Bullseye Bob

We are nowhere near normalization — and this will be too nuanced for many who have an axe to grind — but the number of vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz has unambiguously risen off the lows during the last 48 hours. Tankers, dry bulk, LPG. It’s a start.

🚨🇮🇷🇺🇸 BREAKING: Traffic jams forming in southwestern Iran as civilians reportedly rush to help security forces capture the downed American pilot. Iranian military urging people to stay away from the area. Source: Middle East Spectator

Many journalists are 25 year old kids who know absolutely nothing about the world beyond the narrow confines of petty ideology. Its North Atlantic Treaty Organization!

BREAKING: The IRGC is now charging tolls, with rates starting at $1 per barrel of oil, on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, paid in Chinese Yuan or stablecoins, per Bloomberg. The process includes: 1. To pass, ship operators must first contact an intermediary company linked to the IRGC 2. They then provide their vessel’s ownership, flag, the cargo manifest, destination, crew list, and transponder information 3. The intermediary then passes the file onto the IRGC Navy’s Hormozgan Provincial Command for background checks to ensure no link to the US or Israel 4. Iran has a ranking system of 1 to 5 for nations, with ships from countries that are seen as friendly more likely to get better terms Once the toll is paid, the IRGC issues a permit code and route instructions for the ship to pass.

Iran was trying to use the North Korean model to get a nuke: create sufficient conventional deterrence so you won’t be challenged in acquiring one (it’s called the Seoul Hostage Problem). This has been explained over and over since day one. Everyone claiming shifting goalposts or no imminent threat has been lying. The reason North Korea was allowed to get nukes is because Seoul (and its 10 million inhabitants) is within artillery and rocket range of North Korea. During the 1994 nuclear crisis, the Clinton administration seriously considered airstrikes on North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor but backed off precisely because of the artillery threat to Seoul. Iran was trying to accomplish the same by stockpiling missiles and drones which would have had the same deterrent effect. The proof is what Iran has been doing in the past month: attacking all its neighbors in order to pressure the US to stop attacking it Beyond this, they were building medium-range ballistic missiles that could reach Paris and London, meaning all of Europe could be held hostage as they built a nuclear bomb. The reason Iran has not built a nuclear weapon until now is not because it couldn’t, but because it knew it would be attacked and denied this capability. So by allowing them to continue developing this conventional deterrence, you would be allowing Iran to get a nuclear weapon. And unlike North Korea, Iran is led by an eschatological death cult Reagan saw nuclear mutually assured destruction (MAD) as both morally bankrupt (because of the innocent-body-count problem) and dangerously fragile because it assumed flawless rationality between adversaries…this means it only takes one irrational actor to destroy the world. Working backwards from the conclusion that Iran’s Islamist regime must never have a nuclear weapon, it was necessary for the US to attack Iran to deny it the conventional capacity to hold the entire eastern hemisphere hostage. Every European leader knows this and behind the scenes praises the US for this action. But they are cowards, held hostage by their own internal Muslim populations, and so adopt these ridiculous public positions. This was never about Israel. And if your argument is that Iran should be allowed to get a nuclear weapon then you are a fool and a traitor to western civilization…you’re a useful idiot