Warships headed to the Persian Gulf

[Suu]

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-and-britain-sending-warships-to-gulf-2012-9

Warships, aircraft carriers, minesweepers and submarines from 25 nations are converging on the strategically important Strait of Hormuz in an unprecedented show of force as Israel and Iran move towards the brink of war.

Western leaders are convinced that Iran will retaliate to any attack by attempting to mine or blockade the shipping lane through which around 18 million barrels of oil passes every day; approximately 35 per cent of the world's petroleum traded by sea.

A blockade would have a catastrophic effect on the fragile economies of Britain, Europe, the United States and Japan, all of which rely heavily on oil and gas supplies from the Gulf.

And I had to go and become a Navy girlfriend. Fortunately, he's not going anywhere until a year from now.

[Kai]

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-and-britain-sending-warships-to-gulf-2012-9

Warships, aircraft carriers, minesweepers and submarines from 25 nations are converging on the strategically important Strait of Hormuz in an unprecedented show of force as Israel and Iran move towards the brink of war.

Western leaders are convinced that Iran will retaliate to any attack by attempting to mine or blockade the shipping lane through which around 18 million barrels of oil passes every day; approximately 35 per cent of the world's petroleum traded by sea.

A blockade would have a catastrophic effect on the fragile economies of Britain, Europe, the United States and Japan, all of which rely heavily on oil and gas supplies from the Gulf.

And I had to go and become a Navy girlfriend. Fortunately, he's not going anywhere until a year from now.

OF COURSE THEY'RE GOING TO RETALIATE TO AN ATTACK. Goddamn, why are people so stupid. No, don't answer that, I know.

When people are bombed, they're supposed to sit idly and take it, and then the survivors pick up the pieces of casualties and go on as if nothing happened. Retaliation is an act against Jesus, and we don't want to make Jesus cry now do we?

[Suu]

And I giggle over the two countries involved not being followers of Jesus. 

Of course, this shit is also going to blow my chance to go to Israel this summer. FML.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

And I giggle over the two countries involved not being followers of Jesus. 

Of course, this shit is also going to blow my chance to go to Israel this summer. FML.

World's on fire.

Suu misses overseas trip.

The Suu Rule:  No exceptions.

[Kai]

And I giggle over the two countries involved not being followers of Jesus. 

Of course, this shit is also going to blow my chance to go to Israel this summer. FML.

The /two/ countries? Last time I checked, this is aggression by Israel backed by good ole' USAdia++.

I just hope that when shit hits the fan, VERBL and friends are able to get out of there.

[Suu]

And I giggle over the two countries involved not being followers of Jesus. 

Of course, this shit is also going to blow my chance to go to Israel this summer. FML.

World's on fire.

Suu misses overseas trip.

The Suu Rule:  No exceptions.

It's not that. It's just fucking irony IMO. I finally get to leave the country and do something nifty, and the world blows up. Go fig.

I just hope that when shit hits the fan, VERBL and friends are able to get out of there.

No shit. Though I think he said he was planning to be out within the next few months, If I'm not mistaken.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

And I giggle over the two countries involved not being followers of Jesus. 

Of course, this shit is also going to blow my chance to go to Israel this summer. FML.

World's on fire.

Suu misses overseas trip.

The Suu Rule:  No exceptions.

It's not that. It's just fucking irony IMO. I finally get to leave the country and do something nifty, and the world blows up. Go fig.

I am certain all the casualties that result will positively bleed for your tragedy, Suu.

[Cain]

The /two/ countries? Last time I checked, this is aggression by Israel backed by good ole' USAdia++.

Not the current administration.  They don't want to isolate Israel, but at the same time, they've been signing off on the covert ops and similar in hope of persuading the Israelis that war isn't needed.  Stunext, for example, was meant to show the nuclear program could be crippled without also toppling the Iranian government.

I think a case can be made that Obama has not tried hard enough to negotiate directly with Iran, but at the same time, the "Green uprising" and Iran's own hardliners have made it hard for Obama to hold a dialogue without Israeli leaders and their American sympathisers also undermining Obama.  Let us recall, one Hillary Clinton is very supportive of Israel, as a rule.

Obama and Robert Gates and Joe Biden all seem to accept that a negotiated settlement is the only way this is going to get truly resolved.  I'm not sure about Leon Panetta, but by and large, Obama's national security team are more sceptical of Israeli intentions and going to fight Iran than most US security specialists.

[Suu]

The whole thing just seems disgustingly and overwhelmingly complex, though Navyguy just assured me they've moved a whole one extra sub to the Gulf for this, and the majority of the ships have already been there. Nothing new. He doesn't set foot on a sub again til next September.

Of course, there's a good chance he can't tell me the truth.

[Kai]

The /two/ countries? Last time I checked, this is aggression by Israel backed by good ole' USAdia++.

Not the current administration.  They don't want to isolate Israel, but at the same time, they've been signing off on the covert ops and similar in hope of persuading the Israelis that war isn't needed.  Stunext, for example, was meant to show the nuclear program could be crippled without also toppling the Iranian government.

I think a case can be made that Obama has not tried hard enough to negotiate directly with Iran, but at the same time, the "Green uprising" and Iran's own hardliners have made it hard for Obama to hold a dialogue without Israeli leaders and their American sympathisers also undermining Obama.  Let us recall, one Hillary Clinton is very supportive of Israel, as a rule.

Obama and Robert Gates and Joe Biden all seem to accept that a negotiated settlement is the only way this is going to get truly resolved.  I'm not sure about Leon Panetta, but by and large, Obama's national security team are more sceptical of Israeli intentions and going to fight Iran than most US security specialists.

Well, that's something. Thanks for the correction. My greatest wish in this is that it's all solved in negotiation, and that no military action will be taken by any party. I trust the Obama team about as far as I can throw a bull, but if they're actually skeptical and not just jabbering, that's a good sign.

[Verbal Mike]

I'm still in Germany, only planning to even head down there some time in the next month or two, coming back next spring. But it's the the thought that counts, thanks guise.

Suu, I wouldn't bury the summer plans just yet, I'm pretty sure the whole thing is a ruse. I wrote a long email about this last week, which I'll just paste here. It was to a friend who had read and forwarded a bunch of disturbing anecdotes that indicate that real war preparations are going on.

I've been convinced for months that the whole thing is a political maneuver. Right now I can see at least two main reasons for the Israeli leadership to do it: distracting from internal problems (a.k.a. the reason any Middle Eastern leader does anything in foreign policy) and wrangling money and/or hardware out of the US (a.k.a. the only other reason Israeli or Egyptian leaders ever do anything in foreign policy .
For a while I was under the impression that the war was real and would be the maneuver. My horror peaked a few weeks ago when, one Friday, all Israeli newspapers' main headlines were suddenly about Iran. I staged a tiny spontaneous demo here, but a few days later I started realizing (with help from Israeli media analysis) that that Friday was plain and simple a coordinated media assault on public opinion. This made me think this was just very high-volume saber rattling, i.e. that the maneuver was the hype itself, not any real planned war.
Since then Israeli media has been less frantic about the topic, sometimes even quiet, apart from a couple of Netanyahu- or Barak-aligned hacks.
The way I see it right now, it's hard to tell whether they're just putting on a very realistic show of preparing for war, or actually preparing for war. The information you sent is interesting and alarming, but doesn't tip the scales either way in my view. Some of the examples sound to me like pure coincidence, or just usual stuff (for example, IDF soldiers go to the Wailing Wall in groups on occasion, it doesn't have to mean anything.)
All I know is that my friends who served in the air force are busy with studies and career as usual, not reserve duty, and that nothing has come up lately in the Israeli media or social networks that has made me see the war as any more or less realistic than a few weeks ago. And my friend in the IDF Spokesman's unit, who sometimes knows juicy behind the scenes stuff, hasn't dropped any hints lately or anything (but that could be because of a very serious secrecy regime, so who knows.)
Oh, and it's also clear to me that the ideal outcome for Netanyahu and Barak is if they make a VERY serious show of preparing for war, but are then either forced by the US to sit the fuck down and shut up, or alternatively have the dirty work done for them, by America and other Western powers. They have a good bargaining position with their allies in the US congress and US elections coming up, so I hope they get that outcome (especially the version where nobody does any fighting) and they might.

Another piece of the puzzle, something I just read [in Hebrew]: casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, Netanyahu and Romney's biggest financier, the man who founded and still funds the free daily Netanyahu mouthpiece paper "Yisrael Hayom" (Israel today) at great personal cost, might be so dead set to get Romney in office (I read yesterday Romney's tax cuts will save him astronomical sums, hundreds of billions or something, far more than the already huge sums he's investing in Romney) that he's getting Netanyahu to do his dirty work in creating a rift between Obama and American Jews. I get the impression that it's not really working, since Obama is amazingly manage to snub Netanyahu while still taking a relatively clear stand on Iran, but that might actually feed into the feedback loop, making Adelson and Netanyahu ratchet up the scare even more.

As I mentioned in another thread, AIPAC have now actually said a good word about Obama, so it's hard to tell where things go from here.
And of course it's not unlikely that all of my thinking on this is wishful thinking. But I did take the war talk very seriously for a long time, until that media barrage came and went.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

And I giggle over the two countries involved not being followers of Jesus. 

Of course, this shit is also going to blow my chance to go to Israel this summer. FML.

Life's SO HARD.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Warships, aircraft carriers, minesweepers and submarines from 25 nations are converging on the strategically important Strait of Hormuz in an unprecedented show of force as Israel and Iran move towards the brink of war.

Western leaders are convinced that Iran will retaliate to any attack by attempting to mine or blockade the shipping lane through which around 18 million barrels of oil passes every day; approximately 35 per cent of the world's petroleum traded by sea.

A blockade would have a catastrophic effect on the fragile economies of Britain, Europe, the United States and Japan, all of which rely heavily on oil and gas supplies from the Gulf.

WEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOH! WEEEEOOH!
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