The port of Bandar Abbas is one of Iran’s major shipping hubs, as well as a big naval base in the Straits of Hormuz, and the site of a big refinery. It is now in chaos. Thousands of trucks, many of them loaded with imported foodstuffs, commercial goods of all description, and even oil products, have blocked the city’s roads, effectively ending all movement in and around the port. The drivers simply shut down their rigs, took the coils out of the engines, and walked away. On the water, there’s a similar shutdown of the hundreds of small boats and ferries that usually carry thousands of people each day to the nearby islands as well as to Dubai. They have clogged the harbor, and nothing is moving.
This is the result of the Iranian regime’s cancellation of energy subsidies, proudly announced by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday. One of the subsidies was on diesel fuel, which has now become eight or nine times as expensive as it used to be, and the drivers can’t survive the cost, nor can the ferry companies. So they went on strike.
It is hard to get details and there are of course many rumors. It seems certain that the regime dispatched some ten thousand Revolutionary Guards to “establish order,” but it’s the wrong remedy. Even the toughest of them can’t convince a truck to start itself, or a ferry to get out of the way. The Deputy Minister of Transportation arrived late this afternoon and met with the leaders of the drivers and ferry pilots, offering to let them raise their prices, although not nearly enough to compensate for the blow of the canceled subsidies. Government officials were overheard arguing with the Guards, who seemed sympathetic to the workers. Not a good sign for the regime.
It’s in spontaneous acts of revolt like this that revolutions begin — remember the strikers climbing the fences in Gdansk or the crowds jeering Ceaucescu in Bucharest? The regimes didn’t last long after either.
Maybe this is finally the same kind of moment for Iran. We can only hope.
who knows? life is full of surprises. but the regime is in a bit of a jam i think…and it could spread.
If the new year brings a revolution to Iran, what will the post-revolution Iran look like? Specifically, what will Iran’s attitude towards the US and Israel be?
Would love to hear your thoughts on this Dr. Ledeen. In the meantime have a happy and prosperous new year ahead.
Good on the Iranian people and they have my support. The key, as you point out, is that the feckless Western politicians and media get in and help.
Merry Christmas to all the Iranian hostages.
Good news indeed. Reminds me a little of accounts of the early days of the French Revolution. No big staged violent action. More a walking-away by the ordinary people for whom the small necessary linkages had broken. These folks, parking their trucks and pulling the coils, exemplify that massive passive action-by-inaction. And it must be giving the regime fits!
You are right OMan, but never to worry our “O” will bail the dictator out for sure!
re Arkie; my thoughts too, O will get involved as he wants to show the world what a great benevolent person he is. and we as citizens of the U.S. will be screwed one more time by O.
I hope you’re right Michael. I would have said that the students’ revolt would have made some inroads too. But we see what the regime’s thugs did to that movement.
If this strike lasts more than a few days, or spreads to other cities then it could the be beginning of the end for this regime. On the other hand, I thought last years protests over the faux election were the start of a 2nd Iranian revolution.
Rich Vail
Pikesville, MD
The Vail Spot at blogspot dot com
Sounds like a party to me….. perhaps they should serve tea and have a “tea party” in the harbour….. what an original idea I have there, wait it has BEEN done!?! Where? WHO? When????
Of course, President Divot will see this as a sign it’s time to go get frozen yogurt.
I wonder – couple of years ago many Tehranis doubled their income by taking passengers (using their cars as a taxi), it seems that these people most probably will lose that part of their income. And of course all products would go up.
I think I would be careful comparing Iran to Poland.
In Poland the communist system was introduced from outside (Russia), and it was against catholic faith. In Iran the system is of Iranian devising, it is connected to religion and it is supported by some of Iranian religious leaders. It is also supported by many low-level mullahs who work in secular jobs. Further, the religious foundations and businesses connected to Revolutionary Guards are the source of earnings for many Iranians. So I think that revolution, such as in Eastern Europe is not really probable. Some political change, on the other hand, is quite probable. IMHO
That said I would love for Iran to have a revolt similar to that in Eastern Europe. And for Iranians to be really free.
Who will be Iran’s Ataturk?
Where’s Turkey’s Ataturk? It’s business as usual there now with the demonization of Israel and linking mosque and state. When the Iranians are done confronting their regime they’ll be right back at Israel. The information age means nothing if you ignore the information.
Totalitarian regimes are more like glass than explosives.
When cutting glass even experienced glaziers like regime henchmen, can thump and bang without consequence and then next time…..the whole thing shatters.
“Maybe even the feckless Western leaders will see it and support the Iranian people.”
I tend to think they’ll do it on their own. When your neighboring country’s highest religious leader, who shares your religion, is calling for seperation of religion and politics, and you own country is controlled by the the ‘leaders’ of the same religion, one will inherently win out.
The shiite are going to do this largely on their own. Ahmadinejahd just accelerates the change, by resisting it.
I’d be curious to see if the freeing of Iraq from their despot has given the Iranians a similar hope.
The regime cannot let this protest go unanswered. There will be blood in the streets and there may be a revolution, but there will be blood in the streets before this is over. Some western governments may be able to take advantage of this, but ours (US) won’t be one of them – it is barely coherent nationally, let alone internationally. But we’ll be blamed for it anyway.
In the wake of Iran’s stolen election, Obama could have flicked the mullahcracy over with the back of his hand. Instead he propped it up, almost certainly because he is actually a Muslim, and the fact that he is lying about it tells us what kind of Muslim he is: the Islamic supremacist kind. He propped up the Iranian Islamofascists because he is an Islamofascist. Just pray the Iranian people can oust these thugs in spite of Obama’s active opposition.
—and pray that the American people can oust our own thugs in spite of the Thug-in-Chief’s active opposition. November 2012 was the first of several steps that will be required to restore our nation’s ascendancy and manifest our national exceptionalism. No higher national calling can be ours than to discard the trash into the dustbin of history where they will become a footnote, soon to be forgotten. It is our privilege as a people to bring this about and restore sanity to our national ethos.
He is a leftist.
If he were a Muslim he would not be doing drone strikes on West Pakistan or letting the CIA hunt al Alawiki in Yemen.
His deeds speak so loud as to who he is- a far leftist ne’er do well. He despises the things that made this country great and don’t even get me started on his betrayal of Israel.
Militant Muslims rarely have any qualms about killing other Muslims. That’s only an issue when it comes to cooperation with infidels. For their own purposes, Muslims are the great killers of other Muslims, and Obama has his own Islamic ambition. He will use other Muslims, but won’t let them foul up his own plans.
Neither is there any conflict between communism and Islam. The Nation of Islam has been combining communism, Islam and racism for decades, just like Obama. Note that Obama’s mentor Bill Ayers is a communist who converted to Islam back in the 70′s, naming himself (Abu Zayd) and his son (Zayd) after a Nation of Islam cop killer.
“Ex Muslim” Jeremiah Wright is a Muslim who “converted” to Christianity when he got far enough in his master’s study of Islam to learn that Muslims in Christian countries are supposed to pretend that they are Christian (Tabari 8:23). You can tell he is actually Muslim by the fact that instead of teaching the Christian law of love, his church teaches the Islamic law of hate: to love the members of your own sect, while hating all others. He just adopts the Nation of Islam’s racist version of this law of hate: that followers are supposed to in particular hate white people. (Wright: “If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.”)
Note also that Chavez has apparently converted to Islam, and now employs the Islamic salutation inshallah. This from 2006:
“The United States empire is on its way down and it will be finished in the near future, inshallah,” Chavez told reporters, ending the statement with the Arabic phrase for “God willing.”
He is using the term in the standard ritualistic Islamic way, where every statement of what one will do or what will happen is followed with this nod to god’s will, akin to putting PBUH after Muhammad’s name. And why shouldn’t a totalitarian embrace a totalitarian religion? This is a very natural pairing, as NOI demonstrates. It is grounded in a hatred of western civilization, a hatred of white people, a hatred of Christianity, and a hatred of liberty. We see these things going together everywhere, and with the world’s most powerful office his to use for the cause, Obama certainly isn’t going to let a few pissant terrorists make him look bad and cost him his position.
The funny thing is that 90 percent fuel subsidies were a terrible idea in the first place, but you can’t just free up one price while distorting a bunch of others and expect reasonable results. You pretty much have to rip the Band-Aid off all at once, the way Ludwig Erhard did in postwar West Germany. Short-run dislocation is survivable if it quickly leads to new patterns of coordination and prosperity. Otherwise things will tend to get ugly.
Yes! Thank you. Economics in a nutshell. I wish Ben Bernanke would read your post. So he would understand why quadrupling the interest rate over a period of 2 years is not a very good idea.
I remember, from the book, ‘The Fourth and Richest Reich’ when Erhardt said to General ?Grant ?Clark, that he was going to lift all price and wage controls. Grant tells him “I’ve heard a little of this plan – my experts tell me it will be a disaster.”
To which, Erhardt replies, “Don’t worry – my experts say the same thing.”
Obama isn’t a Muslim–he’s a Communist–and that isn’t why he supports the Iran regime. He supports it because he is doing everything in his power to encourage another 9/11 attack, which he will then use to enact his evil gun confiscation agenda. Notably, he isn’t the first member of the Democrat/Communist Party to do this. Clinton’s Stalinist regime did the same thing when they infiltrated Timothy McVeigh’s neo-Nazi group and convinced him to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building, thus saving the way for Clinton’s pogrom against gun owners. America needs an uprising of its own, followed by a complete cleansing of our nation of the left-wing parasitic filth.
What’s your flavor? Cherry or Grape?
Personally, I have always preferred Hawaiian Punch over Kool-Aid.
Left wing idiots should be pointed at, laughed at, maybe pitied a little too, but to speak of cleansing with all its historical context is beyond the pale.
Ken:
Did you send that mess from your rubber room?
And also, Elvis is back; you forgot to mention that.
The aliens who kidnapped him tossed him out of the mothership when they fed him the three pizzas he requested and he threw up on their shoes.
He first tried to get back with Priscilla, but he couldn’t read the reaction in her face because of all the botox and plastic surgery, so he skulked off brokenhearted. He rebounded, though, and won the California gubernatorial election. The real “Jerry Brown” is now a sofa in Linda Ronstadt’s living room.
The U.S. and most of it’s “Western” allies, no longer have any ability to engaged and manage such an enterprise. These types of operations require a sustainable and sophisticated “deep covert” plan with many layers of compartmentalized and highly classified components and channels. The U.S. and its Western allies lack the will or ability to keep anything highly classified these days. Personally, I doubt the government continguents who would normally create the plan and manage the operations, have the strategic abilities to do anything successfully with todays generations at the helm.
There are no second tries following a poor execution anywhere along the line! A failure at any point of the operations [could] result in catastrophic consequences. Having said this, the ultimate mission of taking out the [political] command structure is simply not that difficult to accomplish with todays technology IF, the continuity of secretcy is not violated at any point and time.
I suspect the U.S. and its allies are without either such a plan or the will for such a plan, to fully support an internal overthrow in Iran. The generations of competent planners and managers of such operations are gone or have one foot in the grave.
Economic protests are inherently more powerful than “student” protests. You’re talking about the productive members of society giving the economy (and thus the regime) the finger–that leaves an immediate mark. Shooting your youths is just eating the seed-corn of the next generation, which if your back is to the wall sounds like a reasonable course to take. (It’s not, of course.)
Iran is not a sufficiently totalitarian state to be able to completely enslave its population. No matter how this strike turns out, the shocks will keep coming until the colossus’ feet fail.
–JC
“The chaos in Bandar Abbas is a self-inflicted wound masterminded by the fanatical buffoons who rule the Islamic Republic. Sooner or later, this sort of thing will spread, and the hollowness of the regime will be exposed to everyone.
Maybe even the feckless Western leaders will see it and support the Iranian people.”
Those feckless western leaders are responsible for economic sanctions which are causing those fanatical baboons to lift the fuel subsidies.
If those workers opposed the regime why did they not go on strike until the economic situation made their further labor fruitless?
If this leads to positive change, you will have to give credit where it is due: to the feckless western leaders who imposed economic sanctions.
I see a ray of hope for the sanity of humankind in the inference that the problem might not be the fuel price increase but the failure to let transportation prices rise accordingly.
Pleonasm of the day: “feckless Western leaders”.
So that’s what a pleonasm is?
I thought it was a long-necked, aquatic Mesozoic reptile.
I left this comment on a Pajamas article about the new Iranian revolt:
http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2010/12/21/iranian-chaos/?singlepage=true
I loved this insightful sentence of Mr. Ledeen’s, about the Revolutionary Guard thugs: “Even the toughest of them can’t convince a truck to start itself, or a ferry to get out of the way.” Shades of Atlas Shrugged. Perhaps we will see the same kind of non-response here if and when ObamaCare goes into full swing and the government discovers that half the medical profession has quit or taken an early retirement, doctors who refuse to be slaves dependent on federal largesse and whims. Can you imagine TSA goons walking into clinics, hospitals and abandoned practices and commanding the medical equipment to heal and care for the entitled?
I loved this insightful sentence of Mr. Ledeen’s, about the Revolutionary Guard thugs: “Even the toughest of them can’t convince a truck to start itself, or a ferry to get out of the way.” Shades of Atlas Shrugged. Perhaps we will see the same kind of non-response here if and when ObamaCare goes into full swing and the government discovers that half the medical profession has quit or taken an early retirement, doctors who refuse to be slaves dependent on federal largesse and whims. Can you imagine TSA goons walking into clinics, hospitals and abandoned practices and commanding the medical equipment to heal and care for the entitled?
““Maybe even the feckless Western leaders will see it and support the Iranian people.”
IMO, there is no chance Obama would support the Iranian people. He doesn’t support any freedom anywhere. Look at his Support of a Honduras dictator because he wanted to make Chavez happy.
This is good news, but I fear that, no expense will be spared in giving the Revolutionary Guards whatever they want. They certainly will not have to endure any shortages in anything, so long as they support the mullahs. Sort of like Hitler and the SS. Hitler always made sure the SS had whatever it wanted, the most modern equipment and all of the food and clothing they needed. While other army units had to make due with all sorts of shortages, the SS always had what it needed. Why? Because the SS was Hitler’s personal bodyguard and so long as they were happy they remained fiercely loyal to Hitler.
Once the Revolutionary Guards become “disinchanted” with the mullahs, then the regime will change. Focus all of our covert efforts on neutering the Guard and that will be the key in overthrowing the regime. It helps to have the public on your side, but the heavily-armed Revolutionary Guard can always put down rebellions (just like it did after the Iranian elections). But destroy or incapacitate the Revolutionary Guards, and you’ve won.
I still don’t know what kind of support the author wants the West to give. If there’s a revolution and the CIA helped, that just feeds the propaganda that everything that happens is due to the Great Satan. If America does nothing and the revolution succeeds, then we can hope to avoid being the enemy of either the new regime or its opponents.
‘Who will be Iran’s Ataturk?’
Reza Pahlavi II
Why is the Iranian government struggling with this problem at all? Why don’t they solve it the way they solve all their other problems – by blaming the Zionists and their American puppet masters, or is that the Americans and their Zionist puppet masters?
Too bad Odumbo isn’t bright enough to get in front of any parade – this one could be great.
But he can’t, won’t – and belittles himself further each day.
Odumbo ………..??? You should be ashamed. This is an insult to that precious little elephant!!!!
Good for the people. Hopefully this will spread like my name. This could be a great thing and I hope the good folks in Iran take back their liberty and human rights, given to all of us by God. The world must, one by one, crush its dictators in any form. Its underway in the USA, we will do our part for freedom an get rid of our dictator and comrads.
The Mullahs have nothing to fear. Obama will assist in their putting down of this burgeoning revolt just as he did last year. Remember how he had nothing to say when the Iranian student Neda was murdered? One word of solidarity with the students then and the Mullahs would be on trial now for their lives. Obama is a stupid, cowardly, arrogant, posturing monkey, just like Benito Mussolini.
Revolutionary Guards are PIMPS! They can’t do a thing. The Iranian people need HELP!Barak Hussein won’t do a thing! He is way too into his radical leftist agenda and that agenda doesn’t include spreading democracy. The far left and radical islamists are allies. Haram! Down with munafiqs! Long live the freedom loving people of Iran, Israel, and America!
Maybe even the feckless Western leaders will see it and support the Iranian people.
Let’s hope so, but I am confident that I know wOn feckless leader who will NOT see it and support the Iranian people. To take the time to do so would interfere with one of his vacations.
Count me in as feckless as there will not be a democracy in Iran in the true sense of the term in the lifetime of anyone living; the hearts and minds thing didn’t go over big in Vietnam and won’t anywhere else in the East. Iranians are ethnic dingbats who are no more capable of looking at a person by the content of their character than a deer is. Luckily or unluckily depending on how you look at it, no immigrants are sneaking into Iran so it is not an issue they will ever have to deal with. Only ancient ethnic rivalries will ever occupy this enlightened nation.
If we’d stop giving them headlines they wouldn’t rally around each other and want nukes and would instead go back to nose jobs for the girls and oppressing each other like the sleepy backwater we pulled them from.
Is this the beginning of the end? Perhaps, but not just yet. The misguided, theocratic, oppressive, and backward clerical regime in Iran is doomed to face the same destiny as the other repressive regimes of the world have before it. To subjugate, torture, repress, and kill in the name of God does not justify such acts. To pray five times a day, praise Allah as the compassionate and merciful, and then act ruthlessly in the name of the same Allah is blasphemy in the true sense of the word, only if they realized.
I am waiting for Irans lead apologist to the NYT, Roger Cohen to do a story on how Irans economy is speeding past the US, and how Ahmadinejad economic policies should be followed by the US. Likely Erdoganojad of Turkey has been summoned by Ahmadinejad to help with the economic mess
anon: bravo!
Michael,
I hope the wedding was all you hoped it would be. And many best wishes to the nuptials.
It’s been almost a week since your article. Have you heard anything new on the situation in Badar Abbas?
From an earlier post
How to get rid of him, them? Fund the opposition to these regimes and stay the hell out. Far more can be accomplished by funding good guerilla forces and leave these guys, like Chavez and Achm, to face the turmoil of a poor economy and a populace in revolt. Give the dissenters in these countries the means and arms to do the job, simply reverse the communist plan of victory. That way there is no one else to blame, give the guerillas the means to destroy the infrastructure while you sit on the side lines saying sorry, not our problem. If you’re going to waste something it’s better to waste a little time and money than the lives of our young people.
while I am glad that by cutting the subsidies hopefully this regim will come to an end. but subsiddies must be eliminated but in an orderly fashion which the douches running the country now do not know how to do it. some 200 billion dollars are being spent in subsidies evey year and that is not good. that money should be invested in education, structure etc…
Mr Ledden: what do you think?
to some of my fellow bloggers here who are blaming Obama for this or blaming him for not taking any actions. folks: this is just getting too old.
Carter did not do any thig and niether did the following presidens:
Reagan
Bush
clinton
bush
so please let’s get real.
m
“M” you are right R,B,C,B, & O didn’t do anything. Unlike the others “O” is anti-American and will do anything he can to oppose any American idea that pops it head up above the horizon.
That being said is “Real”.
arkie:
and if you ask Rachael Maddow, Kith Oberlmann and Jon Stewart, George Bush was/is anti American. your dislike of Obama is based on your politicks as is the people I just mentioned. Bush was for Americans and so is Obama. and guess what I despised George Bush.
Happy Holidays!
You’re wrong. Obama is the first President in American history who does not like the story of America, considering it a non-stop panoply of Trails of Tears, “Lady Interment/Antebellum” country bands, colonialism, imperialism and thus taking refuge in a Jim Cone racist inspired “church”. Tell me how in the hell there is an equivalency there with Bush.
Diesel engines don’t have ignition coils.
hah! well whatever you call it, Mr Rather. you found me out, heh, a truly technologically challenged old guy…
Well, don’t make stuff up.
“…the Iranian people do not like their regime, and they are prepared to confront it. …Maybe even the feckless Western leaders will see it and support the Iranian people.”
As Obama emplaces more and more totalitarian rule in *this* country — of which ObamaCare, new TSA edicts, “net neutrality”, repeated defiance of court orders, Elena Kagan (a communist on the Supremes), and Holder’s DOJ are among oh-so-many examples of treasonous disregard of the Constitution — maybe the American people will be prepared to confront the Chavista’s who have seized Washington D.C. and who are now consolidating their power in ways big and small, seen and unseen, on their way to rule by edict. Maybe our feckless political parties will see it and support us.
The internet is the worst thing that ever happened to the Iranian regime of mullahs now in charge. Iranians love their country but are not utter morons. They know they are considered by many in the world as pariahs. Their instincts probably tell them that something is wrong somewhere and it is not necessarily in the West.
American music and films are doing their own kind of indoctrination and in the same manner that artists in America are practically all liberals, so it is in Iran. Despite the supposed ambitions of Iran to exert influence over a few shi’ite enclaves in other polities, it is really smoke and mirrors and will suck treasure out of Iran with no appreciable advancement to the lives of the average Iranian citizen.
A new internet savvy generation is growing up and a new synthesis of Iranian and Western values will penetrate the bureaucracy in the same way that liberals have de facto control of bureaucracies in the U.S. thanks in part to our Supreme Court but mainly because of the liberal zeitgeist which has worked its own indoctrination in the US. One need only go to youtube and read comments by Rage Against the Machine or Arcade Fire fans to see how easily youth are subject to stereotypes, in our case of Che Guevarra and America as a machine. Iranians haven’t got so far and have not so much time on their hands and their indoctrination will take the form of how to better their lives and not teenage angst from the 60s as is the case in America. Really all we have to do is stand and wait and Iran will come to the dark side Morlock world of fast food, rock and roll and flat screen TVs like the Eloi to a siren’s siren.
we’re about to leave town for a while; our youngest son is getting married…so i will not be online for a day or so now…
Congratulations on the wedding, Michael, and may all of you have a great Christmas and New Year’s!
Congratulations, sir!! May your son’s wedding be a joyous occasion for all, and may he have a long and happy marriage!!
Mazel Tov on your son’s wedding. I wish the two of them a long and happy life together. I also think you lucked out having a son. As a father of a daughter it cost me an arm and a leg (and many other limbs) to foot the bill for her wedding.
מזל טוב על החתונה שלך
If this lasts, it will be huge.
Bandar Abbas is THE major port for imports. When ships arrive with wheat, hundreds of trucks line up outside the port waiting to load.
No wheat = no bread = riots.
I think it would be difficult to overestimate how critically important this protest is.
Someone has to be the mourner at this wedding and it might as well be me. Allow to ask:
1) Do the strikers have a trained, disciplined military with a competent dedicated heiracrchy?
2) Is there any organized opposition to the mullahs with such a military capicity?
3) Are the Mullahs practical men concerned about their popularity or are they true believers, nutcases who would murder everyone in the world to stay in power?
It will take blood to get rid of the Mullahs and I do not see anyone capable of shedding Mullah blood, but plenty of bad guys able and willing to shed good guy blood.
I hardly think that a protest against the cessation of government subsidies is a reason to be sanguine. We have already seen them in Great Britain, France and Greece.
Thank you for your posts here, and I wish you a Christmas of rejuvenation in preparation for a great new year.
LOL really funny to see these guys desprately shouting here & there on the internet for a couple of years now that the end of regime is close & so & so. Most of you guys seem non-Iranians or few ones Iranians living abroad.
Good to see that Islamic Republic has such dumb-headed enemies.
It’ll be even funnier when Ahmadinejad’s head is on a pike.
I’m afraid, Layla, that the alternative is a mushroom cloud over Tehran…
Against certain kinds of regimes, the less organized the uprising, the more successful it becomes. Organized uprisings are vulnerable to attacks on their leadership.
How strange to see Republican support for the MEK. If you think the theocracy was bad just wait until these people take power in Iran. Mark my word, it will be another North Korea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/22/AR2010122205180.html
Mr. Ledeen….why is so much of the “opinionated” writing done today with zero regard to the background facts?
Iran as we know it today, has been in “internal” strife by one element or another since the latter part of the 40′s. Much of this internal strife was either directly “created” by the U.S., et al or supported directly by covert operations.
Since the mid 70′s, the current element of internal dissention is one most favorable towards the U.S. and Western governments yet, they continue to struggle, essentially alone.
Overall, through some economic ups and downs, the corrupted policy of economic sanctions has only allowed for the centralized theocratic government to profit. The government wisely yeilds just enough freedoms to minimize an all out revolution by the dissidents. Without a well coordinated external plan of assistance to destroy the political command and control heirarchy nothing will change…while the government will continue its increase in economic and military strength.
The U.S. and other Western Allies have missed all to many prime opportunities as the potential “cost’s” of doing such political business increases by multiples going forward.
Superficial writing does little to inform factually!