France rejects transit fee for passing through strait

It's too bad Iran kept funding groups that actively attacked other shipping lanes & made maritime travel difficult. 

But it doesn’t honestly because Hitler actually wanted Germany to rule the world for the rest of time

There have bee dozens, hundreds of despots and fascists across history. Our obsession with always going back to f****** nazis is part of what got us here. There are so many historical examples, yet *thats* the one we fixated on and now we have WAAAYY too many f****** people desensitized to it.

What's this got to do with Sigmund Freud?

Always interesting to hear from an old school Republican. I don't know how you deal with watching your party abandon it's ideals, and in some cases do a complete 180 and justify it. Most of the republicans I know either jumped in with maga, or look the other way and act like this is still the same old Republican party. Either way they all are voting for trump, or at best, not voting at all. Not one has had the balls to vote Democrat to get a madman out of office. I really fear for this country.

That feels like a somewhat charitable assessment of their previous spinelessness. My sense is that, in the past, they were unwilling to accept any compromises on the table because they knew that real reform would change the political landscape unpredictably and reduce their near-term political power. And now, they're refusing to hold Trump to account, also because it would be unpredictable and reduce their political power. But the lack of any specific goals or plans, other than near-term control of the levers of power only so liberals cannot have it, is the unifying thread. Same facts as your read, but a different interpretation – I don't think that the press has ever been a huge factor in the Republicans' cosmology, but having to defend actual policy to a bunch of short-termist real and wannabe titans of industry (who donate to their campaigns and form the core of the Republican brand) is something they have been reluctant to engage in since Bill Buckley's time, more or less.

Nevertheless, they have *standards.* Can't have organized crime without organization, and any organization at scale requires some sense of standards.

Yeah but that goes in his personal account, just like the funds from the stolen Venezuelan oil

Let's not name names!

Denmark was paid a lump sum to stop bothering ships in the Sounds. It was the start of freedom of navigation, in 1850. Let's not open this can of worms again.

I laid out the case why Dardanelles and Bosphorus are different than others you’re mentioning. Suez, similarly, is part of Egypt indisputably and has rules accordingly.

Do you not understand the difference between a canal and a naturally navigable waterway outside of any country's borders?

Celsius, otherwise they’d think it’s a compliment

I agree with most of what you’ve said but I might be able to offer a bit of a silver lining. Most states even if they went rogue wouldn’t be able to play chicken like Iran can. Irans advantage is based mostly on being right next to the strait of Hormuz which transported a tremendous amount of the world’s oil and natural gas. This allows them to much more easily attack ships passing through and shut down the trade. Most states do not have a strait of Hormuz to attack. Let’s say the strait did not exist, Iran can’t play chicken because the US could have simply bombed them, destroyed a very large amount of military infrastructure and navy, killed leaders, said “we won” and left. Barely a thing Iran could do about it because the US in our chicken game doesn’t even have a car coming at them anymore. They could attack neighbors but it won’t have anywhere near the same global impact that Hormuz has. This means if a state like say Nigeria went rouge, if it was pushed to war, then someone could bomb Nigeria, set them back a decade or two, and leave them in economic and military ruin unable to do much for a while. Iran is not alone in its capacity to play chicken but it’s not very common. For France if the tolls stick around I’m not entirely sure what their plan is considering their economic conditions are teetering a bit (their current plan is don’t let the tolls stick around in the first place). My guess is since they don’t particularly super heavily depend on Hormuz they will try to find elsewhere to buy what they need. But no matter what it’s going to hurt if the tolls stick around. Arabs I don’t know Im not too informed on how they like to do things in these cases. They will be opposed to Iran in the future In general for sure, and they have less restraint than European states, but it’s hard for me to say what they will do about tolls other than most likely not wage a direct military war since even the US is having a hard time pulling that off and Iran has shown they can blow up their stuff. The next decade or so will be anything but boring is the only truly certain thing that’s going to happen.

You’re all good man I’ve misinterpreted things plenty of times before. You are correct it’s a retreat from back then. While it seems to be true a lot of international laws and customs turned out to be a loose series of gentlemen’s agreements i would say it’s also true it was better when we followed those.

We do not know what he agreed to, that had not been made public. He has explicitly stated the one that Iran sent out was not true. Based on the confusion of Lebanon I don’t think either party has a solid understanding of the ceasefire.

No I meant domestically, although it’s just 60%. The 90% I was probably getting confused with the percentage refined in US, thanks for correcting. Canada does export most of the rest. https://www.afpm.org/newsroom/blog/how-much-oil-does-united-states-import-and-why In any case my point was we don’t really use the oil that flows through Hormuz and that other countries will be impacted much more quickly and severely. Not sure about the likelihood of the currency swit CB, thanks for bringing that up.