Occam's razor... senility? I'm tired of fixing this.
> can much more easily explain with [something]
An "easy explanation" is very different from a truthful and proper one. I mean, different as night and day.
Occam's razor might well describe actions of a cold calculating leader. But of Trump..?
https://gcaptain.com/controlled-passage-first-ships-edge-thr...
Make Europe jump to another more solid economic and defense ally? Increasing even further the difficulties to do a preemptive attack?
The whole thing is a whole mess. Why didn't they seized the strait first? Why didn't they secure pathways to their own control first?
I see that not telling any of the allies first was a strategic decision with consequences for decades to come. If not attacking European and Asian economies was not the main goal I can't comprehend what was even the plan.
Or would the plan be creating the scenario for another world war? That is even stupid as it only made the other economies attack to want to retaliate hard. And on the other side would be everyone else with nuclear weapons. The only outcome would be the end of the world.
(To be fair, all mega rich have built super bunkers)
IMO, they watched too many movies and simply assumed their own victory.
> Make Europe jump to another more solid economic and defense ally? Increasing even further the difficulties to do a preemptive attack?
While they do seem to want Europe to spend more on defence, I think it's genuinely not occurred to them that threatening to seize Greenland and Canada (and Iceland even if by accident) and dishonouring all the allies who lost servicepersons while assisting the US on previous missions, and putting tariffs on everyone, and interfering with everyone else's domestic politics, might make us all unwilling to assist in their adventures.
Basically, yes, they want Europe to be a solid economic and defence ally (and culture-war ally), but in the NPC sense, not as actual sovereign nations with our own interests* who aren't just simple computer programs that exist solely to make their lives more interesting.
> The whole thing is a whole mess. Why didn't they seized the strait first? Why didn't they secure pathways to their own control first?
If "they" is "the US armed forces", the answer is: they can't.
The geography massively favours the defender; and even if the geography didn't, developments in drone warfare since current US materiel was developed has shifted hard enough to render it similar utility to the Russian materiel vs. Ukraine.
> (To be fair, all mega rich have built super bunkers)
I don't see this helping them, but like that one with the carbon fibre submarine, I don't think you get them to understand why it's the wrong kind of strength.
* even though we also broadly agree that Iranian leadership and nuclear ambitions are a threat, for most of us they're quite a long way down the list, for the average person in the UK I think Iran was somewhere between bus timetables and the price of organic cocoa before this second concurrent "3 day special military operation" started
What is happening instead is that Iran is making agreements with various countries to let their ships through. These countries stand to lose it all again in case of a US attack, so they have an interest in trying to stop it.
It quacks way more like a duck.
… and then …
“The binding constraint on Hormuz was never a minefield or insurance. It is the US Navy’s willingness and ability to reopen it.”
The damage of loosing even 1 carrier is much much higher than 20 years ago because of this. But US force itself to play this unfavorable game that its enemies can not even dream about.