this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026

343 points (98.3% liked)

World News

55825 readers

2024 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world

Recommendations

How to spot Misinformation and Propaganda

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

NewsAutoMod@lemmy.world

Tenthrow@lemmy.world

little_cow@lemmy.world

lemmyAtom@lemmy.world

jordanlund@lemmy.world

343

‘Worst nightmare’: anger and frustration as Gulf states bear brunt of war they did not start (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 month ago by HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works to c/world@lemmy.world

132 comments fedilink hide all child comments

An eerie quiet hangs over Ras Al Khaimah’s industrial port. Usually a thriving maritime hub of the United Arab Emirates, now ships stand docked and silent. Not far out along the hazy horizon, a backlog of hundreds of tankers have lined up in recent days, halted along a waterway flooded with danger.

Any vessel heading past Ras Al Khaimah out to the Arabian Sea must traverse the world’s most treacherous strip of water for shipping today: the strait of Hormuz. Just over 20 nautical miles from Ras Al Khaimah, two oil tankers heading for the strait were attacked by Iranian missiles this week, one catching fire.

It is one of the many consequences facing Gulf states as they are pulled deeper into a war that they did not start and had diplomatically tried to prevent.

For decades, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Oman have allowed US military bases, infrastructure or access on their soil, and have been among the largest buyers of American weapons and technology. In return, the US has stood as the Gulf’s closest and most significant military partner and protector.

But now, Gulf states have growing concerns over the relationship, analysts say, after Donald Trump was seen to wilfully torpedo peaceful diplomatic negotiations in favour of starting a war in the Middle East.

(page 2) 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] Bonifratz@piefed.zip 7 points 1 month ago (6 children)

I think Trump's best course of action is to take the loss, pull out and try to sell it as a "mission accomplished" at home, which might just work for the redhats.

Then he still has to hope that the mullahs take the win and leave it at that, not trying to avenge the old Khameini any further.

And he still has to hope that he hasn't permanently damaged the alliances with the Gulf states.

And he still has to hope that the economic chaos he's started doesn't escalate and it doesn't take too long to return to normal.

Etc.

I.e. the US is very likely fucked in the long term. But all other options seem even worse.

[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 month ago

And he still has to hope that he hasn’t permanently damaged the alliances with the Gulf states.

And he still has to hope that the economic chaos he’s started doesn’t escalate and it doesn’t take too long to return to normal.

Unless those were his marching orders in the first place. Trump is a chaos agent, and he uses the disorder he causes to commit more acts of corruption and more power grabs. Every self-created crisis is a pretext to commit the next crime.

[–] baller_w@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago

Yeah, taking the L would be best for everyone in the short term, but the Iranians must seek nuclear arms now, at any cost, because it’s the only thing that makes other countries take each other seriously so it seems. So the options of the US all suck:

Allow Iran to gain nuclear capability, and deal with the consequences (which I think may include a nuclear detonation on US soil). Israel and the US won’t let that happen.
Invade, get all fissile material out of Iran, and engage in nation building activities (again) which has never ended badly /s. I think this is the most likely option.
Declare victory and leave Israel to do their worst.

I really don’t see any other option here. The market will tank, energy prices go trough the roof, we hit another depression, and everyone the world over feels the pain. 30% of Americans will still back this play because of “freedom” or because “Kamala would have done the same thing” (I disagree, but guess who did do this? NOT KAMALA).

This die was cast when Trump tore up the nuclear deal which met be the biggest strategic blunder since Bush The Lesser invaded Iraq for no reason other than to “get even”.

My entire life we’ve been at war and I can’t believe we’re here again…

[–] Wakmrow@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

It isn't revenge for khameini.

The Iranians have tried to negotiate in good faith for decades. Now they need to inflict as much pain and violence on the global economy so people know not to fuck with them any more. The only reason to come to the table for them is if they think they can't maintain drone/missile launches.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

Hmm. Maybe he can put a tariff on Iran? Or maybe build a wall around it?

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 month ago

MBS and other Gulf dictators were begging Trump and Israel to attack Iran. They are now being served a good example of FAFO. In particular, I hope MBS and MBZ go down in flames. They are the worst of this inhuman scum.

[–] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago (12 children)

As a thought exercise, I was considering what the other countries in the middle east could have done to avoid this conflict.

I ended up with nothing reliable. They did not have sufficient power to address the problems in the Iranian regime. And even if they could, the US would likely just be attacking the next state on Israel's hit list and cause similar problems.

The only thing that might have gotten close, is to outspend the Zionists in their interference in US politics.

[–] MrNesser@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

If your running that thought experiment it's not just the Arab states funding trump and America.

Those same states could also have curtailed Iran's influence in the region as well including removing funding for the various military and terrorist groups they all have a hand in.

Frankly they have raked in the money while others suffer and now they are suffering because of it.

Meanwhile the orange toad is using the money they gave him to further his own agenda and using their countries as pawns.

[–] NannerBanner@literature.cafe 4 points 1 month ago

As a thought experiment, what do you think would have happened if they wound down their involvement with the u.s., and actually tried to come to their own arrangement with Iran? Maybe a united front of the OPEC countries would have been enough to give the middle finger to any country that supplied Israel with weapons...

Get in bed with china, make their own deals with African nations and india to get industrial capabilities up and running, and we'd see a very large and sudden swelling of the global south.

load more comments (10 replies)

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

The beatings will continue until America is great again. Apparently the strategy is to lower the bar on what “great” means by dragging the entire rest of then world down.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

KSA: "Yeah I defnitley didn't do nothing just like Israel over there. I don't even know what an Iran is"

[–] BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

They should start adding convenience fees to US oil.

The US is absolutely defenseless against hidden fees and surcharges.

load more comments