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Comment by mvkel | Hacker News Reader

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The war has been costing the US in the region of 30B per day by some estimates. Fees per ship are around $1m . It wouldn't make any sense.

not a big fan of this theory, but as we've seen in other instances, money from the public coffer is 'free', so even at a substantial loss, if the result ends up in the right private account, its still a net win for someone. and net a loss for the public even larger than "I'm suing the government for $50B, oh wait, that's me, I guess I'll just have to pay myself"

There are much easier ways to convert the US military budget into someone's personal wealth.

Unlikely. Iran is winning this war, or hadn’t you noticed? No need to pay America off when they’re desperate for a deal.

To define victory, you'd need to know their political objectives, which neither side has declared or otherwise made clear. On the one hand, the USA was unable to completely restrain Iran's ability to wreak local havoc, but on the other, Iran had many of its assets damaged, and now seems completely unable to prevent foreign actors from using its airspace almost at-will. It seems like the situation has shifted, and the result is inconclusive.

For the Iranian regime, to survive is to win.

Nuclear programme can only be stopped with boots on the ground.

America’s military is outdated compared to modern asymmetric warfare.

Iran may gain income from the strait.

It can now pursue a bomb knowing it will be hard to impossible for America to stop it.

Impossible without boots...

Why would Iran give the US fees?

Behind the scenes, they may have already conceded to paying Trump off just like the other gulf states.

I like Trump, but this could very well be true. He's getting rich off of something.

plausible, esp in light of all the things.

American exceptionalism is crazy. We do not always come out on top. Sometimes – quite frequently actually – we are dumb as shit, overplay our hand, and create more problems for ourselves than we solve. 4D chess is a myth.

“ ABC News’s Jonathan Karl asked Trump if he approved of Iran’s plan to charge vessels a fee for passing through the strait — a key channel through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil is transported. “We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture,” the president told Karl, who shared Trump’s response on social platform X. “It’s a way of securing it — also securing it from lots of other people. It’s a beautiful thing.””

I bet Trump will justify it as compensation for US “security” guarantees to Gulf States.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/5821343-trump-us-ir...

Is this that 4d chess bullshit y’all keep embarrassing yourselves with? There’s no plan.

This is like Legal 101. It's not that complicated.

Another possibility is that what's left of the regime has been given a certain time to flee and thus are plotting their exit and trying to pocket every last cent of wealth to take with them before they go into exile.

Are you talking about the US or Iran here?

You might be talking about Israel too.

I truly cannot say.

Obviously, I refer to Iran yet any BTC transactions can be traced which suggests that they'll convert to some other crypto, more secure coin then take whatever wealth they have and go to a secure, extradition-free country.

That's not the surprising thing, though. The interesting thing here is that my comments are slowly being erased, censored, hidden from view. Seems that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. § 230) really needs to be re-examined since its main function is to protect online forums from liability for third-party posts and allows voluntary content moderation rules. Makes me want to run for office just to call attention to and fix this issue.

Israel for last, perhaps? One can dream.

Is this Breitbart comments what's going on here?

No, the US leadership is just really that inept to not have anticipated this extremely likely outcome in Iran closing the strait. Now watch em celebrate this great victory in media spin.

Also of course if you want to profit, you can always just insider trade! A favorite of the administration. Someone bet a cool billion just yesterday that oil prices would go down. And would you believe it.

Iran and the CIA are perfectly capable of moving physical or digital dollars if they wanted, there is no need for bitcoin. In fact it's much more likely for bitcoin payments to Trump to be detected than digital dollars.

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