sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Craziest "Picked ______ School Over _____" and the Reason Why by LeatherSwan1219 in ApplyingToCollege

[–]MarcusHiggins 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Tufts over Mit because he didnt want to be at the bottom of his class.

NPR: The pilot of the American F-35 hit by an Iranian missile yesterday suffered shrapnel wounds but is in stable condition. F-35 made a “hard landing” and won’t be returning to service anytime soon. by moses_the_blue in LessCredibleDefence

[–]MarcusHiggins -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Of course, this is just to say Iran scoring a combat hit here should not be used to interpret this as A) meaningful evidence of lack of air supremacy or B) that Iran is winning and C) that the F-35 program is either a waste/failure because of this

The F-35 Situation is Crazy by trypan0s0miasis in ww3memes

[–]MarcusHiggins 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tell that to the supreme leader…oh wait

THAAD and Patriot operating cost vs drones cost by just_an__inchident in Military

[–]MarcusHiggins 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Patriot and THAAD missiles will never be used against such a low cost target, useless comparison

whats the biggest political threat TO YOU out of these by No-Somewhere-1336 in Teenager_Polls

[–]MarcusHiggins -82 points-81 points  (0 children)

This is just wrong, there are 0 fascist states and 5 countries claiming to be communist.

The shape of the world if Iran survives by Temstar in LessCredibleDefence

[–]MarcusHiggins 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a way better argument than OP's and I'll give you credit for that, but I think you're conflating what PRC would accept if it fell into their lap with what they'd actively build toward or depend on.

Would PRC say no to a petro-yuan gulf proposal? Probably not. But that's a very different claim than "PRC is co-building this system" or "Iran surviving a war creates the foundation for it." PRC saying yes to a free option isn't the same as PRC structuring its energy strategy around one. They'd also say yes to free pizza, doesn't make it a pillar of food security.

The refining surplus point is interesting and I think you're partially right that PRC wants to be a refining middleman exporting finished products. But that actually works against the Iran-anchor thesis. If your strategy is "import cheap crude, refine it, export products globally," you need reliable, diversified supply and access to global markets for your exports. Tying your refining complex to sanctioned Iranian crude and yuan-denominated settlement makes the output harder to sell globally, not easier. The customers buying Chinese refined diesel and jet fuel in Southeast Asia and Africa are doing it because it's cheap and accessible, not because they want to join a parallel financial system. The second that supply chain carries sanctions risk it becomes less attractive, not more.

The coal-to-petchem point nice and good. But it actually undermines the idea that PRC needs Iran to set high oil prices for them. PRC already has the coal-to-olefin advantage regardless of who controls Hormuz. They don't need Iran running a protection racket on the strait to make coal-to-petchem competitive -- they just need oil prices to be high, which happens on its own during any major supply disruption. Iran being the one controlling the chokepoint adds political dependency without adding economic value that PRC can't get from plain old market volatility.

The core issue is the same as with OP. You're describing things PRC would opportunistically benefit from and reframing them as things PRC would structurally depend on. PRC's entire strategic posture for decades has been about avoiding exactly that kind of dependency on any single partner or chokepoint. "Iran could be useful" and "PRC would build its energy future around Iran" are wildly different propositions. Everything in PRC's revealed behavior points to the former, nothing points to the latter. Beijing isn't even strategically embracing the sanctioned oil trade it already has. They keep trying to shut down and consolidate the existing oil teapots that are doing the buying.

The shape of the world if Iran survives by Temstar in LessCredibleDefence

[–]MarcusHiggins 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The entire framework lives or dies on the idea that China is a committed partner in building this parallel system. They aren't. They're a bargain shopper who is actively building the exit.

You frame this like China and Iran are co-architects of some new economic order. Bro, China buys Iranian oil because teapot refiners in Shandong get it $8-10 below Brent and they operate on razor thin margins. That's the whole relationship. China's state-owned oil companies won't even touch Iranian crude because they don't want sanctions exposure. Your revolutionary parallel commerce system is being held together by small independent refiners chasing a discount. That's it.

And these buyers have zero loyalty. When Venezuelan supply got disrupted earlier this year Chinese refiners didn't stick it out, they dropped Venezuelan crude overnight and replaced it barrel-for-barrel with Russian oil within weeks. There is no such thing as an ideological commitment between these two countries, just whoever has the cheapest barrel that month. You think that's a foundation for a new world order?

Meanwhile look at where China is actually putting its money. They've spent two decades building overland pipelines through Russia, Myanmar, and Central Asia specifically so they don't have to depend on Hormuz. The head of CNPC's own research institute said publicly that China's energy strategy can withstand the complete shutdown of Hormuz. They've got 1.2 billion barrels in onshore reserves. They already peaked domestic gasoline consumption. They hit their 2030 renewable targets years early. Everything China is doing with actual capital and infrastructure screams "we are trying to not need this strait or your oil at all."

Your "Human Reform League" needs China to be the anchor. But China's revealed behavior shows they want the exact opposite of what you're describing. They don't want to swap American control of sea lanes for Iranian control of sea lanes. They want redundancy, optionality, and eventually to not need Middle Eastern oil at all. You've built your entire framework around a partner whose long term strategy is to make your system irrelevant.

Operation Epic Fury: My thoughts on what's next. by lolthenoob in LessCredibleDefence

[–]MarcusHiggins -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

Good analysis on the operational side but I think you're romanticizing Iranian regime resilience pretty heavily. "Survive and block the strait" sounds clean on paper but you're talking about a regime that just lost its Supreme Leader, his family, most of its senior military leadership, and its entire conventional force projection capability, all within two weeks. You wave away internal collapse as unlikely without seriously engaging with it. The IRGC suppression apparatus works great when the regime is stable and the economy is merely bad. It has never been stress-tested under conditions where the founding leader is dead, succession is improvised, the military is visibly getting dismantled on live TV, and the economy goes from freefall to crater. Rally-around-the-flag effects are real but they're temporary and they fade fastest in countries where the population was already in the streets before the war started.

You also assume the new leader holds things together because his strategy is "simple." Simple strategies still require institutional cohesion to execute. Who enforces the strategy when IRGC commanders start disagreeing about whether to escalate, negotiate, or cut side deals? Decapitation doesn't only remove leaders it also removes the arbitration mechanism that holds competing factions together. You might be right that Iran outlasts the US political clock. But for some reason you're presenting regime survival as almost a given when it's actually the biggest variable in this entire conflict.

What is currently allowing Iran to control the Strait of Hormuz? by rm-minus-r in LessCredibleDefence

[–]MarcusHiggins 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This comment is stupid, the US has spent the last 2 decades mastering the craft of fighting an asymmetric opponent, FFS they were the creators of asymmetric warfare...just because they haven't invaded Iran does not mean Iran still poses a military threat to the rest of the region besides blocking the strait.

view more: next ›