Iran threatens to block straights of Hormuz - Again

Many in the USA WANT us to not be the country responsible for keeping world trade moving smoothly. We WANT to be neutral and let the rest of the world work out their own problems. All many of us want is to trade peacefully with folks and play in our own back yard as it were. Europe should create its own military and protect itself. Now the world on the other hand should think long and hard about all that though. Because if we did leave or were replaced that will create a vacuum that China and Russia want to fill or exploit.

The USA is annoying and over bearing but make no mistake China or Russia will be far worse for most countries then we are.

 

Sure they do. It would not be difficult for them to send some of their ships that are no longer needed out into the Straight and sink them in certain choke points. and sink them on the spot. With the height of some ships they could sink and the deep drafts shipping vessels normally have would make the Straight of Hormuz effectively impassable.

That, would take more than a few hours to clear.

 

They do not have that many ships of that size. The normal draft of a standard tanker is 20 Meters That means in order to block it from most tankers they would have to sink tanker sized ships across about 8 miles of strait. And all would have to have a size of 60 to 80 meters total in height. They just do not have that many ships like that unless they sank most of their tankers (roughly 46). They have no naval ships of that size at all. Their largest ship the Alvand is a destroyer which does not even come close. So what would they use?

 

The United States left hook is the U.S. Coast Guard.

 

This is not about China or Russia being what China or Russia are. This is about the massive blunders we are making on the geopolitical chessboard that are playing into the hands of China and Russia.

Using the USD as a cudgel - messing with the sovereignty of other nations - including our closest allies - is NOT "peacefully playing in our own back yard".

I agree that NATO (as a military force) really has little purpose but that was not the point of bringing up Macron's statement. NATO is not just a military arrangement .. it serves as a basis for cooperation - an alliance among the worlds (or what were the worlds) most powerful economic entities.

United we stand - divided we fall. I am not talking military here - I am talking economic. We are the ones creating the vacuum and yes China and Russia are filling it.

There is a bigger game being played here. The international financiers that run this nation are milking us dry. This is the "Establishment" which consists of political and bureaucratic elite with the big money interests dictating or influencing foreign and domestic policy.

The main purpose of the Russia, China, Iran fear mongering is to keep money flowing into the military industrial complex - which is owned by the international financiers.

It is not that Russia, China and France for that matter are not a threat. It is that the threat is not military. Its economic.

 

How tall you think this tanker might be? Don't forget about the rest of the ship beneath the water line.

ETA: Here is their Tanker website, if you can read it maybe you can find their inventory listed somewhere on there.

http://www.nioc.ir/Portal/Home/

 

That tanker should be about 60 meters if it is the largest class VLCC and Iran only has 28 of those.

 

doubt
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-m...-occupied-golan-marks-new-phase-idUKKCN1IF295

 

Hezbollah has fired missiles and rockets at Israel. Ia a link on all the weapons they have and employ:

https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/hezbollahs-rocket-arsenal/

According to Israeli tank commanders at the front of the 2006 War, Hezbollah’s anti-tank missiles damaged or destroyed Israeli vehicles on about 20% of their hits.60 The party successfully struck nearly 50 Israeli Merkava tanks during the conflict, penetrating the armor of 21. Hezbollah used ATGMs against buildings and Israeli troop bunkers as well. As Anthony Cordesman writes, “More [Israeli] infantry soldiers were killed by anti-tank weapons than in hand-to-hand combat.”61 While fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq, Hezbollah has effectively used ATMs to counter suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devises (SVBIED) launched by the extremist group.

 

billy-bob, if the US would block Iranian oil, than they would have the right to turn the straights into a war zone. That gives them the right to shoot at whatever that moves, including commercial ships carrying oil. No ships will try to attempt that.

It fails to stop the rockets of Hamas all the time. It fails to stop the rockets of Hezbollah. And Iran simply have a heck of a lot better equipment than the both of them.

it wouldn't. And it would be the end of Israel if they tried that. Iran has enough rockets to wipe Israel of the map with WMD's. It's after all a tiny nation and Iran is not.

Not saying that. Just saying it's relatively easy to blow up a tiny country with the fire power that Iran has.

The Jews are shaking in their boots about Iran. That's why they want to have the US economically destroy it but rather go for a military intervention. with their:

^^
fake news that's 6 years old.

 

What are you trying to suggest ... it was a rocket attack .. not "missiles" as in sophisticated missiles. They called rockets "missiles" which I suppose is correct in a sense but - not with respect to the missiles I was referring to.

 

They'd be able to block the Straight with 10 or less. We'll see what they end up doing.

 

I am not so sure they could get 10 ships sunk to actually block the straits. That would be pretty significant and a pretty tall task.

What they could do is a combination of mines, fast attack boats and missile attacks to destroy tankers and harass shipping but the response from the other nations in the region would be swift. Mines would be pretty tough to see before it was too late. However, odds of us seeing them deploy them would be pretty high. (Been there, done that)

 

Oh pff. Nice nitpicking there, buddy.
Point remains that Israel is not able to shoot them down by default. While the crap Iran got is exceptionally more faster and so way harder to shoot down. Which means it's not that hard for Iran to flatten Israel the conventional way. It just takes 3 places to demote Israel to a bunch of towns who are smaller than 250K peeps.

 

Its not nit picking and I am not disagreeing with you silly. There is a huge difference between the rockets that Hezbollah is shooting (essentially a sexed up firework with no guidance, limited range and low payload) and the technologically sophisticated missiles Iran has - which includes both cruise and ballistic missiles.

 

I was there. Helped write policy for it. I regret that I will probably be responsible for the deaths of many Balochs. My area of expertise is Southwest Asia. If you want, I can bore you with hideous details of the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, including information that is still either classified or unknown by casual "experts."

Such beliefs are typical of the lunatic fringe, but assuming there's even a kernel of truth to what you say. they have every reason to do precisely that.

No doubt you're totally oblivious to the fact that Central Asia has 5x-7x more oil, natural gas and coal than all of MENA (Middle East & North Africa) and the eastern Russian republics are sitting on 2x more oil, natural gas and coal than Central Asia.

There's a bonus, too, that MENA doesn't have and that's an abundance of timber, metal ores and non-metallic minerals.

Your plutocracy is not going to be happy with either the Chinese or Russians controlling that, and whoever controls it gets to be the King of Earth and make all the rules, and your plutocracy is not going to survive, unless they get control of it.

What kind of plutocracy doesn't want to survive?

 

They are not like the Geneva Conventions, but nice try.

Your government makes that claim, not me, and it doesn't matter what other foreign States did or did not do.

I'm an ultra-conservative, not a leftist, but unlike you, I recognize and accept Truth, which you are unable to do.

 

You weren't "there" for this country. I had one uncle (as described) who was a Soviet expert and I spent a lot of time talking to him. What I didn't tell you is that I had another uncle who was a USA Maj. Gen. and Military Aide to the President. He was a roommate of Westmoreland's at West Point and they were lifelong friends. Westmoreland gave the euology at my uncle's funeral. (My uncle thought we were crazy to get into an Asian ground war.)

Your description of U.S. policy is absurd.

What you don't understand is that a lot of that coal, oil, and natural gas will never leave the ground. Besides, there's enough methane at the bottom of the ocean to power the world almost indefintely--assuming we could burn it without wrecking the planet.

If you understood economics, you'd understand why the plutocracy isn't pursuing the half-baked policy you describe. You come across as a Russian propagandist or dupe. Read up on quantum computing and robotics--that's the future.

 

Oh, you said so, I'm just so, so convinced.

That doesn't answer the question.

"Recognize the truth".

I.E., I cannot defend my claims - but I'll deflect by stating only "I" know the truth. What an amazing debater you are.

 

Whoa, an anonymous internet forum poster on a not-so-great forum claiming they "had an uncle who knew a cousin who worked with an expert on moscovian pizza parlours and felt they knew so much about soviet eating habits", thank you so much for sharing.

 

Maj. Gen. C.V. "Ted" Clifton, USA. Military Aide to the President.





https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Victor_Clifton_Jr.

 

Sure I was. I did everything I was asked to do.

I didn't go to Iraq as a military advisor, but then that was a volunteer offer, and I was already tasked with training the Egyptian Army, which is something I preferred to do. I was in Panama and Iraq. I got your nuclear weapons programs back on-line. I got the Nike-Hercules withdraw back on-schedule and under-budget. I got a Meritorious Service Medal for that. I couldn't salvage the budget for the Pershing II deployment, but I did get it finished 3 weeks ahead of schedule, and I was there when the last warheads were delivered to Neu Ulm. I got a medal for that, too. Actually, two of them, if you count the unit citation as well. Because of my expertise in nuclear weapons, I was a NATO observer on Druzba '86, watching the Soviets run nuclear weapons operations in the field.

None of that is relevant. Westmoreland has no bearing on, nor played no role in your current Geo-Strategy. He was long since retired before most of it was developed. In fact, he was retired before the US adopted Soviet-style war-fighting in 1976 and implemented it in the Division '86 program, which I had a hand in, too. So, your uncle is a Soviet expert. Good for him, but he wasn't developing doctrine and strategy, like I was.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't make it absurd.

Not tomorrow it won't, but Geo-Strategy isn't about tomorrow, it's about the far Future.

I do understand Economics. I got my BA in Economics in 2003, along with a BA in Political Science (to add to my other undergraduate degree).

You should learn how the US works, and you might, had you actually been involved.

 

I do have PhD in International Relations, so it's not like I don't understand treaties or their applications.

The question was irrelevant. What other foreign States do is irrelevant. The issue here is what the US did.

I did defend. The fact that you cannot justify the actions is the problem.

 

And you knew more than my uncle? Horsesh't.

My other uncle briefed the President daily for an hour or more. He brought a summary of all U.S. intelligence.

He met one a month with Ronald Reagan. He knew what was going on. You? Compared to him? I doubt it.

If you understood economics, you'd know why your claims about our economic policy are absurd.

I don't believe a damn thing you say. You use British spelling and then claim to be involved at policy setting levels.

 

Either you do not know what a Plutocracy is - or you are completely unaware of how our political system works.

The idea that big money interests do not have influence in our political system is akin to claiming water is not wet.