No. of Recommendations: 13
The other Gulf states are probably also a bit cheesed off that the Chinese are able to get sanctioned oil from the Iranians at a discount rather than buying it from them at full price.
I mean, that's the point of sanctions, right? To punish the sanctioned country? I'm sure they might have preferred to have a little more market demand, but I'm sure they regarded the economic pain inflicted on Iran as somewhat worth it.
The world's energy markets are being remade in real time in ways that favor us. I'm not so sure why this is such a mystery or why that's beneficial to us especially as it relates to China.
Because...the world's energy markets aren't being remade in real time in ways that favor us? You've mentioned this a few times, but I genuinely don't understand the logic. We've always had the ability to just give up on sanctioning regimes if we wanted them to be able to sell oil freely - and doing that doesn't really "remake" oil markets, just eliminates the modest "sanction discount" that purchasers received.
Iran, whom everyone in the region thought was much stronger than it is, was just dismantled in less than a month.
>80% of China's commercial shipping runs through a 2 mile strait that's now going to have the US Navy all over it.
Global energy markets are shifting to the US, and we for sure aren't selling the Chinese a drop of oil for less than market price.
What are you talking about? Iran's outperformed expectations. No one - literally no one - thought Iran could prevail in a conventional military fight with the U.S. It will surprise no one that our air force could beat their air force, and similarly the navies. The big surprise of the war was how effectively and easily Iran was able to shut down the strait, and how helpless the U.S. was in the fact of it.
As for Malacca, that's not really an outcome of this foolish military "excursion." It's certainly good for the U.S., of course - though it's helpful to remember that Indonesia is still balancing the U.S. and China here. It's not going to "have the US Navy all over it" - the MDC doesn't massively shift U.S. naval presence in the region. It's still significant for our ability to monitor that area - we're not getting basis, but we're getting the ability to overfly and surveil that we didn't have before.
And global energy markets aren't "shifting to the US." There's a short-term blockage of the strait, which means that in the short term all of the non-strait oil supplies will see an increase in customers trying to access them. But because the Administration keeps insisting that the war will end soon, you have not seen a significant increase in U.S. drilling activity. New oil sources take months to bring online, and need many more months/years of production to be worth the initial investment. Since U.S. oil output isn't materially shifting as a result of the excursion, global energy markets aren't materially shifting either.
And Xi's seen some of his best equipment slapped aside by the US and Israel. Yeah, everyone should be this lucky.
Isn't that more true of us than Xi? We weren't able to prevent Iran from hitting the other states in the Gulf, despite having some of our best equipment in the region - or to keep them from landing hits on some of our bases, which will require considerable funds to repair. We're the major arms supplier to the Gulf, and we are the ones who set up those defenses. And for the hits on the U.S. bases, that's us using our own military equipment to defend our own facilities. Meanwhile, as noted above, Iran was largely isolated from international military markets through years of sanctions. Meanwhile, China didn't send Iran their "best equipment" - they've mostly refrained from direct military transfers for decades. Instead, Iran's benefitted from parts and dual-use materials transfers from China, as well as financial and infrastructure assistance - but most of their stuff is home-built.
Yeah, I'd say Xi is feeling pretty lucky about how this is all turning out. The U.S. unable to meet their strategic goals, openly shown to be incapable of opening the strait of Hormuz against a much smaller power, and having Iran be able to penetrate their anti-missile defenses sufficient to hit multiple U.S. bases with home-built technology?
