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The Americans officially want our help.
Which brings us back to the original question - if this encounter ends up ridding Iran of the ability to produce nuclear weaponry, has it been worth it?
No, they didn’t see the Strait of Hormuz being the mess it is. You can debate that forever if you want, but ultimately there is no question Iran is done for and it's just a matter of time before they fold.
The price is high, inflation is up, the supply chains for a lot of stuff like fertiliser and plastics and ceramics and oil doesn't look good.
The economic damage is virtually everywhere. Is that the price we are prepared to pay to see Iran neutralised?
Here is the tricky question; given no one asked us, why would we help now?
The great diplomatic cock-up from the Trump administration is they didn’t get buy-in. Unlike other conflicts no coalition was built.
What made it worse was when he realised he was in trouble, Trump started whining about the lack of help. NATO and Britain got a good going over.
Can you unilaterally start a war with global economic implications and then whine that we aren't too thrilled about lending a hand?
In other words, does the so-called "favour" he has done us by finishing off Iran allow us enough positivity towards him to come to his aid?
Also at play is the cold, hard reality of geopolitics. We are kind of obliged to help. We are in the American camp and if push came to shove they would help us.
So we sort of have to assist when asked. And the fact we are tiny doesn’t help our cause because we need all the help we can get.
As the Prime Minister told us the other day when I asked, almost in a way that he knew this was brewing. He offered the idea that our Boeing P-8A Poseidon could do some patrolling.
We have sort of answered the question before it even needed to be asked, haven't we?
Are we in? What choice do we have?
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
America doesn’t need our help - or anyone’s - they’re testing to see who their allies are and who they’re going to show up for when the Chinese park a big armed boat or two in the Tasman sea between the Australia and New Zealand with long range guns aimed at Sydney Melbourne and all of nz - that can shoot planes out of the sky.
Who knew the Chinese could do such a thing….until they did it just last year.
We need America, they don’t need us.
If they’ve asked for our help we should bloody well turn up!
The "commander and chief" is probably unaware how inadequate any help would be that NZ could muster, especially from our defense forces.
Recent peace time activities in our own backyard have proved to be an embarrassing fiasco.
Do we really want further embarrassment on a larger world stage to highlight our institutional incompetence born from DEI policies.
NZ has an unblemished record of scraping up relatively untrained and poorly equipped contingents of troops to participate in our ‘protector’s’ wars, with subsequent serious levels of casualties. This experience has done little to encourage us to establish a serious military capability to defend ourselves if required. Given our disastrously incompetent governments, now tending to the treacherous, this should surprise no-one.
It’s obvious to most that Hosking has a serious case of TDS consistent with the agreed narrative flowing from the corrupt MSM. Would it have made more sense to bury one’s head in the sand and permit this despotic regime to arm themselves with nuclear weapons? Is the prospect of short term inflation a little inconvenient to you Mike? Let’s blame the first world leader for having the courage to stop this nuclear risk rather than sending pallet loads of cash to appease this terrorist regime.
I dunno what TDS stands for but I agree that New Zealand must retain an independent geopolitical position. If the USA is doing silly things - which they obviously have, oil price blowouts and dead school kids for no gain is nothing but silly - then we shouldn’t follow suit.
Anonymous at 6:40 has it right, the US doesn’t need us but is asking who its friends are.
Better we front up now than rely on the useless European pretend alliance.
For the last 50 years Iran has been funding terrorism around the world, finally we have a US administration that’s prepared to put up rather than shut up.
Or would you rather have a nuclear armed Iran?
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