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Iran claims to have seized British oil tanker in strait of Hormuz

SenorXm/Sirius said:
We buy their oil, they buy our weapons.. That's what both sides have done for each other.

No one is being fooled by what's going on.
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Not that buying our weapons has done all that much good for them. The Saudis aren't even capable of fighting their way out of a wet paper bag.
 
Apocalypse said:
He is correct. The Saudi regime for all its faults is working side by side with the geopolitical interests of the West, not against them.
It's also a matter of fact that the regime is making the nation gradually more moderate with every passing year. It's a long road to go and cannot be judged immediately but it's there and the direction is positive.
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The Saudi's are just as guilty of fostering unrest, instability and extremist violence as Iran, if not more so. It was the Saudi's that flooded Syria with weapons. Many of which that either went to, or fell into the hands of all kinds of bad actors and extremist groups.
 
Atomic Kid said:
The Saudi's are just as guilty of fostering unrest, instability and extremist violence as Iran, if not more so. It was the Saudi's that flooded Syria with weapons. Many of which that either went to, or fell into the hands of all kinds of bad actors and extremist groups.
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They aren't. The Saudi regime has an interest to counter the Iranian attempts to destabilize the region with their actions in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere - that is true.
They do not however create and fund terror groups and order them around engaging in a proxy warfare.
 
apdst said:
We've been supporting troops in Afghanistan since 2001; as many as 100,000. The logistic system is well established for that region. At this point, there are very few unknowns.

Besides that, the Afghan front wouldn't be the main effort. That would come from the west, by land and amphibious forces.
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US has been fighting in Afghanistan since right after 9/11, not attacking Iran inside its borders from Afghanistan. Nor has the US been conducting operations against Iranian assets in the air and on the sea. Nor has the US been conducting operations against Iran in Iran using Afghanistan as a support base of operations from the west. You ignore this and what virtually all states in south Asia and central Asia would do if the US initiated operations against Iran in Iran, to include of course against Iranian sea and air assets deployed outside Iran's borders at its borders.

Iran has a proliferation of non state forces it directs, controls, influences throughout the region and beyond if Tehran might see the need or desire to extend its conventional armed forces response. Yet your posting on this is so out of it you're not even fighting the last war never mind the next one you and the American Ayatollah-con Bolton are all stoked up for. US troops running all over Iraq for a decade got the people there spitting mad against the United States so think now about the Iranian people's response to US military operations against Iran inside Iran's borders. And there are a lot more Iranians than there were Iraqis.
 
Iran is aching for a breaking.

And it could not happen to a more deserving nation, IMHO.
 
SenorXm/Sirius said:
Ah yes I remember when the American Conservatives really disliked the Saudi's...

Now? Cons think they are our best friends. Best friends who were most of the 9/11 terrorists. Best friends like OBL.. Best friends who spend BILLIONS around the world promoting Islamic terrorism.

It's like Trump has all the Cons in this country in a trance..
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What exactly do you mean, SenorXM/Sirius? The United States has been more attached and conciliatory towards Saudi Arabia and its regime since the 1940s and our dependency on their oil and the global need to keep oil prices stable. Every administration, conservative and liberal, has been solicitous towards the backwards barbaric theocratic autocrats in Riyadh. Our country has been less critical of and more solicitous towards Saudi Arabia than we have ever been towards any other nation, including countries with which we have extraordinarily close relations like the United Kingdom and Israel.
 
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Apocalypse said:
They aren't. The Saudi regime has an interest to counter the Iranian attempts to destabilize the region with their actions in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere - that is true.
They do not however create and fund terror groups and order them around engaging in a proxy warfare.
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Don't kid yourself they have indeed done both. Ever hear of Wahhabism? Or Al Qaeda? 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Not a single Iragi or Iranian among them.
 
Tangmo said:
US has been fighting in Afghanistan since right after 9/11, not attacking Iran inside its borders from Afghanistan. Nor has the US been conducting operations against Iranian assets in the air and on the sea. Nor has the US been conducting operations against Iran in Iran using Afghanistan as a support base of operations from the west. You ignore this and what virtually all states in south Asia and central Asia would do if the US initiated operations against Iran in Iran, to include of course against Iranian sea and air assets deployed outside Iran's borders at its borders.
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That doesn't change the fact that the logistics system into Afghanistan is already in place.

Iran has a proliferation of non state forces it directs, controls, influences throughout the region and beyond if Tehran might see the need or desire to extend its conventional armed forces response.
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If the Iranians launch a terror attack in The United States, they will be doomed.

Yet your posting on this is so out of it you're not even fighting the last war never mind the next one you and the American Ayatollah-con Bolton are all stoked up for. US troops running all over Iraq for a decade got the people there spitting mad against the United States so think now about the Iranian people's response to US military operations against Iran inside Iran's borders. And there are a lot more Iranians than there were Iraqis.
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I've said in other posts that there's no need to put troops on the ground.
 
Atomic Kid said:
Don't kid yourself they have indeed done both. Ever hear of Wahhabism? Or Al Qaeda? 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Not a single Iragi or Iranian among them.
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And not a single one was an agent of the Saudi government.
 
Atomic Kid said:
Don't kid yourself they have indeed done both. Ever hear of Wahhabism? Or Al Qaeda? 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Not a single Iragi or Iranian among them.
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We're talking about the Saudi regime here, not citizens of Saudi Arabia in general.
 
apdst said:
That doesn't change the fact that the logistics system into Afghanistan is already in place.
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That fails to address my post concerning what nations in south Asia and central Asia would likely set out to do to it if the US started operations against Iran and its assets in or outside or Iran. Which is that the governments would want to inter alia tamp down or immobilize the US armed forces supply train from Afghanistan. Nations throughout Asia would very likely want to act on several fronts to quell a US-Iran serious measure of conflict, to include at the UN, the EU, the Arab League and so on. They likely would apply their individual sovereignty to deny airspace and transit of any kind -- or of most modalities -- to try to cool things down.[/QUOTE]





If the Iranians launch a terror attack in The United States, they will be doomed.
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Thanks for the news bulletin that starts with 'if." That's weak however despite your changing the tense and mood to "will be." Mark Twain was much better at changing tense however both effectively and realistically -- of course.





I've said in other posts that there's no need to put troops on the ground.
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You and everyone said (to include myself). There's no need to do anything militarily either. So it's long past time Trump and His Rowers got their feet back down onto the global ground.
 
Jack Hays said:
The Iranians can't go that far. Saudi air was miscast in Yemen; they would do just fine against Iranian conventional units. Another thing about Yemen: it is likely that a humanitarian crisis was among Saudi war aims.
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What are you basing that off of? What successful military operation have the Saudis done to give any indication they aren't anything than an overfunded militia?
 
ecofarm said:
Territorial waters include the territorial sea, contiguous zone and exclusive economic zone. The contiguous zone extends for twice the distance of the territorial sea and in it a state has customs jurisdiction.

Your map has an obvious flaw in either labeling or failing to uniformly illustrate.

One can see that territorial waters consume all possible routes. One can see why Spain said, "hey", but that's between the EU.
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Territorial waters do not give jurisdiction to impede free passage of shipping

Territorial waters - Wikipedia

The passage about "preventing or punishing "infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations within its territory or territorial sea" is to give the authority to capture ships that committed or are about to commit a violation IN the territorial sea. So, for example, if the territorial sea extends up to 12 miles from the coast and a coast guard detects a ship smuggling drugs tt can legally capture it outside of this 12 mile radius. THat's the meaning of the paragraph you mentioned.

Neither Britain nor Iran have jurisdiction to block free passage of straights by using your claim of the contiguous zone.
 
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ecofarm said:
Territorial waters include the territorial sea, contiguous zone and exclusive economic zone. The contiguous zone extends for twice the distance of the territorial sea and in it a state has customs jurisdiction.

Your map has an obvious flaw in either labeling or failing to uniformly illustrate.

One can see that territorial waters consume all possible routes. One can see why Spain said, "hey", but that's between the EU.
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and more about the legal rights of transit passage through straights

https://www.law.hawaii.edu/sites/www.law.hawaii.edu/files/content/Faculty/Straits100308.pdf

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The United States was particularly concerned about its continuing ability to navigate its warships, including submerged submarines, through key international straits such as the Strait of Gibraltar (into the Mediterranean Sea), the Strait of Hormuz (into the Persian/Arabian Gulf), the Strait of Bab el Mandeb (into the Red Sea), the Strait of Malacca (connecting the Indian Ocean with the Pacific), the Dover Strait (through the English Channel), the Bering Strait (in the Arctic), and the Strait of Lombok (through the Indonesian archipelago).

Page 179

The compromise that emerged during the protracted negotiations consisted of (a) allowing coastal States to extend their territorial seas to 12 nautical miles; (b) recognizing the right to “transit passage through international straits;” and (c) allowing countries to establish an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) out to a distance of 200 nautical miles from their coasts, governed by Part V of the Convention, Articles 55–75. The right of “transit passage through international straits,” as defined in the Con- vention, is nonsuspendable and applies to all vessels – military and com- mercial – and also to airplanes (Article 38(1)). Pursuant to the language in Article 39(1)(c), submarines are allowed to remain submerged when they exercise the right of transit passage.9
The position of the maritime countries that all ships should have the right to unimpeded passage through international straits was thus largely adopted in Part III (Articles 34–45) of the 1982 LOS Convention.
 
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Jredbaron96 said:
What are you basing that off of? What successful military operation have the Saudis done to give any indication they aren't anything than an overfunded militia?
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They'll be just fine.

[h=3]The 10 Strongest Military Forces In The Middle East - Forbes[/h]
[url]https://www.forbes.com/sites/.../2018/02/.../ten-strongest-military-forces-middle-east/
[/URL]



Feb 26, 2018 - In Yemen for example, a coalition involving Saudi Arabia, the UAE and ... A local man watches as an aircraft of the UAE Air Force's Al Fursan ...
 
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Jack Hays said:
They'll be just fine.

[h=3]The 10 Strongest Military Forces In The Middle East - Forbes[/h]
[url]https://www.forbes.com/sites/.../2018/02/.../ten-strongest-military-forces-middle-east/
[/URL]



Feb 26, 2018 - In Yemen for example, a coalition involving Saudi Arabia, the UAE and ... A local man watches as an aircraft of the UAE Air Force's Al Fursan ...
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This is a god awful list.

"Global Firepower Index" is a terrible measurement, because it fails to take into account the single most important quality; skill. Putting Egypt above Israel and Iran is atrocious; the Egyptian military performance over the past 60 years has been pitiful. Their performance in the Israeli-Arab conflicts was downright embarrassing on numerous occasions. Their performance in the Gulf War was hardly any better.

Putting the Saudis above the Algerians is ridiculous, given how terrible the Saudi performance over the past few decades has been. The Iraqi Army collapsed before ISIS and it's only improvement since then is that the stupid people have been killed off by now, but the idea that they're really better is ridiculous; 8 years of fighting Iran didn't markedly improve the Iraqi military overall.

The only capable military forces in the Middle East are the Iranians, the Israelis, the Turks, the Pakistanis, and the Algerians. Everyone else either hasn't had a chance to display any kind of military capability, or, like Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Libya, has done so and their performance was atrocious.
 
Jredbaron96 said:
This is a god awful list.

"Global Firepower Index" is a terrible measurement, because it fails to take into account the single most important quality; skill. Putting Egypt above Israel and Iran is atrocious; the Egyptian military performance over the past 60 years has been pitiful. Their performance in the Israeli-Arab conflicts was downright embarrassing on numerous occasions. Their performance in the Gulf War was hardly any better.

Putting the Saudis above the Algerians is ridiculous, given how terrible the Saudi performance over the past few decades has been. The Iraqi Army collapsed before ISIS and it's only improvement since then is that the stupid people have been killed off by now, but the idea that they're really better is ridiculous; 8 years of fighting Iran didn't markedly improve the Iraqi military overall.

The only capable military forces in the Middle East are the Iranians, the Israelis, the Turks, the Pakistanis, and the Algerians. Everyone else either hasn't had a chance to display any kind of military capability, or, like Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Libya, has done so and their performance was atrocious.
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Thank you for your personal opinions. I don't put complete faith in any such ranking. The point is the Saudis are respectable enough.
 
Jack Hays said:
Thank you for your personal opinions. I don't put complete faith in any such ranking. The point is the Saudis are respectable enough.
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Personal opinion which I formed after studying the performance of the militaries of various Arab states. My "personal opinion" is based on how these forces actually performed when the time came, and every time it did, they disappointed. Including the Saudis. Do you have any evidence to actually indicate the Saudis are a respectable military force?
 
Jredbaron96 said:
Personal opinion which I formed after studying the performance of the militaries of various Arab states. My "personal opinion" is based on how these forces actually performed when the time came, and every time it did, they disappointed. Including the Saudis. Do you have any evidence to actually indicate the Saudis are a respectable military force?
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Thank you for your personal opinion.
 
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