2 hours ago, uhhello said:

Looks like the first ship has already ignored the blockade. Asian-American type.

CENTCOM is saying different from ship trackers

6 hours ago, disgruntledemployee said:

Chinese Seamen?

Getting through the strait IS a short trip...

Edited yesterday at 12:26 AM1 day by FourFans

23 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Exactly this. Haven't we already done this with a few ships from the ghost fleet?

I have zero SA on maritime law, so IDK if a ghost ship is legally treated the same as a chinese flagged oil tanker, or an Iranian flagged tanker etc.

I'm more curious how we'd handle a tanker with oil purchased by China attempting to pass through the strait. We lifted sanctions for a month, chances are some countries bought oil that hasn't left port yet. If a tanker has legally purchased Chinese oil, do we have good options for dealing with that?

9 hours ago, 17D_guy said:

Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please. -

I'm shocked you didn't point out how I assumed the gender of the aforementioned chinamen.

36 minutes ago, Boomer6 said:

I'm shocked you didn't point out how I assumed the gender of the aforementioned chinamen.

Edited yesterday at 02:20 AM1 day by 17D_guy
posting from phone and fracked it up

38 minutes ago, Boomer6 said:

I have zero SA on maritime law, so IDK if a ghost ship is legally treated the same as a chinese flagged oil tanker, or an Iranian flagged tanker etc.

I'm more curious how we'd handle a tanker with oil purchased by China attempting to pass through the strait. We lifted sanctions for a month, chances are some countries bought oil that hasn't left port yet. If a tanker has legally purchased Chinese oil, do we have good options for dealing with that?

I'm sure the administration thought this through and has a plan...

Edited yesterday at 02:19 AM1 day by 17D_guy

48 minutes ago, 17D_guy said:

I'm sure the administration thought this through and has a plan...

Don’t be so negative dog we uno reversed carded their blockade with our own even more dope blockade. It’s a genius move that gives us nothing but leverage and definitely isn’t gonna have a bunch of unintended consequences.

I’m tired of people making this whole thing about Trump and his administration. If it feels incoherent and made up as we go that’s just because you’re too blinded by your libtard-ness to see the genius bigger picture

19 hours ago, Pooter said:

Wrong. We live with something called the global economy

Did someone say on here that oil isn’t a global commodity?

To the rest of your rant:

Why is the US blockading Iran to ramp up economic pressure such an insane concept to you? I’d love to here a critically thought out argument against foreign policy 101, along with how you would have dealt with Iran blocking the strait and attempting to play the one card they had left to influence war outcomes in their favor.

If you haven't seen them already, the Iranian Lego propaganda films are entertaining and shocking all at the same time!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZmIOg3BibU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G9DNx7xIIc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfBx6GxPw_k&list=RDgfBx6GxPw_k&start_radio=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bJO-P0V2V0

Why would we watch Iranian propaganda? One of you's teenagers are gonna see it on your phone and tictoc that shit. Next thing, all the Zs will be crying for poor ol Persia.

As for those asking about a strategy, set goals, and a plan, this has a feel like the AFG pullout. Just do it live. Well, sorta. It went from kill the boss, bomb a bunch, that'll do it, to, oh shit, they biting back, now what? Mean tweet em to death! Crazy bastards.

2 hours ago, brabus said:

Did someone say on here that oil isn’t a global commodity?

lol it was pretty heavily implied when not a single person acknowledged there might be downsides to choking off a major global energy supply route.

“Why is the US blockading Iran to ramp up economic pressure such an insane concept to you? I’d love to here a critically thought out argument against foreign policy 101, along with how you would have dealt with Iran blocking the strait and attempting to play the one card they had left to influence war outcomes in their favor.”

Well that’s the thing about starting a stupid war of choice predicated on lies with no strategic plan.. you might end up painting yourself into a corner with only bad options. Which is where we currently find ourselves.

Yes I agree that blockading the straight is the best bad option we have right now. The point is that we never had to be in this situation in the first place. My comment is simply pushback against the trump sycophants in here pretending it’s some genius strategic move with no downsides.

Edit: Also the onus also isn’t on me to come up with a better plan. I wasn’t elected president, didn’t start this war, and have been against it the whole time.

Edited yesterday at 05:29 PM1 day by Pooter

10 minutes ago, Pooter said:

Well that’s the thing about starting a stupid war of choice predicated on lies with no strategic plan.. you might end up painting yourself into a corner with only bad options. Which is where we currently find ourselves.

Yes I agree that blockading the straight is the best bad option we have right now. The point is that we never had to be in this situation in the first place. My comment is simply pushback against the trump sycophants in here pretending it’s some genius strategic move with no downsides.

Are you equally critical of the Biden and Obama administrations that put us in this shitty situation?!?

Ya'll keep forgetting how we got there, and while Trump ain't no General George C. Marshall he really didn't have a lot of other options, did he?

I typically oversimplify things, but the truth is the US put its head in the sand when it came to Iran for four decades; and it was only going to get worse if nothing was done about it.

Sure, it would make more sense to have a well-thought out plan; and I sure the big brains at CENTCOM had a concept of operations gathering dust on the shelf for years; but in the immortal words of Sheriff Bud Boomer, "There's a time to think, and there's a time to act; and this gentlemen is no time to think!"

RIP, John Candy!

strategic objectives were surely achieved in the last few days 😂

3 hours ago, M2 said:

Are you equally critical of the Biden and Obama administrations that put us in this shitty situation?!?

Woah holy cow Obama and Biden launched a war of choice against Iran with no plan based on pressure from Israel, blatantly lying about an “imminent nuclear threat” our own intel agencies assessed the Iranians weren’t pursuing? I must’ve missed that part of the last decade..

Oh actually none of that happened and they did address the problem like semi-competent politicians. They negotiated the JCPOA which, while imperfect, provided a baseline for enrichment limits, inspection intervals, and further diplomacy. Trump then ripped it up while promising a way better deal, launched a war, and is now floundering to try to get back to some semblance of the diplomatic solution we literally already had.

6 hours ago, Pooter said:

predicated on lies with no strategic plan..

That’s a very naive and objectively wrong statement. Additionally, I’m not tracking anyone here that said there aren’t any cons to a blockade. Thus, everything you said following said statements is invalid. Feel free to make your case starting from a true and accurate premise. You certainly don’t need to come to the same conclusion as others, but if you can’t start from truth, then the rest doesn’t matter.

On 4/14/2026 at 11:43 AM, Pooter said:

We don’t use much oil from the straight.. cool. So it shouldn’t affect our prices much right? Wrong. We live with something called the global economy and when supply of a commodity drops, effects of that percolate through the whole system. American oil companies will sell to the highest bidder just like anyone else so higher international demand will cause domestic prices to spike. Sorry, we don’t get to go on military adventures around the world and then suddenly pretend our own economy is isolationist.

Please quote me where I stated that prices wouldn't be affected. I'll wait. In any case, what this really does is put the US squarely in the driver's seat as to who is the main supplier of oil in the world. That is a great position to be in.

On 4/14/2026 at 11:43 AM, Pooter said:

What happens when China is cut off from a huge portion of their oil imports? I guess in the world where we don’t consider follow on effects we’re just gonna ignore that. Are they just gonna sit back and take it? Are they going to put pressure on us to open the straight again? Are they going to raise their export prices to offset increased energy costs? Hmmm I wonder what country imports the most Chinese stuff…..

I'm not sure, but this is a good question and an avenue to explore. Maybe there's something there to be had? I bet China's ambitions WRT Taiwan have been cut down to size. They would struggle mightily if they attempted to conduct large scale military operations while the US has a stranglehold on the global oil supply. A few well-placed cruise missiles into pipelines connecting Russia and China and they're in the hurt locker.

On 4/14/2026 at 11:43 AM, Pooter said:

Or What happens when (god forbid) one of our ships, now dicking around much closer to Iran than they were before, gets hit? Or hits a mine? Iran still has a very real missile, mine, and drone threat and now we’re basically just doing the navy version of seizing Kharg island—parking a bunch of juicy targets right off their coast. Again, the escalation ladder is sitting right in front of us and you guys are completely blind to it.

Risk is the nature of military operations. I'm not aware they're being ranged by anything Iranian, however. I'm also confident that the Navy knows what it's doing here. Again, do you think we're going about this like we did in Desert Storm or Iraq? I don't think that's our strategy.

On 4/14/2026 at 11:43 AM, Pooter said:

What happens with the civilian population when the Iranian economy is fully destroyed by our blockade? I’m sure they’ll come running happily into the open arms of the country that’s doing it to them. It’s definitely not going to cause a rally around the flag effect much like trump’s tweet about killing their whole civilization. Any minute now the populace is going to rise up and turn the country into a flowering democracy…

I never said anything about hearts and minds or democracy. Like I've stated numerous other times, I think it's best we allow time to work on the culture and see what happens organically. Iraq and Afghanistan have shown we don't know what we're doing with regard to nation-building. Best we stick to destroying governments. I will note though, that you continue to sidestep or otherwise avoid the relevant facts I've pointed out, namely that Iran is far more dependent on the straight than we are. Do you not want to address the implications of that? Too much to wrestle with? Doesn't fit into the mental model you've constructed?

Anyway, everything you addressed above is either misattributed to something you 'think' I would say, or perhaps something you think someone like me would say. In other words, it was all projection.

So here is what I think: It doesn't matter what happens in the short term to Iran's government. In the end it will be changed for better or worse. I don't care which way it goes. I only care that their military capability has been diminished and their ability to project power going forward declines. Both of those things have happened and will continue to happen. The fact that Iran no longer has the initiative to sell oil to illicit customers puts the ball squarely back in their court as to the next move. I'll note that almost immediately after we closed the straight, suggestions of 'talks' between the two parties began again.

Thus, even though you constructed your own strawman to beat up, I at least give you an 'e' for effort for posting without reference to something Trump said. That, alone, is a move in the right direction.

21 hours ago, brabus said:

That’s a very naive and objectively wrong statement.

How so? The war was launched based on an “imminent nuclear threat” which none of our intel agencies corroborate and the White House won’t elaborate on. Tulsi Gabbard dodged the question when asked about it and our own counterterrorism director resigned in disgust.

As far as having no plan, I think that is made more evident day by day as the goals, strategies, and rhetoric shift constantly. Every time Trump is asked what the plan is he just goes “I think something amazing will happen in the next few days and the war will be over very soon.” And then the war doesn’t end and nothing amazing happens. Just more incoherent tweets and strategy pivots. Whenever I ask you guys what the plan is, all I get is “rEduCe iRaNs iNflUenCe iN the rEgiOn aNd mAKe sUrE thEy cAnT pROjeCt pOwEr”

Sick. Has any of that been accomplished? And before you say we blew up their Air Force and Navy for the 69th time, I’ll just nip that in the bud.. at no point ever was the primary power projection concern with Iran their Air Force or Navy.

At this point If you believe this administration has a coherent plan, you’re the naive one. Before the last negotiations they said “Iran is desperate for a deal” and then came away with no deal…

The “fell for it again” meme could not be more applicable than for some of you in this thread.