Are they? They may come out stronger than before in the long term. Yet in the short term they've lost iconic and experienced leaders, their navy, and plenty of other military assets.
I suppose they may be grateful to have an enemy uniting their people. Though it's not like they lost control of the opposition, even if they've had to kill a few thousand at a time.
Oil prices are up, they're getting transiting fees now, as well, and other gulf states were weakened by the conflict.
Assume the leadership of both Iran and the US are kleptocrats who both have motivations to have oil prices high and people dependent on them and it all makes a lot more sense.
Doubtful, wishful thinking, America should’ve left well enough alone in 1953. We got rid of a president who was elected, who wanted to nationalize the oil industry within Iran, and when the puppet was installed the Shah he kept it nationalized anyway and for America, the Middle East became a quagmire and still is billions wasted.
Too bad the Pan America highway or a Pan-American Railway is but a dream the Chinese probably will get that high speed rail all the way to Europe once Russia and the Ukraine stop fighting, I might add if it wasn’t for the war. There’s a good possibility. It would already be done by now.
That old guy already on deathbed from cancer. He basically given death bonus to the country, immortalized like George Washington of Iran. Thank you. Trump! Greatest American and Iranian and world president!
I'm torn between "this was so bad, there's no way that they can forget" and "god, there's just enough time for just enough people to forget". I hate this.
Time will tell. I find it very unlikely that other nations will do nothing if nations and companies start to actually pay Iran money. If Iran get money, then the harbor that the Iranian ship goes to also want a cut, and any strait on the way also want their cut, and then why not just demand a cut if they happen to sail by in range of a military ship. Ships are by nature fairly vulnerable to be intercepted, boarded and cargo confiscated. Historically, from around 1300 to 19th century, shipping companies had to have their own army and cannons on board in order to safe guard cargo on the oceans. One could argue that the current period of international peace on the oceans was an abnormality and we are now returning back to normality.
It seems more likely that the Strait of Hormuz is just in the possession of Iran without grander implications for maritime trade.
What would other countries do? If the US's military might is powerless to control Iran, what chance would any other country have here?
Trump's weakness in giving up the illusion of US power certainly would be a disaster for the US, and world trade, but broader implications seem unlikely.
What can Iran do if other countries consider Iranian ship as free for the taking as retaliation for Iran attacking ships in the strait of hormuz?
What would Australia do if Iran attacked their embassy? They would kick them out, denying Iran an embassy in Australia. When it comes to this stuff, a tit for tat strategy is generally the common tactic. If you attack peaceful trade ships, then your own trade ships is valid target for retaliation. If you start to threaten ships with ransoms, other nations will do the same.
Invading Iran is a complete different subject compared to boarding trading ships well outside the border of Iran. Historically, a Letter of marque was a very cheap way to manage countries which did not respect your own ships. Some laws are still in the law books regarding how to deal with prize ships, which illustrate how close we are to the time where peaceful traversal of waters was not a given.
One of the biggest trade partner for Iran is China. Will China pay the toll? Will Iran attack their ships? Will China retaliate if they do? If China do not need to pay the toll, which other countries would then be willing to one-sided pay for access to the strait?
> What can Iran do if other countries consider Iranian ship as free for the taking as retaliation for Iran attacking ships in the strait of hormuz?
This is exactly what Trump tried. The US was boarding Iranian ships thousands of kilometers away. In the end the US still backed down and agreed to an Iranian toll in the MoU.
Iranian ships have been getting boarded for extremely flimsy reasons for over ten years now. That forced them to adapt to it in such a way that they are now far more resilient to it than the rest of the world is.
There might be. But, from the US point of view, the tolls are not a strategic problem. A conspiracy theorist might even argue that tolls in the Strait of Hormuz make the US oil exports more competitive, and therefore more profitable. The strategic problem for the US (and the rest of the world, Israel obviously included) is for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. One might say that the Memorandum of Understanding is quite vague about that. But the natural conclusion from last Summer and from the last few months is that the US will not hesitate to bomb Iran if it tries to resume its pursuit of the bomb. This does not need to be codified in any agreement, the threat is there implicitly. The MoU is more focused on the carrots than the stick, but the stick is there, in the background, and Iran knows it.
I think the president wants this all to go away. None of this is making him look good, and he hates it. If the bombing starts again, the straight will be closed again. He's gonna leave the whole problem for the next president.
The US could make it clear that if earth moving equipment is spotted within half a mile of the Isfahan, Fordow or Natanz previously bombed facilities, they will be bombed again [1].
I sincerely the next president has the guts to wipe his hands of it and get on about the business of building infrastructure within the United States badly needed infrastructure take a page out of China, actually rebuild from within, actually do something useful in Central and South America, rebuild some Goodwill with Canada and Mexico actually try to solve some problems.
Revisit Oak Ridge, Tennessee why are the Chinese dusting off old technology from America and running with it?
> There might be. But, from the US point of view, the tolls are not a strategic problem
It's a problem pretty much only for the US. The US has been humiliated, embarrassed, and made incredibly weak by showing it can neither protect its allies or its core interests, and that it can not project power despite spending massive amounts of money using its fancy weapons that are supposed to be the best and most expensive in the world.
Further, its shown the world that letting the US keep a strategic base in your country is actually a huge problem for the country, and not a benefit at all.
The US had global alliances that made it very strong, its in the process of destroying all that and isolating itself in order to become weaker and poorer.
Nobody else around the world is hurt much by tariffs on the Strait. Just the US due to its massive own-goal by wasting military power on an undefined goal, with vague aspirations it could never achieve with the resources devoted to it, without convincing the US people that ant war was necessary. It put Iranian leadership on death ground without any alternative except to use all their weapons, seemingly completely unaware of decades of US wargaming about the Strait.
It's hard to overstate how much of a disaster this is for the US on every possible angle.