unpopularity, Trump wants to ease off on his buddy Putin.

"
  • The US said it would allow countries to buy Russian oil stranded at sea in an effort to keep a lid on rising energy prices. The UK has since ruled out easing sanctions on Russia.
  • German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the US decision to ease sanctions was “wrong” as he warned over the Kremlin profiting from the war on Iran."

FT.com
 
"3 hours ago
Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in Berlin

Merz says US decision to ease sanctions on Russia is ‘wrong’​

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said a US decision to ease Russian oil sanctions was “wrong” as he warned over the Kremlin profiting from the war on Iran.

“Easing sanctions now, for whatever reason, would be wrong,” Merz said on Friday in Norway.

Merz added that while there was an oil price problem, there was no shortage: “I would like to know what motives prompted the US government to make this decision,” he said.

“The overriding suggestion is: when will this war end and what strategy will be used to bring it to an end? These questions have not really been answered.”

Merz has grown more critical of the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran after initially supporting it."

FT.com
 
blup said:
The upside of his disastrous intervention (if there is one) is that he will be wiped out in 2028 such that even his hardline supporters can’t seriously claim the election has been stolen.
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Trump is trying very hard to suppress the vote. He is threatening to veto any new legislation until Congress passes a law which will disenfranchise millions of poor and minority US citizens.
 
MNW67 said:
Trump is trying very hard to suppress the vote. He is threatening to veto any new legislation until Congress passes a law which will disenfranchise millions of poor and minority US citizens.
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Disenfranchising the poor and minorities sounds like a terrible thing to do.

Disenfranchising people who cannot prove they are US citizens sounds much better, and it would bring the US voter rules in line with most of the rest of the world.

Can non UK citizens vote in UK elections?
 
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