I'd also like to add that prolonged viewing of FOX can negatively impact intellectual development.
What can we expect of a television station that regularly invites Zhang to express his opinions?
2026 Iran War Strategy and Analysis
- Thread starter plawolf
- Start date
What can we expect of a television station that regularly invites Zhang to express his opinions?
Top trade partners of China 2025 (region/countries)
1. ASEAN ~ 15% (Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore...etc)
2. US ~8% (largest as a single country)
3. EU ~8% (Germany, France, Netherland, Italy, Spain etc)
4. Hong Kong ~6% (Key re-export hub to rest of the world etc)
5. South Korea ~5%
6. Japan ~5%
7. Taiwan ~5%
8. Middle East ~4% (Saudi, UAE, etc)
9. Russia ~3%
10. Australia ~3%
11. Brazil ~ 3%
12. India ~2%
...
??. Pakistan ~ 0.4%
These are "recorded" from trade books etc. But what about "hidden" trade, like with Iran, sanction floating ships or unregistered, undisclosed military ledger/book keeping, outside western book keeping etc....
1. ASEAN ~ 15% (Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore...etc)
2. US ~8% (largest as a single country)
3. EU ~8% (Germany, France, Netherland, Italy, Spain etc)
4. Hong Kong ~6% (Key re-export hub to rest of the world etc)
5. South Korea ~5%
6. Japan ~5%
7. Taiwan ~5%
8. Middle East ~4% (Saudi, UAE, etc)
9. Russia ~3%
10. Australia ~3%
11. Brazil ~ 3%
12. India ~2%
...
??. Pakistan ~ 0.4%
These are "recorded" from trade books etc. But what about "hidden" trade, like with Iran, sanction floating ships or unregistered, undisclosed military ledger/book keeping, outside western book keeping etc....
solarz
Brigadier
Yes, you're right. This isn't really about the oil at all, it's about the US economy. Trump didn't want to tank the market, so he lifted sanctions on Iranian and Russian oil. What exactly has changed now?
I think challenging the blockade with a PLAN escort from Djibouti is still the optimal course of action—given about a week to assess the posture and spottiness of the blockade. The USN is holding the blockade at standoff distance due to the threat of Iranian anti-ship missiles. This gives a lot of Arabian Sea for any PLAN escort to rendezvous with merchant shipping while simultaneously avoiding malicious actors trying to draw China into the conflict.
There are no good options for the USN in this scenario because China can escalate horizontally with full casus belli while the US is vulnerable.
There are no good options for the USN in this scenario because China can escalate horizontally with full casus belli while the US is vulnerable.
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Point 1, that is the ceasefire seems to be holding up for now.
Point 2, that there is now a naval blockade.
They are doing a ceasefire and a blockade at the same time.
Haha! Haha!
The verdict in my mind, is that future historians will rate this foolhardy behaviour by the United States, unless they can pull off the win here, in the general war.
This is total desperation, that is one strong argument. This is not really a military move, this is not really a strategic ploy, this probably is total desperation that is trying to not look desperate.
There is some rumour floating around the internet, forget who said it, that this closure of the Strait of Hormuz, if it last for more that two weeks starting a few days ago, the world will face an economic recession worse than the covid great recession.
A spike in prices, due to higher fuel prices and no fertilizer coming out means higher food prices. The rationing of fuel in some ASEAN countries means hard times have hit. If it gets worst, then everyone worldwide will feel it.
Obviously, the clock is ticking.
Just that this is comedy hour! Haha!
I don't see how getting potentially drawn into ww3 with US is preferable to just blocking RE exports. Also, there's not much for the US navy to shoot at right now, push comes to shove you're basically asking for the Chinese escort fleet to get sunk by a far superior force in the area.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
While indeed interesting and prescient, I nevertheless think Brzezinski’s predictions and strategic analysis is fundamentally flawed and rapidly showing its age.
The unspoken underlying assumption behind the whole anti-hegemonic coalition is that due to America exceptionalism, no single other power could ever challenge, never mind surpass, America on its own. Thus the only way American hegemony could end is if certain key major powers band together against it.
You can’t really hold this against Brzezinski, since not one single human alive in his day could have predicted just how far and how fast China would advance.
Nevertheless, the salient point is that China alone can match and surpass the USA. By most measures, it already has. As such, there is no overriding strategic imperative for China to give Iran full spectrum support as a means of cementing such a coalition, as it absolutely should and would in Brzezinski’s model. Indeed, China had already signalled its own preferred post-American model of the ME as one of partnership between Iran and Saudi Arabia instead of an Iranian dominated gulf.
In many ways, this Chinese model is far more ambitious and grand than Brzezinski’s minimum viable product version, as China is seeking to bring both Shia and Sunni halves of Islam on side, such that if it wants to form a coalition later, it will be a grand one.
A reminder China will not risk a hot war with the US until she reaches nuclear parity because the US is quite willing to use nukes on China
The United States should reevaluate its theater nuclear capability requirements for a Taiwan conflict and carefully analyze options to defeat a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan with limited nuclear strikes if necessary.
…
Deterrence of Chinese conventional aggression against Taiwan requires more than conventional deterrence alone. It also requires intrawar deterrence of PRC limited nuclear escalation, and it may, under some circumstances, require a credible threat to use nuclear weapons first to counter Chinese conventional superiority.
The United States should consider nuclear first use if conventional forces cannot stop a Chinese invasion force from reaching Taiwan.
The United States should reevaluate its theater nuclear capability requirements for a Taiwan conflict and carefully analyze options to defeat a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan with limited nuclear strikes if necessary.
…
Deterrence of Chinese conventional aggression against Taiwan requires more than conventional deterrence alone. It also requires intrawar deterrence of PRC limited nuclear escalation, and it may, under some circumstances, require a credible threat to use nuclear weapons first to counter Chinese conventional superiority.
The United States should consider nuclear first use if conventional forces cannot stop a Chinese invasion force from reaching Taiwan.
This author naively believes that nuclear weapons won't explode in the United States!
The entire article discusses how to deter China with nuclear weapons, never considering that the US mainland is also within the scope of nuclear deterrence.
In China, there is never a concept of limited nuclear strikes; there is only a distinction between conventional and nuclear warfare. If the United States uses nuclear weapons first, then the US mainland will also be a legitimate target.
This article is also somewhat outdated and not very useful for reference.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
I actually think nuclear parity isn’t really sufficient. Nuclear parity only works when dealing with rational counterparties who can make hard,
but logical decisions in their own self interest.
If Trump has proved one thing beyond doubt, its that you cannot count on American leaders being sane or educated enough to know what is real, never mind work out what is rationally the best move. And even those who can work out what is in America’s best interests may not choose to pursue that path as they are secretly or openly agents of Israel.
Ironically, Trump’s wonton acts of lunacy might have bought America more time than they would have gotten under sane leadership. But the bad news for America is that if they have convinced China that they cannot be reasoned with or be counted on to act rationally in their own self interest, then that leaves little alternative for China but to seek total annihilation of them, as a nuclear armed lunatic state is literally too dangerous to allow to continue to exist least they decide to end the world because they aren’t getting their way.
I think Chinese strategic planning is likely to be shifting from a Taiwan scenario to an American scenario, where special priority will be given to SSNs, ASW and ABM. Where the PLAN will seek to have USN during the Cold War levels of undersea dominance where every USN boomer is to have a PLAN SSN shadow as soon as it leaves territorial waters. China will also want sufficiently capable ABM interceptors in sufficient quantities to give it high probability of successfully intercepting all US silo based ICBMs and a high proportion of sea based ICBMs. So look out for China to push ahead with orbital solar power plants to further supplement its ABM capacities without outright breaking international space Treaties. All of this is at least 5-10 years away by my estimates.
As such, I would rate the likelihood of direct kinetic conflict between China and America in the near term as medium overall, and low for the Iranian scenario. The chance isn’t low overall because Trump has proven himself to be a coward, so if the PLA is sufficiently confident that he will TACO out of a full nuclear exchange due to him not wanting to die himself, then the threat of nuclear escalation can be put to aside during his presidency. But Iran is too immaterial to Chinese core interests and too far from China’s main power base to go kinetic over.
To fight a limited war with America in the Gulf is to invite defeat as the PLA does not have the forward deployed force numbers or power projection capabilities to win over US military might in the ME at present. To get an advantageous military outcome would require China to expand the war to its own periphery, which is very much against broader Chinese strategic interests and timelines.
Indeed, I think it’s not an oversight that the PLAN has not forward deployed any naval assets to the region. Because I think China is actually more than a little worried that America might want to deliberately engineer a standoff or clash as a way to divert attention from how badly they are loosing the war against Iran by picking a fight with China in a location where they still hold the advantage and expecting to be able to force China to back down to score a win, or if push comes to shove, they are confident they have sufficiently overwhelming local force’s advantage to be able to take on a PLAN task force and win. Especially if they do a sneak attack first.