Imo the point of the ceasefire was only to give Trump an off ramp from his promised war crimes. The involved parties basically had to cater to Trump's delusional state of mind to prevent a collapse of the world economy. It has worked for now in the sense that people are talking about who is breaking the ceasefire instead of whether there will be any oil infrastructure left in the Gulf.

In general, a lot of countries still seem to be trying to find ways to placate Trump in the hope that the problem will eventually fix itself.

These bombings in Lebanon where probably done with weapons initially meant for Iran. If Isreal is allowed to continue in Lebanon but not Iran it now has a lot more assets available to do so.

What is going on!? I went to bed thinking the Gulf region would be in flames (more than it has been) when I woke up.

We'll see what comes of it, but I'll gladly celebrate any sort of respite for the people of Iran and hopefully Lebanon.

Both sides can make of this incident what they will. But it's a win for Iran: they got the enemy to scramble a lot of resources and be distracted from other targets. It seems likely that Iran could shoot down more of these planes in the future or the US comes to the conclusion they have to be more careful with their air assets. A minor tactical loss that might turn into a strategic win.

The details don't matter because neither side actually wants peace right now. At the beginning of the SMO you saw the same thing: every country that wanted to profile themselves internationally seemed to be promoting their own peace talk initiatives.

Everybody knows neither side of the conflict can force the other to give in to their demands right now. Just like with Ukraine, everybody will keep talking about being open to 'serious' peace negotiations.

The wealth and power of the royal families in the Gulf exist because of their relationship with the US. They have every incentive to stick with the US. Giving in to Iranian demands would mean the end of the patronage networks, within and without, that allows these royal families to maintain control.

I'd imagine they could do a lot of that with drones now. Given that the straight is narrow, I'm sure they could find a way to launch and control these drones from land. That doesn't really solve the problem of getting ships through the strait. But the US probably doesn't need to endanger a whole fleet to attempt to destroy Iranian mines.

That's not doomerism, it's an obvious fact.

But to look on the bright side, these Arab states lost overnight much of what they've been trying to build. Their oil and gas production can't just be restarted at the same scale into the near future. Their plans for diversification and foreign investments have been set back. They're stuck with a security guarantor that has only made them a target of Iranian weaponry. I just can't imagine how all this wouldn't result in political crisis on the national level as well.

Agreed that this wouldn't have happened if Iran got nukes before hand. But at this point of open conflict Iran does posses the capabilities to hit sensitive targets that would still amount to a form of mutually assured destruction.

Nukes serve to prevent this type of open conflict. But now that it's here, building nukes is probably not worth it until there is a ceasefire.

It's so pathetic. How could anyone have respect for them? This war is going to further put the screws on the EU economy. Ukraine is going to have an even harder time getting some of the weapons they need most. Russia is going to benefit from high oil prices and in doing so increase their leverage over Europe. Apart from all the countries directly getting bombarded, the EU stands to lose the most. Yet these piggies will cheer on the US in the hope that this will mean Trump forgets about Greenland and destabilizing the EU. How could their mealy-mouthed attitude breed anything but utter contempt?

If Trump doesn't forget about Greenland it is only a matter of time before some EU countries start pressuring Denmark behind the scenes to make concessions.

I agree, I was just trying to parody the lib position on Venezuela.