Comment by fatbird | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fatbird | Hacker News Reader

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$2m is the current toll that Iran has already successfully charged any ships it allows. It amounts to an extra $1/barrel, so it's a trivial tax in comparison to what the supply shock is causing in fluctuations. China has already paid, and will happily pay going forward if it stabilizes the supply chain.

Expect it to go higher as negotiations cement Iran's highway robbery. Which, yes, it is highway robbery, but it's robbery no one is able to stop without invading and occupying Iran to execute proper regime change... which no one, least of all the US, is stepping up to do.

The U.S. has lost all negotiating leverage. It's been demonstrated that they're unable to militarily impose their will on Iran, and they're far more sensitive to economic disruption than Iranians are--who are, as I type this, forming human shield rings around vital bridges and facilities, ready to die if the U.S. bombs them. Negotiations are, at this point, about the U.S. coming away with some face-saving outcomes.

They're happily paying it because it is a wartime toll.

Consider also the renewed impetus for pipelines on the Arabian peninsula to bypass the strait.

Consider that China has now recognized this as a point of weakness and will be finding ways to reduce or eliminate their exposure.

There is only one permanent solution to blackmail. Shelling out the extortion money is only a temporary one. Blockading international waters is super illegal.

So is declaring that you won't abide by the Geneva Conventions, targeting civilian infrastructure and double tapping a girls' school, but here we are at the logical conclusion of the dumbest war in centuries.

Willing or not, the Hormuz toll will be paid for many years to come.

Thanks, Donald. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Dues

> Consider that China has now recognized this as a point of weakness and will be finding ways to reduce or eliminate their exposure.

China has always seen its need to import oil as a weakness and has been working on solutions to that, solutions it is now very happy to export to other countries that now recognize the threat as well. This war is a huge boon to China which probably helped it avert a recession that was otherwise going to happen this year or next.

The only real shocker is that the USA (well, the MAGA crowd) refuse to see this as a weakness. We have a way to literally make the Middle East irrelevant, and yet we’ve decided to pull back on our anemic (in comparison to China) efforts in moving in that direction.

China has understood their dependency on seaborne oil for years and been actively working to mitigate it with EVs etc. Their electricity mix is coal, renewables and nuclear with not a lot of natural gas.

International law doesn't really exist and if it did, the US and particularly Israel have committed far worse violations (including the most taboo one of all, genocide). Redrawing some borders on a nautical chart by force is minor in comparison

There are already pipelines in the Arabian Peninsula. None of those help - on the contrary, they are more vulnerable than tankers. The Houthis have already targeted the Saudi pipelines in the past.

The only possible solution would be underground pipelines but a.) sunk costs into existing pipelines, b.) capex needed is much higher, c.) you can't transport all of the oil and gas, or even a significant fraction of it through standard sized pipelines.

Saudi Arabia will invest into a port on the Jeddah side, that's for certain.

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