I wonder if the recent USV shipping attacks came Iraqi militias. Maybe Iran set them up with some drone boats like how they send them missiles/drones to hit US bases with. Meanwhile the US was focused on surveilling the Iranian coast. I wouldn't be surprised if Iraq remains the hardest part of maintaining security in the region.
Best source on all this stuff is a classic proper OSINT blogger (who does awesome pics too): https://www.hisutton.com/
It's just a different world now. Large powerful ships aren't that useful anymore, USA and Israel destroyed some of the largest and the most advanced Iranian ships in the first day of the war they started and yet can't sail their own ships in the region either.
This is considered the most "pro-Russian" sub-Reddit, so it balances the Anglosphere deluge of pro-Ukrainian material pretty well. The most important poster is u/HeyHeyHayden, who's content is so important another user built a site to archive it: https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1pfjpx...
Hayden mostly compiles battlefield progress from Suriyak Maps (reputable Russian mapper) and AMK_Mapping (reputable pro-Ukrainian mapper). I think you can find both of them on Twitter.
On Youtube, I recommend WillyOAM (Australian infantryman turned journalist), MarkTakacs (Hungarian infantry officer who makes tactical analysis vids), Daniel Davis Deep Dive (retired US Army LtColonel, Desert Storm vet), and HistoryLegends (meme-heavy but generally well-researched battlefield progress vids).
From time to time he does situation reviews and analysis on Ukraine in English and he doesn’t hold back.
May I suggest an alternative mode of freight that pre-dates trucks and can move much larger volumes at a much lower CO2 cost, namely... a transcontinental train line?
(obviously not going to happen, and might even trigger a few PR cycles about a "hyperloop", but if you were going to try to build large-volume freight, that's where I'd start)
Note that it takes about 10000 trucks to carry the 2 million barrels of oil in one typical oil tanker.
UAE can get ~30% through Oman now, and probably ~75% in 3-4 years.
Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar are screwed without the straight. Qatar could probably work a deal with KSA to get all of their oil through its pipes to the Red Sea if need be in 2-3 years, but they'd pay a premium.
If I had to guess, I think this will structurally push KSA and UAE to move out of the straight, and for anyone in the straight to be tied to China and India.
I imagine Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran are all going to become Chinese and Indian client states.
North & South America now have a major oil & natural gas surplus. Their total usage is declining and production is increasing.
Meanwhile, the EU, Japan, SK, etc are moving towards renewables & nuclear as fast as they can.
China's probably reached peak fossil fuel imports already.
Yeah, but current EU energy prices are as high as they ever been, so that doesn't help the EU manufacturing industry that in 10 years we'll be fossil fuel free, if they have to close shop in 12 months from the energy price hikes.
This is factually inaccurate.
Ember Energy: European electricity prices and costs - https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-an... (updated daily)
Ember Energy: Wind and solar generated more power than fossil fuels in the EU for the first time in 2025 - https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-gener... - January 22nd, 2026
Bloomberg: How Europe Ditched Russian Fossil Fuels With Spectacular Speed - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/ukraine-n... | https://archive.today/yxGp2 - February 21st, 2023
> But what the past year has shown is that it’s possible to go harder and faster in deploying solar panels and batteries, reducing energy use, and permanently swapping out entrenched sources of fossil fuel.
> Solar installations across Europe increased by a record 40-gigawatts last year, up 35% compared with 2021, just shy of the most optimistic scenario from researchers at BloombergNEF. That jump was driven primarily by consumers who saw cheap solar panels as a way to cut their own energy bills. It essentially pushed the solar rollout ahead by a few years, hitting a level that will be sustained by EU policies.
(Europe has enough wind potential to power the world, their energy constraints are deployment rate of renewables, battery storage, and transmission)
Yes, if you ignore the brief 2022 spike, they're as high as they ever been. Oh wow, you got me on a technicality, you're so clever, bravo, even though that doesn't change the situation of today where plenty of EU manufacturing companies have closed shop or moved jobs and manufacturing abroad since 2022.
From the link you posted, I see that energy today is still roughly 4x higher than it was before the Russian war, at least in my EU country. How competitive do you think EU manufacturing is today versus back then given the current pricing? How long can Eu companies stay in business given these circumstances? How long can EU taxpayers subsidize the energy of private business to make sure they don't go bust or leave before higher inflation kicks in?
Edit to answer your reply below here: No, the EU can't flip its energy producing industry on a dime in response to instantaneous external shocks. All it can do is print money and subsides energy costs for industry at the expense of inflation and higher CoL for the population.
How long it takes for Europe to achieve this outcome is a capital investment and deployment velocity decision. The capital exists, the technology and manufacturing capacity exists. How competitive does Europe want to be from a manufacturing perspective? The answer to that is the speed at which they drive down energy costs using the various technologies I've enumerated.
I've reached out to an Ember contact to inquire if they could communicate this time window and velocity in some fashion on their graphs for Europe ("time to historical energy price levels via energy transition").
It seems very unlikely that with sustained temperatures of -5 to -8°C in the winter months, which seem to get longer again, heating can be achieved with renewables in any way.
Heat pumps were already collapsing and making irritating fan noises at -8° this winter. Converting to heat pumps is expensive and the service costs are expensive, too.
LNG is needed for fertilizer and other chemical products, too and is hard to replace at all.
By all means, try renewables, but these enthusiasm waves leave me skeptical.
Low carbon fertilizer production: Green ammonia production: Process technologies and challenges - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00162... | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2024.131808 - Fuel, Volume 369, 1 August 2024, 131808
Skepticism is important, but the evidence so far proves out we have a long way to go with the "easy" parts of decarbonizing until we have to solve the last "hard" parts. Capital and cashflows saved on fossil fuels from the easy parts can be directed towards the hard parts when that time comes. Enough sunlight hits the Earth every 30 minutes to power humanity for a year; it's a capture, transfer, and orchestration story broadly speaking. We are bound mostly by the laws of physics.
It is prohibitely expensive to move things using trailers vs. freight.
This isn't the 1980's where we can surge 100 warships to an area of the world to deny the area or perform escort missions.
If we decided to 10x the Navy budget today and start building ships we'd be a couple decades out since we'd have to start from "train the ship building workforce" first principles to begin with.
Other than air power, the US has been operating off military (reputation) inertia for decades now.
Global supply chain impacts have global ramifications.
Additionally, Russia is redirecting LNG from Europe (the ongoing Hungary-Ukraine spat) to Asia [2].
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-talks-with-ira...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/iran-allow-india-flagged...
Honestly, it's best to ignore X/Twitter for this conflict. Internet access has been restricted bordering on nonexistent in Iran since the massacres in January, and most countries in the region have also either locked down internet access or don't interact in the English language social media bubble.
The Ukraine War is the last war where OSINT had significant accuracy - most states have cracked down on information dissemination and enhanced OpSec.
Edit: turns out the Heilan Journey transited [1].
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/thailand-seeks-ap...
[1] - https://chinaglobalsouth.com/2026/03/12/chinese-ships-strait...
China still gets access to Iranian oil, though with high risk and a much slower pace.
India is getting access to Russian oil without sanctions now, but they're in a really tricky situation - one Iranian ship was torpedoed coming from an event promoted by India where there was safety requirements in place. This isn't good.
Many countries are tapping into reserves, and being severely affected by higher prices.
All while Russia gets sanctions removed and a oil price hike, when they were in a critical situation economically. Even the USA shrugging off of the reports of Intel shared with Iran is insane.
Yes, CNN has an analysis:
"How Trump’s Iran exposure could hand Putin a lottery win"
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/12/politics/trump-iran-war-r...
But the reason the US and Israel is even able to do what they are doing is because Russia is spending all its resources fighting Ukraine.
Russia is too weak to do anything to meddle in the conflict. Five years ago Russia would have its navy in the area, private militias on the ground and been an all around nuisance. Today they are non-existant outside of Ukraine.
A sound analysis on it:
Trump, Putin, and the war in Iran
But for sure it helped. It helped with Syria, Armenia, Venezuela, and now Iran.
But that doesn't explain why the current US administration continues to be submissive to what Russia is now: an isolated regional power - and even this is arguable be cause it will depend on the region.
Like, this is the biggest geopolitical blunder of modern Russia that will probably lead to the collapse of the federation (economic, demographic, diplomatic) - and this catering is all based on personal good relationship?
It just doesn't make any sense.
I really recommend it, it’s from a real Danish military analyst without any over the top dramatization
https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
This is nonsense. Lviv is by all accounts a thriving city. And Ukraine's defence-industrial base is now among Europe's finest.
No, Lviv the Molotov city. Like, yes, if you've already carved up Ukraine in your head, it's obviously losing. By that metric China has been losing to the Mongolians its whole history.
The Trump administration instantly folded under that pressure and has already removed some sanctions: https://xcancel.com/SecScottBessent/status/20297142537252622...
As for Ukraine, nobody in the west really cares for it - that proxy war has given all the dividends it can for the west (EU has cut off all economic ties with Russia, EU is now dependent again on the US for its energy thus making the US richer, EU's next generation have now been brainwashed to hate the Russians again, Finland and Sweden have been successfully pressurised to give up neutrality and join NATO, Finland and Sweden joining NATO means the Arctic Council is now dominated by NATO - Arctic is where the west will next try to cut off Russian influence, Ukraine - which had a large territory and the one of the largest military in Europe - has been cut down in size and is now totally economically and military dependent on the west in effect a vassal state) and the Ukraine war is a stalemate now, where Russians will make slow gains as their army grinds down and keeps losing soldiers - and that's a plus too. As Russia becomes weaker, another proxy war or even a direct attack against it can be waged later in the future (maybe after Putin?). American deep state always plans long term - Death by a 1000 cuts ...
They can hold out for many years. Oil prices going up just means a slightly gentler market for russians.
Iran should be militarily defeated in a few weeks, so that's a brief shot in the arm.
If Iran gets a half decent government and sanctions on Iran are lifted, that would lower oil prices and hit the Russian economy.
It's probably reasonable to expect several years of disruption to Iranian oil even if sanctions were to be completely lifted in the very near term.
The US generally only wages wars of aggression against a nation as well-organized and well-armed as Iran when it can do them at arm's length with remote weapons and air superiority. Since the US has a volunteer army, actual risk to soldiers for something not perceived by the public as an existential threat jeopardizes future fighting efficacy.
The US public will tolerate missiles launched in its name; it is far less likely to tolerate video of entire Navy ships going down or sailors (not) coming home in body bags by the shipload for a cause that the administration didn't even try to sell them on as necessary.
The winners are Russia and Trump's LNG fracking friends. The losers are the EU, who had their pipeline blown up and now had their Qatari suppliers blown up. But EU politicians sit still and leave it all to Trump and Putin.
Considering Iran supplies Russia with a lot of its high precision drones, I don't think it even takes this. Iran can do it all on their own.
It's like we never learnt from Iraq, Syria, Libya.
Higher oil prices and more volatility in the oil market makes renewables even better of an investment.
Climate change has somewhat faded from popular culture, but the problem still persists. The faster everyone gets off oil the better the less the world will suffer in the future for many different reasons.
Iran's neighbour, Israel currently has a genocidal regime (where Netanyahu is trying to become the Jewish Ayatollah by crippling its democracy with the help of his right-wing buddies) that has already massacred and injured more than 50,000 children ( https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unimaginable-horrors-m... ). (The Palestinian genocide is still ongoing). The start of the Iranian war with a massacre of 100+ children suggest that an Iranian genocide too is planned.
America is today run by a President who believes that the rise of India, China, Brazil, South Korea, EU etc, means that American might will be challenged soon, and thus America needs to drop its facade of respect for international law and order and use its full economic and military might to strengthen itself. The Attack on Venezuela and Iran has no politically moral goodwill behind it and is a pure resource grab - it's just a return of imperialism not even trying to pretend otherwise, which none of us in the Global South (former colonies) wish to experience again.
So, tell me again, how is Israel and US morally better than Iran?
gnfargbl•6h ago
IAmBroom•4h ago
lokar•1h ago
Also, it exposes the ships to easy attack in a constrained body of water
Also, the ships would need to exit the gulf and travel a long distance to re-arm their defensive weapons, requiring even more ships.
cpursley•1h ago
enraged_camel•1h ago
adrian_b•1h ago
The decision of the US Navy to not provide escort services makes perfect sense and it is no surprise.
The only thing that is newsworthy about it is that this has exposed yet another lie of Trump, who at some point has promised that the traffic will not be affected, because USA will provide such escort services.
EcommerceFlow•1h ago
gzread•1h ago
margalabargala•1h ago
If the Iranian regime were over thrown, that would be good for basically the whole world except the people actually operating the regime. So, if the war ends without that happening, then that's at least partly a bad thing mixed in with the good of, y'know, not having a war anymore.
EcommerceFlow•1h ago
butILoveLife•1h ago
Its like the issue with the Vietnam war. You need 100% perfect security, or its not worth it. If you are only 98% successful, you arent going to have oil tankers or any cargo ships even attempting it. A single failure every 2 months was a massive waste of resources.
pm90•1h ago
arpinum•1h ago