The US military may place armed troops on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a move that would significantly raise tensions between the US and Iran, The Associated Press reported Thursday.
The idea would be to protect commercial vessels from being seized by Iran, but it could result in direct clashes between the US and Iranian militaries. The US has been steadily increasing its military presence in the Persian Gulf since Iran seized two tankers earlier this year, which was provoked by the US seizing a tanker carrying Iranian oil.
Using the pretext of sanctions enforcement, the US Justice Department seized the Greek tanker Suez Rajan in April and forced the ship to head for Texas instead of China as the US intended to steal the 800,000 barrels of Iranian oil it was carrying. But according to recent media reports, US companies are hesitant to discharge the oil because they fear reprisal from Iran in the Persian Gulf, and the Suez Rajan is stuck off the coast of Texas.
Five unnamed US officials speaking to AP said that no final decision on placing armed troops on commercial vessels has been made. They said discussions have been ongoing between the US and Gulf Arab nations.
The potential plan would involve US Marines and Navy sailors providing security for vessels that requested it. The US recently announced the deployment of an Amphibious Readiness Group/Marine Expeditionary Unit (ARG/MEU) to the region, which typically consists of about 2,200 Marines and three amphibious warships.
Placing armed American troops on commercial vessels in the region would be an unprecedented action. According to AP, the US did not even take the step during the Tanker War, which was part of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
The Tanker War led to a one-day major naval battle between the US and Iran in 1988, which resulted in the sinking of most of the Iranian Navy. A few months after the battle, with tensions still high in the region, a US Navy vessel shot down a civilian airliner, Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 people onboard.
A similar tragedy happened in 2020 when tensions were again soaring in the region following the US assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani via a drone strike in Baghdad. Iran shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, which took off from Tehran, killing all 176 people onboard.
That won’t manner… Iran and Oman own Strait of Hormuz…! For every Iranian tanker US confiscates, Iran would repeat the favor in kind, and the troops won’t make a difference…!
And looks increasingly like they’ll find themselves surrounded by hostiles.
Exactly. But the instincts of Empire are kicking in. Cannot stand being shown impotent. In reality, just making Oman’s life difficult, as all US military ships stick to Oman’s side of the Straits. There are no international waters there. There is a narrower EEZ as defined by UNCLOS. All US can do is use Oman’s narrow EZZ for military vessels. US does not recognize UNCLOS and deliberately violates EZZ for military transit not ever bothering to notify of “innocent right of passage”. US does it routinelly in the name of “freedom of navigation”.
Thank you Democrats and the Left for refusing to allow the US to pump enough oil to control the market price.
We only care about Iran’s seizures because we must. If we don’t the price jumps way too much because the market is so dependent on that region’s oil.
You can bleat and babbler about your fake free markets and other complete nonsence but it’s a choice.
Either a huge military to protect that areas oil or we could control the price by just pumping enough oil to control the market like we used to before the Left became enviromentalist bigots and are only happy if stuff happens somewhere else and others (who do not look like us in the country club) contend with producing the world’s oil.
The US is “pumping” more oil now than it ever has in history.
There is no “enough to control the market price,” though. The US is not the only market actor, and others can take action contrary to US desires.
Take a few economic classes.
We do not pump enough to control prices as we could in the past.
Once you’ve grasped that with a some schooling under your belt you might understand once we do that it removes a lot of the reasons why we care about the ME.
Your self educated Libertarianism is not a way to understand simple market principles it seems and your constant blabbing about current production levels as if that means a thing at their current levels is just comical.
Not only does the US produce more oil now than it ever has, over the last few years the US has become the largest oil producing country in the world. It pumps 18.5% of the world’s oil supply. If it doesn’t pump enough to control prices now, it never did before either.
And that does happen to be the case. Absent a monopoly on production, which it doesn’t have, never had, and isn’t going to get, and complete absence of demand elasticity, which is never going to happen, there is no quantity of oil which can be pumped to “control prices” as such. The price can be driven one way or another when any large producer chooses to pump more or less — until another producer reacts by changing its own behavior.
I’ve probably forgotten more about economics than you’ve ever bothered to learn. If you hadn’t been too busy staring at your professor’s boobs, for example, you’d know that no, “free trade” ideas didn’t originate with the Chicago School or in the Reagan era.
Bla bla bla.
Your understanding of simple economic issues and even the history of this paticular issue is so small that it is not worth my time.
Go play with the kids and stop with these replies that just show how little you know.
As always you make claims such as that idiocy about freemarkets as you just did so you can refute it as if you “got me”
A cheap internet comment section tactic, answering something that was never said but that is you, is it not? How many times have you done that?
In fact your inane boast about how much you know is just the cry of a uneducated man that knows reading a few books is not a replacement for a real education like I have.
It is sad comical cry and you just look so small when you repeat it as you do.
There is still a lot of oil under ground in the U.S. My grandfather was an oil field rough neck and brick mason during the 20’s, 30’s, early 40’s. He told my father that there were many oil fields brought in that were then scrubbed nearly clean, the wells capped and marked. It was a process he didn’t understand until years later.
You are correct.
Before the ME’s production, ours controlled the market.
It is still in the ground where your Gramps shared.
My gramps had a pump in his back yard, in the city.
They used to be so plentiful before it was decided ME oil production would raise them out their wars/poverty and behave like good little oil sellers in return.
What’s a few trillion dollars to protect that area of the world, it’s “free trade” and all that rot.
Is it possible the reason they cut off fracking was because it jeopardized the petrodollar? From my understanding, starting 2009, US intended to drop the price of oil to starve Russia and Iran in Revenue, but it backfired when Russia decided to increase oil output to lower the value even more. This in turn ruined the Saudi revenue as they decided to increase output for several years. If you looks at price of OPB, prior to Covid shutdown, it was at its lowest point. Shortly after he got in office, Biden reversed all fracking and began his Saudi apology tour.
No, The Left have turned the environment into a religion.
You are trying to think of plausible reasons but with them it’s based on emotions among kind of stupid people.
Then add in the “free traders” who babble about free markets as if those exist in a pure form and there are not a few making money while factory workers learn to code or go work for Amazon.
If you’re so “educated,” why don’t you display any grasp whatsoever of basic macroeconomics? I mean, we might be able to have an interesting conversation if you were, for example, a Keynesian. But it’s like you read (but couldn’t quite grasp) rack cards from Buchanan’s and Perot’s presidential campaigns and had a degree printed up or something.
Right…
You literally have not had a community college class in any sorts of economics and I have a 4 year science degree that has really good grades backing it up.
You are a joke.
“You literally have not had a community college class in any sorts of economics”
In your imagination, perhaps. In the real world, I did 101 at, yes, a community college. Before studying in a non-college environment, both reading and conversing with a number of excellent economists, as I do to this day (more than 20 years after my stint as managing editor at the Henry Hazlitt Foundation — look HIM up some time). I didn’t have time for a degree. I had to make a living.
Oooooo Econ 101….wow
(is he kidding? Econ 101?) and you read books and few journal articles.
The more you share, the more my point is made.
You always jump in when I make economic comments and try to get into pissing contests with your comical economic self taught nonsence.
I do not care to read the same crap you keep posting whenever I broach these topics.
You claimed the West’s logistics would keep Ukraine supplied and Russia would not be able to themselves and you were wrong.
So wrong it must embarrass you.
That more than demonstrates you have no idea about economics excepts perhaps rudimary knowledge that at most times is laughible.
Econ 101…give me a break.
You talked with people, lol
You read books, lol
This is so comical…
The guy with no education keeps arguing with me….lol.
“You claimed the West’s logistics would keep Ukraine supplied and Russia would not be able to themselves and you were wrong.”
I claimed that the west’s production capacity and logistics capabilities make it far easier and less comparatively expensive in terms of increasing war production with minimal impact on domestic consumption for the west to keep Ukraine supplied than it is for Russia to supply itself. And I was, and am, right.
If you don’t believe me, look at the Russian central bank’s claims on Russian production. They claim a slight increase in general production but a decrease in consumer and infrastructure areas. They’re devouring their non-military economy to boost their war economy … and still not keeping up.
As for “education,” that involves actual learning, not just commenting on your professor’s appearance. You’ve shown no reason to suspect that you engaged in the former.
The insecurities you have from your lack of a diploma is so comical.
Still trying to engage in a economic online pissing contest as if that will assuage something for you?
Someone else observed you just repeat alot of neocon and progressive banalities and they were so right.
In fact your so-called Libertarian leanings are not representative of most of those in your really small club but then, who cares about that club?
I don’t.
You sure post a lot about things you claim to not care about.
I may take a degree one of these days, or not. I’ve racked up a few hours of community college credit (and a 4.0 GPA) over the years. I could probably finish an associate’s in a year, and there are “old guy going back to school” scholarships available for that and bachelor’s studies. But it would be an “I feel like doing that” kind of thing, not a needed professional qualification. I have no ambition to be a professor.
A few hours…..
The more you share the more comical it gets.
I post stuff because I want to.
Not because I want you to reply with your limited knowledge of economic issues and your desire for a pissing contest to prove something to yourself.
Since you could hit the “block/ignore” button any time you like, but choose to actively seek out fights you’re not equipped for instead, it seems that you very much want me to reply, in hope that at some point you’ll find a subject on which your limited knowledge is less limited than mine.
Feel free to keep trying, but you’re not fooling anyone with your protestations that you really, really, really, really don’t like choosing to do what you repeatedly choose to do.
Do you cut and paste that?
How many times have you replied to me (and quite a few others) have you posted that?
Or do you just have it memorized?
So comical and predictible…
Simple minds never fail to amuse me….
Gosh-a-mighty, I like you both and it makes me sad when ya’ll get into such…intense….disagreements 🙁
He always wants to get into a contest to prove something.
That literally is when I do not want to bother.
This a blog comment section, not a econ class where you present papers throughout the semester (researched, edited with sources that better be good ones and varied) to your class for a debate.
That is a real discussion, not a few paragraphs of poorly sourced factoids like you find here in a univited reply demanding I take some simplistic libertarian nonsence seriously and reply as if I do.
I’ve got a high school diploma Mr. T….lol.
You actually make more sense than a low educated Libertarian (econ 101? That is so funny) who derives his self-esteem from arguments in a blog comment section usually from someone who just wants to be left alone to make comments here without a “worry” that the mod will decide to reply and try to get a argument going…again.
I’m not “educated” per se, ZaSu, unless one considers reading voraciously to be education. There are many subjects of which I confess to ignorance ( economics is one) and other subjects in which I can blow anyone out of the water, such as the US Civil War.
But I do possess an IQ of 134, no brag, just fact.
My sister is a highly educated retired psychologist but doesn’t possess a lick of horse sense.
I try to rely on the latter.
US Civil war?
I took a online class about that.
Attended a great lecture though in person (extra credit, but what’s that worth when you are getting a A?;-) that was done by a professor from a medical college whose hobby was Civil War medicine.
You would have loved it, I bet.
I WOULD have loved it! The sad fact is that more soldiers died of infection than actually being killed. If only they’d have known that alcohol was a disinfectant.
The best vacation of my life was a trip to Gettysburg. I had dreams of moving there and being a tour guide 🙂
my dad is a TV repairman.
he has an ultimate set of tools.
But it’s CHEVRON’S oil, Mr. T. We need to nationalize like ( gasp) Venezuela did under Chavez.
I may be mistaken but I believe that Amerikkka exports more oil than remains here.
Yes, the US needs to nationalize its oil industry … if it wants to go from being one of the richest countries in the world to one of the poorest. Otherwise, not so much.
There seems to be some argument over whether the US is actually a net exporter of oil, or just close.
it’s not a secret man.
US OIL IMPORTS & EXPORTS
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=727&t=6
ZaSu, all while happily ignoring the fact that the United Snakes military produces ONE FOURTH of the world’s toxic emissions!
I can’t recall which huge petroleum producer it is but the US military compromises a bigger portion of their business than do civilian sales.
That cheap and plentiful “chicken” in your pot has huge costs (like that pollution you share about) that politicians know we ignore while we merrily buy our cheap crap from overseas.
hey more oil is exported from the US every day than is imported.
what do you think would happen to the extra oil that might be pumped from US soil if only the evil leftys would allow oil companies to drill a little harder?
Well….
A few years ago prices were down because COVID reduce the need for the supply available, then we got to see what happens when future output that the market believed was going to happen is taken off the market.
Right there shows how supply drives prices as well as policy decisions does as well.
Another recent demonstration of how supply works when the market believes use is on the way down because of recession is when the Saudis announced a million a day cut but that did not move prices up like some believed it would. Europe is going into a recession (lower use) that tampered the increase they were seeking.
So would doubling (I’m throwing a number out) our output effect market prices?
Of course it would. Can one control to some extent world prices with production?
Of course you can but a million a day was not enough to do it as the Saudis believed it could just with a announcement.
Its time to release Zero Point Energy,to save the world from global warming, pollution,peak oil, and endless oil wars.
Did I miss the mention of the US seizing Iranian tanker ships, then selling the oil on the open market? A clear case of piracy.
they literally bragged about doing that.
they are actually proud of themselves.
So, US forces want to seize private ships because Iran forces might try to seize them.
Probably, the idea of the US agreeing to stop seizing Iran’s ships hasn’t even occurred to this administration. They see these tit for tat replies as an opportunity to escalate.
It should be interesting to see if the shipping companies are willing to cooperate with the US government. It must seem to insurance companies that US troops on private vessels is a very high risk to take.
The solution is simple, put armed troops on all commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Let the pirates beware. Oh, that’s right, it’s only piracy if they do it.
Whose f*cking bright idea was THIS?
With the United Snakes promoting war with Russia and China, I suppose they didn’t want the third member of the alliance—-Iran—-to feel left out.
Sarcasm never gets old, NA 😉
Yes! Thanks, Gypsy! I can’t wait to see how many wars we’re going to start before igniting a humanity ending nuclear war. In case you didn’t notice, the grocery stores are running low on popcorn. I can’t stop myself. LOL
Potato chips work too, NA 😉
LOL! I’m switching to potato chips.
Interesting. Double the pride, twice the fall.
What could possibly go wrong?
military mans on the love boat?
https://youtu.be/m_wFEB4Oxlo
There is an interesting aspect to the MAL indictment which alleges
that President Trump showed a highly classified document to persons who were not allowed to see it and that this document allegedly dealt with war plans against Iran.
If that is correct, then the existence of such Iran war plans and documents spawned by them has to go all the way back to Eisenhower. The French begged Ike to nuke the North Vietnamese. Ike said no but as the experienced commander he was he must have ordered the Pentagon to come up with plans of attack/defense. Which of the following Presidents are likely to have asked for upgrades and/or new plans? JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama, Trump, Biden. All? Yes, all.