right, perception is everything.Politics aside..
Persia’s puppet masters are left relying on sabotage & SM guerrilla streaming. Mockery really. Which is nothing a sustained bombing campaign, blockade and power grid blackouts won’t overcome. Sad as a broken kite but we do still want to win this thing, right?

Fangs, while I don’t agree with all of your positions, you’re a generally reasonable and intelligent person. Explain this one to me. I understand that China gets far more oil from gulf states than just about anyone else. What I don’t understand is how turning off X amount of global supply hurts them more than us. The fact that it’s a global market has been discussed ad nauseam. Price and supply issues hit us both. Xi has the dictator’s luxury of being able to ignore public opinion (at least for a while), while the American public will very quickly tire of energy shortages, even if there were a strategic benefit to the country. I just don’t see how this play works out in our favor.

You’re correct Opie btw. Bay of pigs, Saigon, Baghdad, Kabul. Occupation, proxy regime change, bankrolling coup de’tats are losers. On strength of commitment to time, Tehran will sign an accord. To save themselves if nothing else.

I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone “rooting” for Iran on APC. In a 400 million person country with enough cameras you could find a few people protesting against free chocolate ice cream if that’s the narrative you’d like to create.

My friends are over there. I’m irritated they got yanked from their families and great air line jobs by people who specifically said they wouldn’t do this exact thing, and have clearly failed to articulate how to solve obvious, intractable strategic issues which everyone else clearly saw coming.

Very much this. 350 million people in a country with effectively two parties means you are going to have nutjobs in both. If you only judge a group of people by the most extreme elements in that group, it makes it really easy come to the conclusion that the whole group has lost its mind. Our splintered and partisan media fails us spectacularly here. People now routinely make strawman arguments based on what they imagine their critics to be rather than actually listening to and processing said criticism. The result is that we are all arguing with the monsters we imagine in our minds’ eye rather than actually hearing one another. Great for a quick serotonin release, less great for actually moving our country forward.

Oil is a commodity, so pricing is market driven. That says nothing about the logistics of getting it, though. The US produces most of the oil it consumes and only 4% is from the middle east. Contrast that to 50% by China. LNG imports are almost 0 in the US. 30% of China's go through the SOH.

Recall Animal House where Flounder cries to Otter and Boon about his pop’s trashed caddy? What did they say, “you f’ed up, you trusted us.”

so this is my point. We needed to go all in or not at all. This half measure has objectively done a few things
1. cost taxpayers billions
2. Not moved the ball one yard on uranium (subjectively one could say it has only increased the drive to obtain a nuclear shield against US aggression)
3. Educated our very real enemy in a strategy of closing the straight with incredibly cheap military hardware
4. angered our allies and the world at large by causing an economic crisis this further eroding soft power

the list continues, so yes, as to your comment. The only real solution was all in or diplomacy. One could state this as objectively true as evidenced by the current stalemate. Dont kid yourselves, we are currently in a stalemate and i dont see a way out of this other than to back down or establish a full on defense in depth of the entire iranian coastline.

for myself i was in the Air Force from 03-14. Ive seen the absolute dumpster fire of combat ops in the middle east. Enough is enough

With PRC of all nations, it's a little more complicated than just the global commodity price.

By purchasing oil directly from IR, presumably in violation of sanctions, they actually have a supply that is somewhat independent from both the global commodity price and also potentially from sanctions that might be levied against PRC in the event that *they* do something crazy.

I've stated ad nauseam that I don't know what the motive(s) were for this war, but there are a few objective fringe benefits, if not outright motives. With regard to PRC...

1. Shows US is willing to engage (at least some of their plans for ROC/SCS likely rely on US inaction).
2. Demonstrates that we can still execute large scale shock-and-awe in the maritime/air domains.
3. Reminds them that we can (and will) interfere with their interests in other parts of the world... they can't rely on a Taiwan situation being confined to the first island chain.

^^^^^^^ Prolly wasting your breath ^^^^^^^:D

In retrospect 4. Also put NATO on notice