Iran will charge Hormuz fees in Bitcoin (not confirmed yet).
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Well, it didn’t take long to find out:
Iran has halted the passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz over Israel’s strikes in Lebanon, the Fars news agency reports.
Fars reports that two oil tankers were allowed to pass through the strait this morning after the ceasefire between Iran and the US took effect.
“Simultaneous with Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, the passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz has been stopped,” the agency reports.
A fork in the road for the US. I expected Israel to push and Iran to push back. The big question is whether the US leans on Israel to stop and keep the ceasefire on track, or whether they escalate and kill the ceasefire before it hardly had a chance to start.
Including Lebanon into the ceasefire was a masterstroke by Iran and we’ll see if it is successful in driving a wedge between US and Israel.
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Surprise! Israel sabotages a ceasefire agreement it said it doesn’t like!
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One thing I haven’t read much about is the availability of big drones, rockets, missiles and also ammunition to counter the flying threats. With peacetime stockpiles, a lasting exchange of explosive flying objects should deplete capabilities pretty fast. I could imagine that this is one of the underlying rationales for a ceasefire for the participants with expensive weaponery (Israel, USA, Middle East). With their assymmetric threat of relatively cheap drones, Iran could probably bring the adversaries’ stockplies down even more. Other thoughts?
This is why time was on Iran’s side: they were going to win the war of attrition. Both Israel, US and GCC were going to run out of interceptors before Iran ran out of launch capability.
We saw evidence of rationing of interceptors: early on, several interceptors were sent against a single incoming missile, later one these were rationed to a lower ratio. Although, hard to tell with detail due to censorship in Israel, this appeared to have an impact on the number of attacks getting through.
For me, the biggest risk of nuclear use would be if/when Israel runs out of interceptors and Iran attacks stream through uncontested: I expected that there would be some game theoretical point where Iran would restrain themselves not to provoke nuclear retaliation, but this would be a nervous time.
US also should be concerned about stock of attacking weapons. Both in the short term (some ships had to be sent to Diego Garcia to reload after all their vertical launchers were used up) and in the longer term (replenishment rates might leave them in a bind if they had a conflict with China over Taiwan). There were reports that in the attacks so far they have burned through 10 years of Tomahawk production. They want to increase production rate, but this is not so quick to do and may also run into some delays as China blocks critical minerals.
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I still don’t understand why Israel is allowed to have nuclear weapons in first place.
This question has no answer that doesn’t veer too far into politics in my opinion, but I’ll give a broad answer which you know already: nuclear weapons are strategic weapons to shield against existential threats and maintain sovereignty through Mutually Assured Destruction (“you may destroy us, but we’ll make your capital into a large, radioactive car park”).
Based on the answer, I believe Europe needs to have them too across the board 
Further off topic! I’d love a federalised EU, with European defence forces etc.
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Yeah… esp with von der Layen’s perfect track record at Bundeswehr 
… no really off-topic.
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It looks like Vance is holding the line:
“Ceasefires are always messy,” Vance said in response to the alleged drone incursion into Iran’s airspace. The vice president said the U.S. position is that Iran cannot enrich uranium. The ceasefire extending to Lebanon was never part of the agreement, he said.
“If Iran wants to let this negotiation fall apart in a conflict where they were getting hammered over Lebanon, which has nothing to do with them and which the United States never once said was part of the ceasefire, that’s ultimately their choice,” Vance said.
Because they didn’t ask for permission…
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Nobody is allowed to have them till you secrety do have them. Then the rules don‘t apply to you anymore.
So for example if NL announced that they are pursuing Nuclear weapons, they will be bombed ?
Or basically it depends on who US thinks is the right country to have such weapons?
I am just wondering if there is some sort of a law that stops anyone or it’s mainly the other Nuclear nations using their nuclear power to stop others
Sweden is one of several countries (like Switzerland and Japan) that had the capability and came VERY close to acquiring nukes — but ultimately chose not to build nuclear weapons. E.g. due to security guarantees covering them. Yet another reason why holding on to NATO is something I hope for. Now, with regard to the Netherlands… nukes are based there (in US hands) and the country has also done a ‘good’ job of creating the Pakistani nuclear capability (look up Abdul Qadeer Khan). If I am correct, countries can freely join / exit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
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The law would be the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, to which Israel isn’t a signatory (along with India, Pakistan, South Sudan and North Korea, who has been a party to it but withdrew in 2003).
It has control mechanisms for the non-nuclear-weapon State Parties to it but no enforcement mechanism for non signatories (as far as I can tell, I haven’t dived deep in it).
Admittedly, the control mechanism for non signatories would be international pressure through sanctions (and/or bombing).
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Looks like no deal in Pakistan. So not sure what happens next
What I think can NOT happen is for US to continue to bomb them, knowing the strait will remain closed. Maybe US will just drop the topic or say that other countries must pick it up from here if they want denuclearization etc. Or maybe somehow they will be deflating the topic by attacking others. Huge blow for Trump but he has no more chips to play.
This made me chuckle
