Is it a calculated strategy to Fergie the refs? Surely he doesn’t have the clout to pull it off.
OTOH if the straits are forced open (if that's plausibly possible?), does Iran have other options to prolong the war (at more than a lowish intensity)? Some ppl seem to be worried about big attacks on Saudi oil infra. Realistic or not (too risky an escalation, doesn't/won't have the missiles ...)?
If the US and Iran remain at horns locked and the strait remains closed, are the UK, Norway or whoever likely to end up being dragged into sending their minesweepers to try to help open it? I notice that even Ed Davey didn't rule out supporting it! bsky.app/profile/edda...
But surely he at least won’t be reckless enough to telegraph his intentions to the Iranians well in advance, right?
How sure are you about that? It seems likely (I’m not an expert) that the lesson the regime will see in the Iran-Iraq war is “we won, and we stayed in power” and while most Iranians likely feel otherwise the regime has made clear that it has ways of dealing with that.
The goal must have been to give the (official) bedrooms and main bathroom some physical and noise separation from the ruck of the living area/unregistered office/party zone downstairs, so there’s some reason to it.
That’s what I wonder: is it a ‘hacker house’/startup office which is trying to skate by as a pure residence for legal reasons, or is it a pure residence which is trying to look like a startup office? To be fair, the layout does also make sense if you want your house to be a non-stop party zone.
It does have a significant impact on the diplomacy and foreign relations of most of the countries in the Middle East (if not always all the impact those countries claim it has) which does make it more than merely a local conflict.
I think a long-lived horse and a badger played by Timothy Spall is the way to go.
Is it too cynical to think that maybe “HP is very popular” is precisely the problem, in a way? The promise of multiple years of HP TV may be very hard to actually deliver on, but it seems like a well-calculated way to impress Mr. Market and boost the value of HBO prior to an acquisition.
The Mugabe Effect.
I think the bigger problem for big modern rail investment is that all the setllements relatively near by on the eastern side of the Cascades seem to be relatively small, and I assume not that red-hot economically.
Also, the distances involved only seem particuarly large if you travel through the whole range from North to South, and why would you want a railway to do that? The E-W distances seem (not an expert!) to be fairly normal by the standards of the Swiss Alps or Honshu. www.google.com/maps/place/C...
Right, it's just not a different point when the discussion began with bsky.app/profile/bhea.... By mile and by litre of gasoline, probably not that much of US car travel is epic road trips. And it's perfectly possible to have a special tax reduction on rural (and desert) gasoline. Europe does it!
The usual mixture of kompromat and daddy issues, no doubt.
And it started out as an almost purely internal conflict: ever since Major lost the fight against the Euroskeptics, it paid to be a wrecker.
If Trump gets hold of Kharg it’s easy to see him wanting to hold on to that strategic and PR prize indefinitely, no? In fact I’m not sure how quick President Newsom would or will be to give it back.
Ironically this is also the attitude of (for example) the typical Jane Austen character toward people who have to work for a living.
Unfortunately Trump is probably resorting to the “Putin is looking after his own interests, that’s ruthless and smart, I can’t say I blame him” way of looking at it.
Now I'm not at all sure if that belief is true, but it looks as if a lot of the relevant people in Iran may hold it. And it doesn't seem unreasonable to worry that if you make yourself at all visible internationally then someone could capriciously decide they dislike you & put you on a bombing list.
It looks as if (not an expert) there may be a fairly widespread conviction among Iranians that Israel and maybe also the US have a strategic goal of killing Iranian opposition leaders in addition to or even in preference to the regime? bsky.app/profile/dasv... bsky.app/profile/taal...
Are you familiar with the late-'60s-early-'70s British trend of edgy sitcoms? Till Death Us Do Part featuring Alf Garnett, Are You Being Served with John Inman playing Mr. Humphries? Right. That. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_M...
Get them in the same cell and it’s a remake of both Porridge and (… I *think* I’m allowed to say this? …) Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width.
I do like the image of Mandelson continuing to direct Downing Street comms and strategy from inside HMP Slade.
A reasonable minimum standard here is the Gavin Newson Rule. Would Gavin Newsom contemplate appearing on a podcast with this person? If the answer is ‘absolutely not’ then Mr. Platner shouldn’t either.
Partly related: one obvious play for any mid-level IRGC figure who wants to be the next leader of Iran is to skip over that big porous Iraqi border and spend a few weeks or months in the bosom of a Shia militia (or have been there already) before returning when it's relatively safe, no?
Iraq would presumably be in the game too, no? All those networks of influence from Tehran via Shia militas to the Iraqi government can presumably start operating in the other direction if Tehran is knocked down badly enough.
@alanthefisher.bsky.social, if you haven’t seen it already:
