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Comment by firefoxd | Hacker News Reader

Remember, we didn't know how to pronounce hormuz until bombs started falling on people's head. The bombs and those who dropped them caused the problem. This isn't an energy issue.

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I cannot stress enough how historically ignorant of a perspective this is. I don't know how you meant this, but Hormuz has been one of the most critical geopolitical choke points since 1979, and Iran has spent 45 years preparing to use it for leverage in exactly this situation. None of these facts should be a surprise to leaders of nations.

Well apparently over 95% of that 45 years of preparing has been obliterated, their currency is in free fall, 2M people have become unemployed over there in the last few months, and a handful of idiots are playing a game of chicken with global implications.

What a mess.

I mean, their planning has been very effective. It's a decentralized strategy that plays to their strengths; it doesn't take a lot to hold the strait closed, and they can pressure everyone in the region very easily by attacking infrastructure (oil, but also desalinization plants).

Their planning is so good it's turned this into the largest strategic embarrassment in the last... 80 years?

Conversely, Tehran is losing almost half a billion dollars a day. Nobody wins this stupid thing.

Their military is at something like 66% the missile/drone capacity it was at when the war started, and the US is what? Out of patriots?

They also now know they will beat the US in an all out conflict, which was unthinkable before this war started.

The main loss seems to be that with the Iranian / US supply lines into Ukraine slowing down, Ukraine has been able to build a domestic military drone complex that’s arguably more advanced than Iran’s.

> their currency is in free fall, 2M people have become unemployed over there in the last few months, and a handful of idiots are playing a game of chicken with global implications

U.S. PPI is in the double digits as is MoM CPI. And while Republicans are seeing losses in polling, the IRGC is consolidating power. Both Iran and America are bleeding. But it seems clear that it’s in the IRGC’s interest to draw this one out for goodies. That’s why Tehran escalating while Trump desperately tries and fails to run home.

> This isn't an energy issue.

Renewables don't have the same level of external dependence on a constant flow of instantaneously used fuel. So while I do agree with you, it is an energy issue regardless of your politics.

Hormuz was in the news quite a bit in the past decade, if you followed the region at least a bit. Anyway electric cars will have some boom now.

It's dropping that one last straw on the camel's back which caused the problem. This isn't an overburdened camel issue.

You must be young. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanker_war

> we didn't know how to pronounce hormuz until bombs started falling

I mean that might be true for you, but its been on the radar over here for a number of years. (it was also a key risk with Iran identified by a number of key intelligence think tanks. especially around the time of the anti-nuclear treaty negotiations)

But to your point, youre right its not an energy issue, its an energy and materials issue. There are lots of pre-cursor chemicals and products that come out of that region that the modern world needs to function.

The more pressing issue is the fertiliser price spike: https://ycharts.com/indicators/fertilizers_index_world_bank which has yet to fully mateirlaise.

You'll note that spike corolate with lots of civil unrest

I’ve seen this “we didn’t know how to pronounce Hormuz” line being repeated across the internet the last few days. Is it perhaps a new right aligned talking point meant to backtrack some of the “Trump is so incompetent” lines the left has been throwing out by making it seemn like EVERYONE was surprised by the events of the war?

It would be neat if there was some tracking of these kinds of political catch phrases sources and timelines, maybe that exists already.

Well, the Trump-Netanyahu axis turned it from "We're going to have an inhospitable planet within the next century" problem to a "We need an affordable alternative source of energy right now" problem...

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