The popular answer I've seen over the past few weeks is to just blame everything on the US, but that kind of thinking and lack of agency is exactly why countries like the UK are in the position they are.
Just constant burying heads in the sand, and believing in models where the prior assumptions are from a bygone era.
We in Europe negotiated the JCPOA. Read its terms. Understand its lead negotiatior was the EU representative. That was our codified relationship with Iran. Now compare that to the best case after what you geniuses started.
Own up to it. This is solely on the US. The rest of us had it handled until you came along.
Not only do those particular prior assumptions date to 1957 in a way that makes deviating from them structurally dangerous, they involve very low military spending in a way that makes deviating from them politically dangerous.
Fixing the budget hole to pay for that spending without resorting to giving many people living in Monaco the Eichmann treatment as a side effect (which is untenable on account of French security guarantees to Monaco) would need some kind of government of hardcore believers who could also do math.
For decades the world has very reasonably operated on the assumption that the world’s primary superpower wouldn’t be dumb enough to do this without a proper plan.
Everyone except the Iranians and maybe the Israelis were flat-footed by this, and the things that can be done about it are largely on the years/decades scale.
The way i read the parent post, is that the uk decided to invest in other things than military. As a result they are at the whims of USA foreign policy and can't really do much about it. In an alternate world where UK spent more on hard power, they might not be subject to the whims of america to the same extent.
[To be clear, i dont 100% agree with this argument. I think there is a little truth to it but also things are much more complicated than that and it ignores the geopolitical tension in the region that was going to explode one way or another even without usa]
USA is proximally to blame, but Iran in its current borders is an entity that is largely the brain child of Britain. It ended up encompassing the Baloch and Kurds, who could have helped check Persian power and make Persian borders more penetrable, which was probably a geopolitical mistake.
Reason dictates having redundancy in place. Having prepared scenarios for what to do. A lot of countries clearly don't have that and they are operating on the assumption that no major disruption is going to happen.
Depending on resources coming from historically unstable locations and not having plans to prepare for such instability is just foolish.
That only applies to Iranian traffic. It would in fact be an act of war for the U.S. to blockade maritime traffic of countries it's not already at war with.
Cuban tankers have hardly left the island’s shores for months. Oil-rich allies have halted shipments or declined to come to the rescue. The U.S. military has seized ships that have supported Cuba. And in recent days, vessels roaming the Caribbean Sea in search of fuel for Cuba have come up empty or been intercepted by the U.S. authorities.
Last week, a tanker linked to Cuba burned fuel for five days to get to the port in Curaçao but then left without cargo, according to ship-tracking data. Three days later, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a tanker full of Colombian fuel oil en route to Cuba that had gotten within 70 miles of the island, the data showed.
While President Trump has pledged to halt any oil headed to Cuba, the Trump administration has stopped short of calling its policy a blockade.
But it is functioning as one.
Sure, economic sanctions have been in place for a long time, but the US has started seizing full ships.
Which in turn is also against international law (international law would let them retaliate against israel & usa. It doesn't let them target neutral shipping [edit: to clarify i mean neutral shipping going to neutral ports]).
Of course international law is not worth the paper its written on.
> Blockades restrict the trading rights of neutrals, who must submit for inspection for contraband, which the blockading power may define narrowly or broadly, sometimes including food and medicine.
To clarify, i meant shipping to neutral ports (article 99 of San Remo: "A blockade must not bar access to the ports and coasts of neutral States" https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/san-remo-manu... ). Oman seems neutral in all this but nonetheless affected.
They would be allowed to blockade neutral ships going to enemy ports (e.g. Israel) subject to a bunch of rules but that doesn't seem to be what they are doing.
I dont even think Iran is claiming this is a blockade. They are claiming its part of its territorial waters, and they are claiming that they dont recognize the UNCLOS which would give vessels transit rights (but at the same time they are claiming they recognize the part of UNCLOS that allows claiming 12 miles out as territorial waters). At least that is what i got from https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-legality-of-irans-closure-of-th...
> There are no neutral ports there. Every other country past the strait is a US ally with US military bases hosted on their territory.
I dont think hosting a US base would necessarily make them non neutral unless that base was used offensively. According to international law, Iran would also have to justify their exercise of self-defense rights was porportional, which even if you accept hosting a us base made that state non neutral, i think it would be difficult to justify their response against states simply hosting a us base met the porportionality requirements of int law.
However even if they were enemy states, Iran would have to declare all of these countries as being under blockade, which they haven't as far as i am aware.
> Oman is before the strait begins.
How is the Oman port of Khasab before the strait begins?
As a late thought - i would also add that the idea that this is an aggressive war against Iran relies on the idea that iran and hamas are separate enough that israel striking iran is not self-defense from when hamas struck Israel. But the relationship between Hamas and Iran is a lot closer than usa and the gulf countries. So i think its difficult to say that Iran striking gulf countries that host USA bases but are otherwise uninvolved is legitament self-defense without also saying that Israel striking iran was legitament self-defense from the proxies they fund. I feel like logically you cant have it both ways. Either both are valid self defense or neither are.
Did you miss the part about contraband? You quoted it, after all.
Firing on neutral shipping is not the same as intercepting it and inspecting it for war materiel or other contraband. Preventing shipping from reaching or leaving Kuwaiti ports is not the same as inspecting it for war materiel or other contraband.
Iran has been requiring shipping to submit to inspection and tolls via an adjusted route through the strait. And they can certainly deem oil contraband if they are allowed to do food and medicine, as quoted.
Ships that don’t stop get fired upon. That’s what happens in a blockade.
Kuwait is a US ally and hosts American military bases. Stopping shipping to there is very clearly legitimate.
> And they can certainly deem oil contraband if they are allowed to do food and medicine, as quoted.
Wikipedia is defining what the term blockade means not what constitutes a legal blockade.
Medicine is not allowed to be blockaded. Food is not allowed to be blockaded if there is a shortage.
Relavent parts of the san remo manual:
> 102 The declaration or establishment of a blockade is prohibited if:
> (a) it has the sole purpose of starving the civilian population or denying it other objects essential for its survival; or
> (b) the damage to the civilian population is, or may be expected to be, excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade.
> 103. If the civilian population of the blockaded territory is inadequately provided with food and other objects essential for its survival, the blockading party must provide for free passage of such foodstuffs and other essential supplies, subject to...
> 104. The blockading belligerent shall allow the passage of medical supplies for the civilian population or for the wounded and sick members of armed forces,...
You're correct that blocking oil would be allowed (barring situations where the civilian population needs it to survive, which doesnt apply here) if this was a legal blockade. However Iran is not complying with the other rules around blockades, which is the issue.
I guess nobody likes hearing that their country is unethically invading other countries. As much as I hate defending Iran, I don't think there's much of a difference between what the US is doing to Iran and what Russia is doing to Ukraine.
The Soviet Union gave the equivalent of about 80-100 million USD in support to the ANC in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. As soon as they got power, the ANC turned around and aligned with the west, wasting every rouble Moscow spent.
Since the inauguration Trump has supported physical seizures of many different kinds of Russia-aligned merchant shipping and the economic degradation of Russia's allies. Given all of this, we can assume that the Russian asset angle is a much less accurate explanation for Trump's behavior than the alternative theory where he is highly suggestible to the most recent person to heavily compliment him in-person which used to be Putin and has subsequently changed to some mix of Rubio, Vance, Hegseth, Netanyahu and the Trump family.
Couldn't agree more. Our Navy is a joke. We can barely muster a single destroyer. Burning goodwill with Trump is foolish when europe is completely dependant on the US to defend them from Russia. I don't know what the strategic thinking is here. Demonstrate to the entire world that we are pathetic weaklings and the us that we're useless dependants?
This war might be dumb but it was also predictable. Why were these no contingencies? Or to quote Churchill "If you want peace you have to prepare for war".
Just constant burying heads in the sand, and believing in models where the prior assumptions are from a bygone era.