#80
Member
The only tankers going thru the strait are Iranian and Chinesse.
🌎 USA vs. Iran
- Thread starter Brandon Van de Graaff
- Start date
The only tankers going thru the strait are Iranian and Chinesse.
#80
Member
Revolutionary Guard takes over Iran’s government, blocks President’s authority
Iran's presidency faces a political deadlock. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is reportedly controlling key state functions. President Pezeshkian's appointments and decisions are being blocked. The IRGC chief insists the Guard must manage leadership positions during wartime. Supreme Leader...
This is just one article out there and there are more.
The new supreme leader served in the IRG.
Moving forward I have no interest in arguing this with you.
Where it stands now, we have ceded control of what was previously a free passage. It's hard to spin that favorably. Has Iran been decimated to reduce its regional reach? Yes, of course, but we've seen they can still wreak havoc on soft targets in the gulf states.
If this ends like this, we will have alienated our allies in yet another region of the world.
If this ends like this, we will have alienated our allies in yet another region of the world.
The straits have always been Iran's Trump card. They've been threatening to close them as long as they've been threatening death to America. They stopped allowing free passage as it was the only play they had when the attacks started. From what we know, they agreed to open it as part of the cease fire agreement. History also shows us that they have a penchant for lying and delaying in peace talks, hence where we are now. I have no doubt that it will be a free passage again soon, one way or another. I don't like what they're doing but with talks scheduled for Saturday I can also understand allowing certain things for a couple of days until real talks begin. I don't think Iran will ever be rational as long as the same type regime remains in place, I also don't think it's our place to make them a democracy. They've been decimated and their last sense of any control is closing the straits, they have to be made to understand they can't do that either and we have to wait and see if that happens diplomatically or forcefully. Just my opinion.
The US is really counting on the Royal Navy.
Some of these countries we're allied with, who are part of NATO, are countries I question whether we should be aligned with in the first place.
"Anonymous author" can say a few things ... it could be an actual person as it just as easily could be western-led propoganda. I tend to believe it's a person.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/co...t/news-story/af6072abe39584bd4e3c701ed19c0606 (Paywall.)
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Three explosions in rapid succession: that’s how I remember the start of this war. When I first heard them I was at work in Tehran and dashed to the windows overlooking the city streets.
I was afraid, of course, but I also recall a quiet, inner sense of joy, as my colleagues turned to one another to acknowledge that, yes, the attacks had finally begun.
I gathered my things and went straight to my daughter’s school to bring her home. “They say they’ve hit the leader’s residence,” she told me.
“All the children were screaming and cheering … even our teacher was quietly snapping their fingers and dancing.”
That night, when the news of the dictator’s death was confirmed, Tehran’s streets filled with cries and chants of “death to the dictator”. I called my loved ones and the families of those we knew who had been killed during the January protests. Perhaps for the first time, we allowed ourselves to believe our long-held dream was beginning to take shape.
For a moment, fear receded. I now realise the experience of the 12-day war had produced an overconfidence in the precision capabilities of Israel and the US. Beneath that overconfidence lay a profound anxiety about the destruction of civilian infrastructure and power plants, a possibility that remains deeply unsettling.
Each night, we wake to the sound of explosions and fighter jets. The internet, like many other aspects of our lives, has been taken from us by the regime. Even so, through some internal messaging platforms, and layers of coded communication, we have created small spaces of connection. Every day, we check on one another. We ask: What’s happening in your neighbourhood? Are you safe?
So far, none of those close to us have suffered physical harm, but no night is calm.
What weighs most heavily is not only the war itself, but the possibility that it may end leaving behind a regime even more authoritarian, more repressive, and more violent.
A small minority of regime supporters take to the streets every night with loudspeakers. They project a power and influence that does not correspond to their numbers. On the first day of the war, as they chanted “Heydar, Heydar”, we responded with “Long live the shah” and “death to the dictator”.
Yet even this small moment of self-expression and release was quickly suppressed.
We have been threatened by the visible targeting of our homes with weapon-mounted lights. Most days resemble the period of the January massacres, when grief and exhaustion had overtaken society. Then, people were withdrawn, subdued. I would cry in private, away from my daughter. Yet even then, we tried to hold ourselves together. Nearly everyone I know had lost someone.
This time, however, something has shifted. We decided not to step back. For the daughters and sons of this land, we would continue, for as long as we are alive, to insist on the return of freedom and dignity.
It is difficult not to reflect on the complicity I’ve witnessed. This is a painful reflection, but it must be acknowledged. People like me, in different ways, enabled the conditions that allowed this regime to consolidate itself. Within the structures imposed upon us, our knowledge and capacities were redirected toward sustaining its objectives, while its ideological foundations remained unchanged. Those who continue to support it are heavily protected, escorted by armed vehicles, yet their numbers remain marginal. Without amplification, without force, they would not match the scale of public dissent.
The streets are now covered with checkpoints. Under bridges and along main roads, movement is restricted. Long traffic lines form. Young people are stopped, their phones inspected under the pretext of routine checks. At the same time, fighter jets remain overhead, and the risk of these sites being targeted is evident. In effect, ordinary people have been turned into human shields within a vast militarised landscape.
A pervasive sense of anger, paranoia and exhaustion has taken hold. The governing apparatus relies on intimidation: restricting communication, disrupting information flows, executing young people and exerting pressure on a population that has begun to articulate its demands with clarity.
And then there is the word that circulates more frequently: ceasefire. Elsewhere, it may suggest relief. But here, in Tehran, it breeds unease.
Last night, before the announced ceasefire, we went to sleep in a state of deep anxiety, constantly checking the news. There was concern civilian infrastructure might be targeted, which would render our situation even worse. Yet we’re also deeply afraid of a ceasefire and being left alone with this criminal regime.
A ceasefire that stabilises the current order, without addressing the demands that have brought Iranians into the streets for years, risks being experienced not as peace, but as abandonment.
Current negotiations are framed in terms of security, deterrence and geopolitical balance. The people themselves are absent from these terms.
Their losses, their demands, their insistence on dignity seem to be irrelevant.
This absence is frightening as it signals the possibility that the outcome may preserve the very conditions that made this moment inevitable. So we live in suspension. Between fear and anticipation. Between violence and the possibility of change. Between a future that might open, and one that might close again, more tightly than ever before.
Still, despite everything, hope remains a force of endurance. A quiet, persistent refusal to accept that this is permanent.
We wait and we continue, in whatever ways possible, to insist that light will eventually overcome this darkness.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/co...t/news-story/af6072abe39584bd4e3c701ed19c0606 (Paywall.)
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Everyday life inside Tehran: A fine line between hope and abandonment
The streets are covered with checkpoints. Movement is restricted. Young people are stopped and searched. Ordinary people have been turned into human shields.Three explosions in rapid succession: that’s how I remember the start of this war. When I first heard them I was at work in Tehran and dashed to the windows overlooking the city streets.
I was afraid, of course, but I also recall a quiet, inner sense of joy, as my colleagues turned to one another to acknowledge that, yes, the attacks had finally begun.
I gathered my things and went straight to my daughter’s school to bring her home. “They say they’ve hit the leader’s residence,” she told me.
“All the children were screaming and cheering … even our teacher was quietly snapping their fingers and dancing.”
That night, when the news of the dictator’s death was confirmed, Tehran’s streets filled with cries and chants of “death to the dictator”. I called my loved ones and the families of those we knew who had been killed during the January protests. Perhaps for the first time, we allowed ourselves to believe our long-held dream was beginning to take shape.
For a moment, fear receded. I now realise the experience of the 12-day war had produced an overconfidence in the precision capabilities of Israel and the US. Beneath that overconfidence lay a profound anxiety about the destruction of civilian infrastructure and power plants, a possibility that remains deeply unsettling.
Each night, we wake to the sound of explosions and fighter jets. The internet, like many other aspects of our lives, has been taken from us by the regime. Even so, through some internal messaging platforms, and layers of coded communication, we have created small spaces of connection. Every day, we check on one another. We ask: What’s happening in your neighbourhood? Are you safe?
So far, none of those close to us have suffered physical harm, but no night is calm.
What weighs most heavily is not only the war itself, but the possibility that it may end leaving behind a regime even more authoritarian, more repressive, and more violent.
A small minority of regime supporters take to the streets every night with loudspeakers. They project a power and influence that does not correspond to their numbers. On the first day of the war, as they chanted “Heydar, Heydar”, we responded with “Long live the shah” and “death to the dictator”.
Yet even this small moment of self-expression and release was quickly suppressed.
We have been threatened by the visible targeting of our homes with weapon-mounted lights. Most days resemble the period of the January massacres, when grief and exhaustion had overtaken society. Then, people were withdrawn, subdued. I would cry in private, away from my daughter. Yet even then, we tried to hold ourselves together. Nearly everyone I know had lost someone.
This time, however, something has shifted. We decided not to step back. For the daughters and sons of this land, we would continue, for as long as we are alive, to insist on the return of freedom and dignity.
It is difficult not to reflect on the complicity I’ve witnessed. This is a painful reflection, but it must be acknowledged. People like me, in different ways, enabled the conditions that allowed this regime to consolidate itself. Within the structures imposed upon us, our knowledge and capacities were redirected toward sustaining its objectives, while its ideological foundations remained unchanged. Those who continue to support it are heavily protected, escorted by armed vehicles, yet their numbers remain marginal. Without amplification, without force, they would not match the scale of public dissent.
The streets are now covered with checkpoints. Under bridges and along main roads, movement is restricted. Long traffic lines form. Young people are stopped, their phones inspected under the pretext of routine checks. At the same time, fighter jets remain overhead, and the risk of these sites being targeted is evident. In effect, ordinary people have been turned into human shields within a vast militarised landscape.
A pervasive sense of anger, paranoia and exhaustion has taken hold. The governing apparatus relies on intimidation: restricting communication, disrupting information flows, executing young people and exerting pressure on a population that has begun to articulate its demands with clarity.
And then there is the word that circulates more frequently: ceasefire. Elsewhere, it may suggest relief. But here, in Tehran, it breeds unease.
Last night, before the announced ceasefire, we went to sleep in a state of deep anxiety, constantly checking the news. There was concern civilian infrastructure might be targeted, which would render our situation even worse. Yet we’re also deeply afraid of a ceasefire and being left alone with this criminal regime.
A ceasefire that stabilises the current order, without addressing the demands that have brought Iranians into the streets for years, risks being experienced not as peace, but as abandonment.
Current negotiations are framed in terms of security, deterrence and geopolitical balance. The people themselves are absent from these terms.
Their losses, their demands, their insistence on dignity seem to be irrelevant.
This absence is frightening as it signals the possibility that the outcome may preserve the very conditions that made this moment inevitable. So we live in suspension. Between fear and anticipation. Between violence and the possibility of change. Between a future that might open, and one that might close again, more tightly than ever before.
Still, despite everything, hope remains a force of endurance. A quiet, persistent refusal to accept that this is permanent.
We wait and we continue, in whatever ways possible, to insist that light will eventually overcome this darkness.
#80
Member
You are 100% correct.
ElephantStomp
Member
The President of the US was played like a fiddle by Iran and it wasn’t even difficult for them to do. ANYBODY that views this as positive simply has their heads in the clouds. Iran controls the strait, China is now going to begin to assist Iran, Bibi was able to draw Trump into the war he wanted and he made Trump look like a fool. I didn’t want the war to begin with, but afterwards I was hoping our leaders could get us through it without looking like idiots, they failed.
ElephantStomp
Member
He should’ve made sure the dude that got him into this debacle didn’t keep bombing AFTER he pronounced the successful ceasefire, I’d try there maybe just maybe
So Israel shouldn't be able to respond to Lebanon attacking them? Maybe that works in your world, just maybe, it doesn't in mine. And maybe you have issues reading but that wasn't the question. Let me know if I need to rephrase for you.
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Would this be the same fiddle played by Nero?
It's a 20 minute drive from the house to Joint Base Charleston. I know this for a fact having played that golf course A LOT before restrictions and access became as limited as they are today. Miles? Just under 10.
Yesterday, while watching the UF v UGA baseball game, I heard planes coming from the base. Loud. The second one I heard was enough for me to step outside to look. F-18's? I think. I don't know for sure. They were too high for the naked eye to get any real reference other than the outline. A total of eight took off within a span of around two minutes; less than to be honest. It was quick.
Here's the thing that strikes me everytime. Loud. LOUD. Those planes weren't any bigger than the end of a pencil to my eye but they were strong enough, even at that altitude, to shake everything a little. I could literally "feel the noise."
I say all of that to say this.
IF it's that loud here, at that altitude, I can't begin to imagine how loud it must be when you are on the receiving end of one of their bombing runs.
I'm posting this while hearing a string of either C-17's or 141's leaving the base ... and they are loaded.
Yesterday, while watching the UF v UGA baseball game, I heard planes coming from the base. Loud. The second one I heard was enough for me to step outside to look. F-18's? I think. I don't know for sure. They were too high for the naked eye to get any real reference other than the outline. A total of eight took off within a span of around two minutes; less than to be honest. It was quick.
Here's the thing that strikes me everytime. Loud. LOUD. Those planes weren't any bigger than the end of a pencil to my eye but they were strong enough, even at that altitude, to shake everything a little. I could literally "feel the noise."
I say all of that to say this.
IF it's that loud here, at that altitude, I can't begin to imagine how loud it must be when you are on the receiving end of one of their bombing runs.
I'm posting this while hearing a string of either C-17's or 141's leaving the base ... and they are loaded.
You should hear them on a flight deck. I bet all the guys working up there have hearing loss no matter how good the protection they wear is.
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I've thought about that. Imagine that without the catapult systems.
I'm not sure that most could take off without them. They're at a high power when they are shot off. It was cool to watch. You could always tell when the EA6's landed, much louder thud you could feel in CIC.
