Trump escalates the war on the premise that the US should provide safe passage to those ships. He dumps a fleet or two of ships into the Gulf, along with a trillion dollars or so for a ground war and insurance for the tankers. The US and Israel promise to keep the Gulf secure in perpetuity.

we’ll be living in a very different world. The boot of the west will come off the neck of humanity, and the rest of the world will finally have a chance to breathe.

We're already seeing this trend and have for years - but Rome doesn't collapse in a day.

The entire point of the petrodollar is to perpetuate the US hegemony. The entire world, including our allies, know this. The average American knows this. It's just that Americans aren't in agreement as to whether the current arrangement with OPEC is a net good or a net bad.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I mean he can do that, but that's not going to magically open the strait. Iran effectively has unlimited resources compared to whatever the US navy can bring to bear. They're on land, and fighting on their home turf. The US has a fundamental logistical disadvantage here, and there's no way around it. The US is no physically capable of opening the strait.

But, let's for the sake of argument assume that the US could magically open up Hormuz. Iran can simply destroy the rest of oil and gas infrastructure in the gulf in response. So, there's going to be nothing to ship at that point. They've already demonstrated their ability to do exactly that. They hold all the cards here.

Right, the entire point of the petrodollar is to perpetuate US hegemony, and that's precisely why the US is fucked now. As long as Iran controls the strait, they control what currency a huge chunk of oil will be traded in. Meanwhile Russia, which is the other major oil exporter, is already trading outside the dollar. On top of that, I expect that many countries will start getting serious about renewables out of sheer necessity. Even if the war stopped tomorrow, it's going to take years to rebuild the infrastructure that's been already destroyed. This isn't a short term shock countries can just ride out. So, we'll see more oil traded outside the dollar, and less demand for oil going forward. This is basically the worst possible outcome for the US.

Whatever the US agrees with OPEC is completely and utterly irrelevant here.

[–] MerryJaneDoe@piefed.world 1 points 11 hours ago

Yeah!