I remember being in college a lot of Muslim kids coming to our parties drinking alcohol because we didn’t care and asking us not to tell anyone…Sake is wonderful.

France upgraded their gold bars to a new standard and as they were doing that, gold has appreciated massively in price, so France has the new shiny easier to trade bars, and the USA has the old harder to trade bars.

If any thing they've made my job much much more stressful because I'm just dealing with 10x the amount of code to reason about than before, the expectation to delivery faster is growing, and people are just smashing out code without properly understanding the business problems because of doing implementing a feature is so low.

I think the over-reliance mistake won't be made again for a long time.

I don't disagree that it's beneficial for China, likely in the short term, but I also don't think a lot of countries are just happy to go full Communist party either.

They have no air force left, no navy, realistically no way to defend any of their infrastructure, yet apparently, there is no way they can be undone?

What do you think the entire freaking world is going to do if their economies start failing because Iran is blocking the straight of Homuz? Will we all just die or will other countries get involved and start making sure it opens? Will the trillions of dollars the gulf states have just sit there idly while Iran ruins their ability to sell oil ? I don't think so. Right now I think Iran has some leverage, there is maybe even some sympathy directed their way, but in my view it's limited. People right now are unhappy about what the US did, and maybe blame them for high oil prices etc, but at some stage, if it's between Iran existing, and peoples ability to eat, I think I know which side people will choose.

I do worry something like this could really be the start of WW3 though because I don't think China will allow Iran to topple, so it's a precarious situation.

Right now, the question seems to be more about whether or not the neighbors are willing to take the hit, and whether or not the world will tolerate the economic devastation, not whether or not the USA can inflict a lot more damage.

I don't agree with what's going on in Iran, I'm just thinking that regardless of whether or not it's a good idea, if the USA is basically in control of all meaningful oil exports, then it's game over for any significant Chinese military action because, they won't have the oil to run their aircraft carriers etc (they don't have nuclear carriers).

I think I understand their logic, but I might agree with others who say this is going to be an extremely bloody / unpopular war with very little justification for it's existence.

From what I can tell, The USA is either going for force a regime change or it's going to ruin Iran. Where will China get oil from then? You might say Russia but that's a precarious situation for them to be in.