US/Israel conduct airstrikes on Iran again

Regardless of that island this war was happening. It's definitely possible it was used for bipartisan black mail but Trump has always been team Israel. Didn't he make one of his sons a Jew FFS?

Holy ****.. you'd be forgiven for thinking a volcano went off here. These bunker busters just hit a hell of a weapons stockpile.

Whatever Iran had on paper it's now mostly on smoke. They'll not ever get to use even half of it.

Neither the US nor Israel are party to the 2008 CCM treaty and both have used them recently. Can hardly complain now can they?

The psychopaths still have nukes though. Not sure how that'll be handled. It would not surprise me if there was one of each pointed at all their allies (including their greatest) in the case of things going tits up.

The Aranian leaderships are knunts.

The American leadership are knunts.

The European leadership are so fukn sad I wish they were ****.

The Chinese are fukn laughing their asses off.

We're heading into Day 6 now aren't we? You can start comparing to the 10 day war when a relatively fresh Israel attacked a relatively fresh Iran.

Israel are getting hit far less frequently this time around. They clearly degraded them a hell of a lot more then Iran degraded Israel. If anything Israel probably learned a lot from the attacks last year.

As it stands they'll be very happy with how this is all playing out.

On the self sufficiency in oil its more complex than that. The US is not self-sufficient when it comes to refining its own oil.

US domestic crude oil is mostly light-oil. Most US refineries are optimised for heavy-oil. This probably reflects US crude being mostly heavy oil in the past.

The result is that the US imports heavy oil to be refined at US refineries. And the US exports light oil to countries that can refine it.

Most existing U.S. refineries were upgraded between the 1980s–2010s to process heavy and sour crude, imported from places like , Mexico, Venezuela and Canada.

Heavy crude is cheaper but harder to refine. U.S. companies invested billions in complex refineries with units like:

• cokers
• hydrocrackers
• desulfurization systems

These refineries can already process light oil, but they’re optimized to squeeze more value from heavy oil.

When the U.S. shale boom produced huge amounts of light sweet crude, the refining system was not built for that mix.

Large volumes of light crude now come from places like the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico.

Instead of building new refineries, companies often export the crude and let other countries refine it. Major buyers including India, the Netherlands and South Korea.

Online research and things that I know.

If the Iran war has a negative knock on effect for Ukraine Trump will be happy. The whole Trump regime is basically pro Russia and they hate Europe, so everything that harms Ukraine and causes more trouble for the EU pleases them

What's your gripe here exactly? It reeks of begrudgery.

Should individuals, couples or families transiting a region with a commercial airline be left stranded in no-mans-land by their government where they to be caught up in a dynamic conflict. Could it be that many of these individuals also perform critical roles back home and ended up being caught up while on a work trip, transiting or on a holiday?

As for holidays, well that's their own business. It could be a holiday of a lifetime for one person and bi-monthly jaunt for another. Who knows.

I wonder how you'd respond if the Irish consular services did sweet feck all for you in the event you or your family found yourselves in a dangerous spot.

There’s also the “China” factor though- Iran was in bed with China and wouldn’t have survived this long without economic ties with that country, avoiding wider sanctions.

Trump has stirred a hornets nest - he’s disrupted oil going to China; that’s going to be remembered. The American administration can’t say the real reasons they’re supporting Israel in this war- but Trump clearly called out China as an economic adversary in his election campaigning - but yet he’s be relatively quiet about China overall since taking office.

It’s clear democracy or peace is not a primary aim here. Same has happened with Venezuela- it’s about money, oil, competitive advantage and making life a bit more difficult for China .

Its not even western privilege, its pure f*cking stupidity and blatant, arrogant willful ignorance.

The amount of people who believe Dubai is a holiday destination just like Spain, Italy, France, Germany etc is unbelievable.

"Oh I thought it was safe",

"Oh I thought Dubai was different from Iran, Iraq, Israel (insert Middle Eastern sh*thole at war)"

Dubai was always blatently and openly using slave labour and pretending to be western ish. It was always a unsafe, unethical sh*thole.