Quote from: The Butcher on March 18, 2026, 09:47:37 PMQuote from: The Butcher on March 13, 2026, 01:00:46 AMThis post could have gone into the random thoughts thread but felt more appropriate to be in here. Bare with my strings of thought
Iran war continues for a month - energy crisis builds - Europe past month have been taking Russian shadow oil fleet tankers, same with India with Iranian ones, America with Venezuelan ones.
Hard to see how the war ends - does Trump just say under pressure in 1-2 weeks time "That's it, we won." Doesn't Iran, with whatever is left of lower levels of leaders who are more than likely extremists just take a firm stance like "ok, we need a nuke asap." Trump will be told this is the likely path that the remaining Iranian gov will speedrun to having a nuke so Trump will be told that they should be encouraging the Iranian people to strike and takeover....but that prolongs the whole war meaning oil and world recession/depression, a good chance that it's going to be a whole lot worse than the 1970s. Inflation has potential to be massive - economies could literally stop - I see Thailand and somewhere are already making WFH mandatory to try lessen fuel demand. Some places already dry.
Iran in recent days are starting to target desalination plants - Bahrain apparently depend on desalination plants for 85% of their water. UAE/Kuwait it's 90%. If Iran smash enough of these plants - 10s of millions with no water - you are talking mass migration influx into Europe akin to 2015. Also thinking globalisation will eventually fail by around 2040-2050 timeframe (due to demographics across the world) - this could help speed that process up.
Anyway...pretty sure we are all fucked...or am I just a complete rambling fool?
Just to add to this - Iran can still broadcast where they will hit in advance and still hit it - and their attacks are increasing in the past 2 days compared to the low ebb of last week - most likely due to the main leadership being smashed up / lack of orders + command & control etc
For the US to control the straits they would need a lot of firepower + anti drone / counter measures - I'm just not sure that's there. Trump would take a lot of heat if one of their main ships got hit. Troops on the ground to me seem like a bad bad idea - again considering the drone modern warfare - see Ukraine/Russian war.
Concerned about future food prices but at least compared to the 70s the supply lines have more redundancy in them but fertiliser shortages will impact food prices. Seems like a turning point that hasnt yet been decided. At any point Iran could collapse, depends how deep rooted Islamic is and the leadership left but at the moment - doesn't seem likely. Afghanistan was 10 weeks and they were weak in comparison to the Iranians - all points to a prolonged war to me. Serious economic hit on the cards...jobs are going to get dodgy. This could turn ugly fast, prepare properly for that scenario, that's all I'll say.
Nearly a month later and we have a sort of "ceasefire" - we shall see how actual negotiations go but the red lines Iran and the US/Israel have - I don't see how they will climb down from them. I wouldn't be surprised with Israel bombing Lebanon is the excuse Trump wants in order for Iran to violate the ceasefire again due to Israel/Lebanon and then go in when they feel they have enough man/firepower in the region. Going by the amount of stuff going towards the region I would say we are more likely heading back to full scale war than achieving any sort of deal/plan worth noting. Of course anything can happen in the meantime. Prolonged war into the summer means potential famine in some countries amongst other things. Hopefully not.
Our government should have talked to the protestors before they decided to block everything. They could have said "We'll organise a meeting with ye provided you back away from the ports etc" - could have said they are finalising a plan for the whole country. Instead they escalated with army deployment and now public order units from the Gardai. It's bad optics and means they have no other lever to pull now if this doesn't work. I agree that this protest will just speed up the inevitable - we could cut the taxes on fuel to 0% - but if there's no fuel to tax, there's no fuel for farmers/truckers etc. Government should have communicated better. We have had a terrible net zero carbon policy in place from the Greens without thinking about energy security during a transition.
As an aside I think 23% VAT rate was always an extreme rate to have and impacts on so much - should really be around 16%...which costs nearly 5 billion but government spending is out of whack, completely reliant on 3 companies paying the vast amount of corporation tax - I feel like it's akin to the 2008 crash - when the FF gov back then was reliant on stamp duty for budgets. House of cards.
Don't think many people realise how long this is going to go on for and the everlasting impacts. We are in a new world.
US might not repeat an Iraq/Afghanistan but carpet bombing for a month in Iran feels like the result will be the same - huge volatility and risk of civil war for the people of Iran. Not going to be pretty. Energy/shipping issues/costs if this is prolonged in any way. 