Post #75949 by Dope1 on the US Policy board

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https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2026/04/...

And specifically, flipping the chess board:

This Is the Real Target: China The Iran war cannot be understood in isolation. It is one front in a broader campaign that began the moment Trump returned to the White House on January 20, 2025. The pattern is unmistakable: the trade war against China (which Washington won), the eviction of Chinese influence from Canada, Mexico, Panama, and Greenland, the realignment of Asian and Central Asian nations away from Beijing’s orbit, the seizure of Maduro’s Venezuela and its oil redirected to American markets, the flipping of Colombia, and the deployment of U.S. military forces to Nigeria — ostensibly to protect the country’s persecuted Christian population — which brought Africa’s largest oil producer firmly into the American strategic sphere. Add to this the ongoing strangulation of Cuba, and a coherent global picture emerges.

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Trump’s Strategic Logic When Trump declared that Iran “has no more cards to play,” he was not boasting. He was sending a precise diplomatic signal: the negotiating leverage Tehran thought it possessed — oil disruption, proxy threats, nuclear ambiguity — has been systematically stripped away over the preceding twelve months. The blockade is not the beginning of a strategy. It is its final chapter. The preparation was meticulous. Consider the sequence: the containment of Iran’s proxies, the destruction of its air defenses in the 2025 Twelve-Day War, the assassination of its supreme leader, the targeting of its banking system which can no longer pay its own fighters, the sealing of every land corridor, the neutralization of its Caspian port, and the financial exhaustion of its would-be rescuers. Trump, a devoted follower of UFC, understands the discipline: prepare thoroughly, land the knockout blows, then close the choke.

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Critics of the Hormuz blockade are debating the wrong war. The question is not whether it is legally tidy or diplomatically convenient. The question is whether it is achieving its strategic objectives. The evidence suggests it is. Iran’s terrorist regime is being economically strangled. Its regional network has been dismantled. Its nuclear program has been set back by years. Its supreme leader is dead. Its banking system cannot meet payroll. Its overland escape routes are sealed. And the power that sustained it — China — is watching its own energy security erode in real time. This is not chaos. This is strategy.

A-yup.

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