23 minutes ago, Smokey and the Bandit said:

Before the March 4 closure of the Strait, the UK relied on West Asia for at least 50% of its jet fuel imports.

Since the UK cut off Russian supplies in 2022, it shifted its dependency entirely to the Middle East.

Saying "it was fine until it broke" is like saying a bridge with a 50% crack was "fine" until a truck drove over it. The structural weakness was always there; the Strait closure just exposed it.

As Marco Rubio pointed out, the "war" was a preemptive strike to dismantle a drone and missile shield that was about to make Iran "unattackable" while they finished their nuclear program.

While the UK debates the "legality" of the strike, it is simultaneously sending 1,000 troops and Sky Sabre air defense systems to Saudi Arabia to defend against Iranian attacks . If the war is "illegal," why is the UK providing the "shield" for the allies fighting it?

Your analogy doesn't work as the bridge was structurally sound until a bomb hit it a month ago.

Being over-reliant on others for our energy needs is a major problem for Europe as a whole, a problem which - in the case of the UK - successive governments have not addressed. Nevertheless, the UK - rightly in my opinion - did not want to reward Russia for instigating an illegal war. For a similar reason, I hope that the UK manages to avoid increasing our imports of US energy now, even if that leads to further damage to our economy in the short term.

This war being illegal and the UK enhancing its' defences in the region are not mutually exclusive events. The UK and Iran are not allies and are suspicious of each other, why then wouldn't the UK increase its' defence capabilities in the light of this war? However, that does not in any way justify the US's first strike approach.

I have stated in other threads that imo the mounting problems with Iran are, largely, of Trump's making. According to the independent observers and all the other signatories to the Agreement, Iran was compiling with the terms of JCPOA up until the moment that the US - under Trump - left the Agreement and caused its' breakdown in 2018.

The finger of blame for what is happening now should be pointed at Trump.

1 hour ago, connda said:

When Trump first came to office in Jan 2025, I laughed at those who compared Trump to Hitler and other Fascist aggressions.

He has done a complete 180 on his no more wars rhetoric

and is more interested in Israel than America....MAGA turned to MIGA almost immediately very disappointing for everyone not just Americans who voted for him but for the whole world who thought maybe just maybe

he would change things for the better 😭

"No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it".

-Clausewitz

9 minutes ago, mordothailand said:

no one in his senses ought to do so

Trump did because BiBi told him to, totally brainwashed !!

9 hours ago, connda said:

The Official Nazi Justification For The "Pre-emptive" Invasion of Poland

The German government publicly claimed that Poland had been the aggressor and that the invasion was a limited "defensive" or "retaliatory" action to:

• Protect ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) living in Poland from alleged persecution and violence.

• Respond to supposed Polish "atrocities," border incidents, and attacks on German territory or citizens.

• Secure the "Free City of Danzig" (Gdańsk) and the Polish Corridor, which Hitler had been demanding through diplomatic pressure (and which he portrayed as unfinished business from the Treaty of Versailles).

Nazi propaganda had spent months amplifying claims of Polish mistreatment of the German minority in western Poland, including exaggerated or fabricated stories of massacres, rapes, and expulsions.

Now compare that to the Trump cabinet's excuses to invade. If you list them you'll see that Trump, Rubio, and Hegseth's accusations are no more valid than Hitler's accusations used as his excuse to invade Poland. The US has been repeating the same propaganda that "Iran is two weeks from a nuke" for the three decades. Other well worn propaganda points used are that "Iran is an evil authoritarian dictatorship who murders its own people." You hear that same porkie every time the US is getting ready to overthrow a country (Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Venezuela, Iran, and soon Cuba).

Reality:
- The CIA overthrow democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953.
- Iranians took back control in the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
- And since then the US has been trying to destabilize Iran with the intension of overthrowing the government and taking back control of the country and its oil. It has ALWAYS been about controlling Iran's OIL!
The constant demonization of Iran is simple propaganda used during the 47 year information war wages against Iran. The Trump administration took the information war to another level and used it as the excuse to engage in an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran with the explicit intent to "TAKE IT," i.e., steal their oil reserves and project power into the Persian Gulf. Up next? Pushing power projection into Russia and China from the Persian Gulf region and engaging in Anti-access/area denial (or A2/AD) aimed at Russia and China as the United States targets them with unprovoked aggression using proxies in those regions.

All of Rubio's rhetoric is propaganda and part of the US information war waged against Iran.

Iran's record is, in fact, pretty awful. Not just human rights but basic governance. You think Israeli and American intelligence services could have gotten such extraordinarily detailed info if it weren't for rampant corruption and disaffection with the present government. There's no need to put lipstick on the pig that is the Iranian government. The case against the American-Israeli war is strong enough without that.