Gulf states have no ability to go to war. As this war has shown, the states are entirely dependent on oil and desalination plants, both of which are easily attackable infrastructure.
For reference: This would almost triple their govts funds each year. One must also not forget that they're able to raise tolls in the future, both for monetary investment but also for negotiation purposes.
Making outrageous demands is normal in these negotiations. You can just look at what Hamas demanded during the ceasefires. What usually happens is no strong concessions from either side and hostilities just end. The regimes get to survive just in a badly degraded state.
Most importantly Iran can't afford to keep the strait closed to enforce this. If they block shipping their own will be blocked as well - which hasn't yet happened, they were still allowed to ship oil. Iran was already in terrible financial shape before the war and they aren't negotiating from a strong position of power to take those risks.
> Most importantly Iran can't afford to keep the strait closed to enforce this. If they block shipping their own will be blocked as well - which hasn't yet happened, they were still allowed to ship oil.
Why do you say this? During the war they set up a checkpoint system so their ships and ships they allowed to pass could still pass through.
this would be a worse crisis than we've just had; it'd put China (if not all of Asia) directly against the USA and would put Australia in a very peculiar spot.
Iran charging a massive toll would also cause a crisis with the gulf states and they aren't going to tolerate it. This is much bigger than Iran vs US, and the idea they hold the cards for such a claim is mostly propaganda.
Just pointing out that for the volume of these ships, it's not really a massive toll. It's honestly a bargain, paid for in a really easy to stomach way by the people who allowed this to happen: Everyone else.
Doesn't explain why UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrian, and Saudis would tolerate a fee transiting the strait. Let alone why America would agree to that in negotiations given they have little incentive to agree to any large demands.
If that is agreed upon it's going to come with some concessions by Iran which is even less likely.
They'd tolerate it because they all poked a giant in the eye and it didn't go down. It's by far the cheapest route to peace any of them have.
USA could agree to it because it's not particularly dependent on that fuel supply and therefore would only pay the costs indirectly via market forces, which as the thief-in-chief pointed out, does (the parts he cares about of) their economy no harm as a net petroleum-product exporter, and above all else, they are losing the war.
Their entire leadership, navy, airforce, petrochemical and steel industries as well as the entire supply chain for the ballistic and drones industries which is also a lucrative export to Russia.
I am not sure they "lost a little else". When looking at what the US lost, it's pretty small in comparison
Russia and China would likely disagree as they count their gains:
- yet another massive blow to their trust and reputation among allies
- again massively undermining NATO thereby fostering global instability
- weakened credibility vis a vis defending Taiwan
It's not a complete US success, but what the OP said was a huge understatement. Iran situation had gotten much worse during this war.
Regarding NATO, this is a European effort of undermining the alliance no more than it is the US.
Europe is rightfully saying that Ukraine is our, the entire western world, war.
However, when the US bombs the very factories that manufacture these drones used in Ukraine, and the nation that quite frequently kidnaps european citizens as political chips, the europeans say "this is not our war".
No no no no, I can't let that go. Sending astronauts around the moon has nothing to do with "knowing more about the moon". We don't need people up there to observe the moon. In fact, it's a lot easier and better to have sensors go there and automatically make measurements (e.g. pictures).
Now thinking about Mars, sending astronauts there is actually a net negative for science because it risks contaminating Mars.
We send astronauts there because it's cool, period. Science has nothing to do with it.
This FAQ from the NASA website seemed particularly intellectually dishonest:
>Why do we need astronauts to view the Moon when we have robotic observers? Human eyes and brains are highly sensitive to subtle changes in color, texture, and other surface characteristics. Having astronaut eyes observe the lunar surface directly, in combination with the context of all the advances that scientists have made about the Moon over the last several decades, may uncover new discoveries and a more nuanced appreciation for the features on the surface of the Moon.
I think perhaps you mean the far side of the moon. The "backside" of the moon implies a large graben stretching almost from pole to pole, and I have seen no evidence of such a geological formation in any photos.
It really is surprising being able to see the Moon isn't spherical. (Are those abberations?) It makes sene, given the moon isn't in hydrostatic equilibrium.
How are CSS and HTML a mess? Combined, they're an incredibly powerful layout engine that works almost the same across all environments and devices while also featuring easy accessibility.
When taking a bird eyes view on CSS it will be hard to oversee that CSS is a mixture of different concepts that evolved over time with a lot of inconsistentsies. It is possible to make it work, but it's not pretty.
Same for HTML. If the web would be reimagined today, there is a very low chance that we would create HTML as is.
I have never in my career encountered a Vanilla JS project of at least medium size that I would have called simple. They all feature brittle selfmade frameworks whose developers have since left the company years ago.
C is infinitely less complex to parse and validate than Typescript. C is compiled in a single pass, the `tsc` type checking algorithm has to check structural typing, conditional types and deep generics while also emulating JS' dynamic behaviour.
I don't think any C compiler has been single pass for the last 20 years. Typescript's analyses are also not that complicated, it's just that the typescript type checker is written in js. Iirc the actual ts -> js part is pretty fast with some of the more recent compilers.
I disagree - this is an excuse. Even the post we’re commenting in now shows that it’s a series of poor abstractions and bad tooling that takes way too long to do the basics, combined with a language and ecosystem that encourages this behaviour . They saw a 5x speed up by changing tools while still using a JavaScript framework so it’s clearly possible for it to not be complete nonsense.
reply