Responding to terrorism gives the terrorists control and encourages it.
I always think of prison systems in contexts like this, but terrorism is more obvious — the whole point of terrorism is to excite response. That’s why it’s called “terrorism”.
That’s ridiculous for any number of reasons.
If Iran detonates a nuke underground that’s not “hands off”, that’s the end of any negotiations with the regime.
And no one has been willing to do anything against North Korea since 1953, because of China. It’s got nothing to do with nukes.
As if we’ve been willing to seriously negotiate before. No; if they had nukes we would negotiate with them seriously, or we’d ignore them. Instead of just relying on terror and killing.
Fundamentally, America is a bully. We glory in terrorizing and attacking nations that can’t fight back, but can’t stand up against anyone willing and able to hurt us back.
Apparently there is some hacking going on at top levels.
Is it really “hacking” if you guess Patel’s password is “1234”?
Wasn’t Trump hacked some time ago and his password was something like “MAGA” ?
Copying from the Iran breaking news thread:
BBC - The United Arab Emirates (UAE) said a number of people had been injured in an Iranian strike on a key aluminium plant in Abu Dhabi, with significant damage reported by operator Emirates Global Aluminium.
A challenge for the US here is that they’ve put high tariffs on Canadian aluminum, because of all the fentanyl we’re shipping to the US. (Sarcasm). As a result, Canadian aluminum smelters have found other customers around the world and locked in contracts. Contracts that are honoured.
SO… The US industry has both increased prices, and aluminum buyers have gone to other sources such as… The Middle East. Which supply is now farked, due to the bombing campaign.
End result; Much higher costs for a lot of product in the US.
Winning!
Yay us! 
Valid targets. After all, Iran can’t let its enemies have anything that might allow for the production of chemical or biological or nuclear weapons. Or does that logic only work for America and Israel?
Suckers! 
Someone explain to me how the Marines are going to invade Karg Island. Karg Island is located in the Persian Gulf. To get there, the ships carrying the Marines will have to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. I’ve heard that’s a dicey cruise lately; just how’s that going to happen without losing some ships and all hands aboard?
I would guess that with a good escort they should be able to transit the Strait with acceptable losses.
The problem is that is not possible to escort all the traffic in the strait in the same manner AND that “acceptable loses” is different for the military than for civilians.
Also, that people like Trump and Hegseth probably have a rather distorted idea of what “acceptable losses” are. Trump is a malignant narcissist who would regard any level of casualties as acceptable as long as he isn’t one of them, and Hegseth is a performative “hard man” who likely looks at major casualties as a sign of how “tough” his “warfighters” are.
The military will want to be careful, but they’ll push for recklessness (this whole war is reckless, after all). Trump and Hegseth won’t have the same concern for consequences the military does.
From a military perspective we might talk acceptable losses but I’m not sure what that means politically. The United States typically has a low tolerance for American casualties even when we’re behind the war effort. In this particular case, where the objectives for the war seem ephemeral at best, I don’t know if most Americans will stomach many deaths at all.
Politically speaking, acceptable losses would IMHO be far lower than militarily speaking, but still probably attainable, say they cross the straits and there are 10 or so casualties, mostly wounded, there have been more than that already in the war.
If a ship is sunk or seriously hit and we start talking about hundreds of casualties though…
Trump doesn’t care what most Americans want. He does care about the praise he gets from his sycophants though, so any effects come down to how much casualties will change their tune (including how well they convince themselves it’s the fault of everyone else besides Trump).
Oh, yeah, we all know Trump doesn’t care about American lives beyond the adolation he receives from his lickspittles and toadies. This war already has low support among registered voters as a whole even if a lot of Republicans are rallying around Trump. I suspect support for the war will continue to go down south, even with Republicans, as the costs ramp up and more American lives are lost. It’s possible Trump, in a desperate bid to set things right, will continue to escalate.
I’m also wondering about all those countries in the Middle East that bribed Trump. Does Bahrain and Qatar regret bribing Trump? Will people be less likely to bribe Trump in the future?
My guess is that the Marines are going to reinforce existing bases to begin with and, if and when ground troops are eventually deployed to islands, it will be to Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb, and Abumusa to begin with.
A Marine Expeditionary Unit includes 12 MV-22B Osprey tiltrotor VTOL aircraft, each can carry up to 32 marines in combat conditions, so a single sortie could put a couple companies on the island. They can also use LCAC high-speed (40 knots at full load) hovercraft vehicles to support a beach assault, if their ship permits (Boxer has a well deck for the hovercraft, Tripoli does not). I’d guess you could put most of the firepower of the MEU ashore in the first wave, and follow up with some heavier weapons in a later wave, or possibly airdrop artillery or light armor support from some C-130s flying low and slow. So not much need to risk slower, larger ships in the Gulf itself.
This doesn’t include the costs and risks of maintaining a hold of Kharg Island, though Wikipedia says that it does have its own source of fresh water, so it’s got that going for it.
Only if they’re all operational and none of them crash on the way. The Osprey is notorious for having a low readiness factor, as well as a high accident rate.