Maged Mandour

Waiting for the EU and China to get in on the blockade action

The blockade always made more sense than seizing Kharg Island. It stops Iran’s exports, its revenues, is a counterpoint to their closing the Straits. They may attack Gulf oil facilities but it puts greater pressure on Iran. It also puts great pressure on China to pressure Iran.

Iran’s position and unwillingness to give in to U.S. policy red lines on the nuclear issues is a reflection of the fact Tehran believes that’s it’s winning and can wait the U.S. out. We won’t see a change in behavior until we see a change in perception.

💢 Trump’s First Post After Failed Islamabad Talks: A Naval Blockade of Iran President Trump’s first Truth Social post after JD Vance left Pakistan without a deal was a link to a Just The News analysis laying out the U.S. naval blockade of Iran as his next option if Tehran refuses to accept Washington’s “final and best offer.” The article argues Trump could flip Iran’s Hormuz tollbooth strategy against it — stationing U.S. warships at the strait’s 21-mile chokepoint to physically control which vessels pass, cutting off Iranian oil exports and squeezing China and India, Tehran’s two largest customers, into pushing for a deal. “It would be very easy for the U.S. Navy to exert complete control over what does and does not go in and out of that Strait,” Lexington Institute defense analyst Rebecca Grant told the outlet. The piece notes the USS Gerald Ford — the carrier that led Trump’s naval blockade of Venezuela before the U.S.-backed ouster of Nicolás Maduro — is now in the Persian Gulf alongside the USS Abraham Lincoln.

I see much commentary on this which misunderstands the evolution of Islam in particular. Here's a brief thought experiment: How would the Arab-Islamic conquests have progressed had they followed the Israeli pattern? The Hijazi Arabs leading unified Arabian tribes would have come to replace the populations they conquered. Arabs would have gradually forced them out, without offering the option of conversion to Islam. Instead, a constant stream of peninsula Arabs would have been brought in in a vain effort to Islamise and Arabise the state. As original population numbers continued to grow, this Arab-Muslim elite would have resorted to increasingly desperate measures to erase them. Islam would not have evolved since it would have arrived as a fully formed religious system from the start. How would the Zionist movement have evolved had it followed the Arab-Islamic model? A small core would have imposed Hebrew as the official language on all subjects, who in time would convert to the state religion, which was in itself evolving. As it evolved, its intellectual luminaries in law, theology and philosophy would have come from the indigenous convert communities. This highly syncretic process would have transformed the original religious ideology into something almost unrecognizable in time - a hybrid civilizational project leading the world in its time. (NB: On the evolution of Islam - the part where commentators usually get it wrong - there is a now large body of literature by Islamicists and other scholars of the Late Antique world)

“The elderly were killed, small children were killed, mothers were killed…” I ask Israel’s Permanent Representative to the UN Danny Danon about growing international commendation over strikes on Lebanon which killed at least 357 people