Depraved, Desperate, Deluded and Dangerous - Trump Thread #160

[Spandauer]

More of the same. 🤬

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5510944-the-king-of-crazytown-cant-control-the-chaos-trump-thread-159

I thought I was.

E2A: But then I was fed with the history of Vietnam in my programming. 😎

Well, HAMAS are not defeated yet. They don't use drones. Same with Hezbollah.

Then there is Ukraine. Drones there both sides. There is no good anti drone tech in use.

That graphic was taken from Trump's 2-min briefing on widening the SoH after the US takes it.

You're point being?

The Iranians need one drone or one mine to hit a ship. That is all it will take to stop stuff moving down it again. The US can have as many large boats as escorts as it likes. It will make no difference if they are still being fired at.

Supertankers are very slow to turn.
THey cannot weave their way between obstacles or avoid a mined area.
Just narrowing the channel will render it impassable.

We're going in a circle about US opening the SoH.

Issues are How? (any achieveable/realistic options)
Swiftly followed by Why? Who will use it.
Would you risk eg a $142M cargo + crew lives on US safety guarantees? They've lied about casualties and hardware before. If UK minesweepers are brought in, will UK guarantee the waters are safe ie mine free. Or will UK just be a US proxy.

There are no answers till there are answers.

[Shocked that Friday's WTI was $71.09]

Sorry. Trolling US ideas on widening SoH under them.

Plus it doesn't have a uniform depth throughout.

It appears that Saudi have re opened their pipeline to the Red Sea
The UAE's one to Oman is up and running.
Qatar's gas is still an issue, but gas ships are smaller

The normal 2 lanes are 2 miles wide from what I see. One on the Iran side, one on the Oman side. Iran has put a map out with new lanes, both on the Iran side. A big danger area marked out on the Oman side.

Any you believe them? Presumably they need to go through as well. US can block them in

US can block who in ?

I am not trying to find problem here. But there is a big one. Ammo. UK type 45 destroyer in among the best air defence ships in the world. It's anti air missiles are supper accurate. But it only has 16 of them. And it has one (maybe 2 ) CIWS guns. They just need to fire more than 16 missiles and the destroyer is done. Needs to go replenish. And there are not enough new missiles to replenish it with. US has same problem. Everyone does.

The FT article upthread noted that an alternative to the SoH is not a technical problem. Just a political one that needs all the ME states/countries😀 to work together.

If only there was a precedent or example for how a load of countries might engage together to made trade easier for each other and thus themselves richer,.

If only.

It makes not a fucking jot if we believe them or not.

It matters a lot to the captain of any vessel looking to use the straits.

Besides, I thought you were busy researching how North Vietnam won a war after being bombed back to the stone age. If your library pass doesn't got back that far, look how the Taliban defeated the US and it's allies.

I could also throw North Korea in as well. But that's just being goady

No need to be rude or offensive.

I'm genuinely confused as to why the US would struggle to control the Strait given their dominance.

I was thinking you were being sarcastic.

Because they don’t have dominance in this type of warfare. There is a reason why nobody has tried it before and why everybody has backed off and left the US alone. And that was before drones became a thing and warfare changed completely.

Dominance is relative.

The US could sail it's navy through no issue. A wee bit of damage perhaps. Unlikely Iran could sink any or render any non-operational. But tankers they can damage, set ablaze etc. And maybe sink.

A bit like a transit van in a tank battle.

We will be paying off much of our mortgage when our fixed rate tragically comes to an end later this year - fortunately with a windfall that I had hoped to use on something more fun.

We are considering getting a lodger later this year.

Can someone explain to me the strategy of blockading a Strait that’s already blocked? I know it’s to stop other countries paying a toll, but they could be blockading this thing for years? Genuinely confused, happy to have it explained to me.

Presumably it's a cover for blockading Iran who rely heavily on the Strait.

The world relies on the strait.

Once blocked its very hard to unblock.

Working mid channel to remove an obstacle means being in constant range of a tooled up country.

The US has big guns and boats, but that will not work if the other side is happy to block the strait

So is Trump going to blackmail the world ..genuine question.