“Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) called President Trump twice Thursday, urging him to launch strikes against the Houthis as the Iran-backed group closed in on a vital Red Sea chokepoint,” Axios reported, citing two U.S. officials. “Trump declined, and U.S. officials stressed the administration has no plans to intervene directly against the Houthis for now.”
Is this the moment the Saudis have to finally admit to themselves that Trump isn't just a power obsessed narcissist lost in his delusions who has kicked all the adults out of the room, he actually genuinely has no clue how to string ideas together into coherent thoughts and will undermine literally everything for zero reason.
17 Comments
adespoton@lemmy.ca · 12 pts · 2d
Well, at least this cloud has a massive silver lining :)
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 2d
gold lining, trump loves gold.
green_red_black@slrpnk.net · 8 pts · 2d
Once the Saudi's inform that they are reconsidering the investment arrangements Trump will change his tune.
skhayfa@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
US army reached its logistics limits, they can't patrol the straight of Hormuz and Bab all Mandeeb. Especially with the low ammo levels.
Rothe@piefed.social · 3 pts · 2d
Change his tune as in accepting the public humiliation of accepting Iran's peace terms. That is his only option for making this go away.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 2d
Saudis thought they bought influence with trump, by throwing money at him, it dint. saudis dint have epstein files, or the media outlets that give all that influence.
Rothe@piefed.social · 1 pts · 2d
And not least Israel.
Burn_The_Right@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 2d
🤣 Too late! The Saudis have funneled many billions into the Trump family pockets already. Rule number one in the game of grifts: no refunds.
The best part is, they will probably offer the Trump cartel even more money! 😆
green_red_black@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 2d
Said billions is but chump change for the Saudis
Burn_The_Right@lemmy.today · 0 pts · 2d
True. Maybe Trump can convince them to part with a few trillion this time. He needs to catch up with fElon somehow.
green_red_black@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 2d
"We might. But first, about the Iran situation."
NathanRanch@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 2d
American power now exists not to deter as it once did, but to be tested. All that equipment will be replaced with printed money too, because the show must go on. We'd be lucky not to piss away trillions of dollars to maintain this illusion, but the show must go on. Whatever our reaction might be to losing our power, it's probably going to cost us a lot more than this war has so far.
bedwyr@piefed.ca · 4 pts · 2d
As of now, the Houthis declared the waterway is open to all shipping except saudi vessels they've already identified.
The Saudis asked the US for help, and the US declined action instead offering intel and the like.
Meaning it's likely the administration and the houthis have an understanding, at least for now, the prez will probably attack them later. But for now, the strait is mostly open. The shutting down to all shipping would force ships to go around Africa rather than the suez canal and cause a large amount of inflation.
BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
Godspeed to the Ukrainian drones bound for Russian oil transport and infrastructure.
supersquirrel@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 2d
Unfortunately, the shutting down of the Red Sea will only make the case for nations in the vicinity of russia buying russian oil more, which is one of the reason Trump's daddy clearly wanted him to start the Iran War even though russia is ostensibly Iran's ally and thus has ostensibly been "disadvantaged" by the Iran War.
...don't pay attention to the fact that the one thing Ukraine desperately needs is ballistic missile interceptors and the US and Israel chose to start a war of aggression that everybody knew would consume almost the entire stock of air defense missiles in Europe and European allied nations in short time.
If there is a silver lining here for Ukraine it is that Ukraine is the best in the world at littoral maritime small unit incursion with unmanned vehicles and Ukraine is similarly by the same capability the best in the world at securing littoral environments from small unit unmanned incursions (at least in terms of skill and doctrine, maybe not in raw equipment capability) so Ukraine will and already is playing a crucial role in building the future picture of maritime security that facilitates global shipping being relatively reliable and safe.
To be honest, I think a lot of what is happening here is probably classified, but suffice to say the obvious question when you cannot sail a ship through a strait because of the capacity of troops, small gunboats and ground launched missiles to destroy surface targets is well... can we just sail through the strait 10 meters below the water? These are the kinds of questions I am sure many Ukrainians have already thought very hard about and acted on.
I think that the Ukraine War cannot end until the Palestinian Genocide and connected Iran War reach some kind of resolution or end trajectory as well, and hopefully the geopolitical change in leverage here is enough to make the regional actors doubt the wisdom of just falling in line with whatever plan the US and Israel has even if it means blowing up Turkey next... which might lead to the end of the Ukrainian War finally becoming possible but make no mistake in general this is a tenuous position for the entire earth in a way that isn't good for Ukraine, it distracts nations from spending time supporting Ukraine.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 4 pts · 2d
Or the Saudis could just... give up on regime change in Yemen? Besides, they've tried this twice by now and it didn't fucking work.
NathanRanch@lemmy.zip · -1 pts · 2d
We lost. Not just America, but many 'western' - and I hate using that word - strategies were just tested and found wanting. Maybe if Ukraine has taken Moscow by now, Iran would be more likely to make a deal?