Yeah this was my thought too. IMO this is the navy choosing to do a less illegal and insane thing than they had been ordered to do, correctly sumising the CiC would not tell the difference.
But like, is the USN even blocking the ports? Or did they find out that they were supposed to be blocking the ports at the same time the rest of the world did, when it was Twuthed, and now they’re also scrambling to figure out WTF it means.
So yes, to your point – he said he was going to “blockade the straight” - and we’re all here discussing the legality of blocking the straight versus Iranian ports and what the impact might be and yadda yadda, all based on a single tweet of unknown consequence.
I dunno, in Trump’s first term (and the shitshow leading up to it) there was a lot of debate about whether or not the media should be giving airtime to Trump’s ramblings, with the attitude I heard on NPR being “He’s the president, we can’t not cover the crazy shit he says”, but dammit, I wish we’d wait for some concrete output from his crazy tweets before we all jump to figure out what it means.
Best typo of the month.
I think there’s a crucial difference here between Trump rants about domestic political policies and ones about overseas military actions. There is a whole bunch of layers of stuff that needs to happen before a Trump rant becomes a piece of government policy (even if many of those layers are less of hindrance to a amoral autocrat than we thought 
). Trump clearly has neither the inclination or temperament to ensure that stuff happens, if it’s anything more involved than signing an executive order.
That’s not the case with overseas military actions. He’s commander in chief, at the top of the chain of command, his insane demented utterances are commands to be obeyed.
And now passenger aircraft are targets.
There is more at the link, including some statistics.
Shockingly, it seems it what the USN is doing on Trumps order is in fact just a purely symbolic blockade on some ports, not a blockade of the straight….
Ships under US sanctions pass through strait of Hormuz despite blockade on ports Middle East crisis live: Ships under US sanctions pass through strait of Hormuz despite blockade on ports | US-Israel war on Iran | The Guardian
Genuinely terrible reporting on this yesterday, no one highlighted that what the USN was doing was nothing like the thing Trump claimed to be doing.
STRAIT!!!
In fact is pretty crooked, not a straight strait at all.
Maybe if somebody tells Trump it’s not actually straight he’ll leave it alone so nobody will think he’s gay.
According to Al Jazeera, 279 ships have transited the Strait since the war began and 22 have been attacked in various parts of the Gulf.
It seems so…
The US blockade of Iranian ports involves more than 10,000 US military personnel, more than a dozen warships and dozens of aircraft, US Central Command said on Tuesday.
No ships have made it past the the blockade, while six merchant ships have complied with direction from US forces, it added.
Though I’ve seen nothing impling there are any oil terminals in any of these ports. So I’m assuming it is entirely symbolic and have no affect on anyone except a couple of small pistachio merchants (and the thousands of US sailors who are now much closer to the assembled Iranian artillery, missiles and drones if the shooting starts again)
Again though why hasn’t any of the reporters covering this done their job and actually discussed all this. FFS
Saying the quiet part out loud. He was so close to admitting "we’re gonna do it too” but caught himself. The world knows what you meant, asshole.
Two can play at “economic terrorism”?
Yeah, this war was well thought out by strategic minds.
Follow up question, “Are you referring to President Trump’s random illegal tariffs and abrogation of outstanding treaties with trading partners?”
The regime change is currently reflected in changes in body temperature.
That’s still not the definition of regime change. The Iranian government continued to function exactly as designed, even selecting a replacement for their supreme leader.
Think about what happened with the United States during World War II. President Roosevelt passed away, yet the government continued to function and the United States even put in a replacement for him.
In neither case was that a regime change. It was only a change in the players.
You don’t have to have regime change to effect a change in policy, for instance, the ascension of Peter 3 to Russia, whose prussophilic tendencies caused him to pull out of the war against it. Unfortunately for the Austrian corporal, they hoped that this would be repeated when Roosevelt died but were mistaken.
That exception was called a miracle for a reason, though.
The country was relatively unified behind Roosevelt as WWII progressed. Iran is losing it’s civilian population to it’s own government. They want a change. They want to choose their leaders which is not happening with the Supreme Leader.
Going forward I expect the Kurds will be integral in the flow of arms to civilians leading up to regime change. The banking infrastructure has to be close to collapse and Russia is in no shape to prop them up. Saudi Arabia already has their pipeline back online to the Red Sea and Hormuz will likely open up soon.
“Likely” has yet to be seen.
Oh sweet child of MAGA.