> I'm not sure why you think that's strange. There was a status quo: Iran lets ships through the Strait of Hormuz. It works well enough. Then the US attacked, and that status quo is gone. If the US ends this war without re-establishing the status quo, then the world will be worse for everyone, and other nations bordering critical shipping lanes will be encouraged to follow suit.

There was no status quo, there's just people looking (now, after the fact) for an obvious party to blame for the bucket flowing over. Status quo is just a war that's on pause rather than resolved.

The Iran war is a case of "the drop that overflowed the bucket". There was "peace" because Iran believed it could not win, while Iran's army was strengthening and becoming more extreme constantly. The water level in the bucket was rising, in other words, because of what Iran did. Now I can agree that Trump added a big fucking drop into that bucket (unless he wins, in which case he dropped the water level by A LOT. So to some small extent the jury's still out)

If you look at Iran's economy (which is all that matters), even before the war, the only option for Iran is a big external cash injection, and they are in total desperation since at least April 2025. That's what the IRGC is fighting for. That's the only way to end this war (because without that cash injection the Iranian population will keep attacking the IRGC. They have no choice but to continue attacking).

Oh, and oil is on it's way out, so this will not be the last war in the middle east. China refused the very obvious and cheap fix to their oil problems Putin was offering. They don't think they will still need oil soon.

And yes, people are desperate to look moral, and specifically to make doing nothing look moral. So we all blame the US and Trump. Great, and I don't like Trump either, but that's the sum total of the depth of that argument.