Oh sorry dollar, I thought you meant RMB, because you wrote so much about China, and just miss wrote that. Also most stuff is not made in China. Share of global GDP of China is like 20% or so.

and Chinese buy foreign products too.

It also means that Chinese workers are underpaid.

East Asian countries also have much lower denominated currencies in general. One USD gives you 158 Japanese Yen or 1505 South Korean Won. Even a Taiwan Dollar is much weaker at 31 = 1 USD.

Currencies are somewhat made up. What matters most is how they move against each other. Usually this is going to balance trade naturally. However it can be manipulated to increase exports for example.

How do think a ground invasion of Iran, the famously impossible to invade area for literally thousands of years, would go?

There were a couple of mongol and Turkish invasion, as well as the Islamic Conquest. Last century the Soviets and British invaded Iran rather easily during WW2 as well.

Do you think that it would be like Iraq where the USA blitzkrieged with tanks through to the capital?

You use helicopters and paratroopers to take an airport close to Theran and then land troops with planes. That is how the US would invade. Iran has lost its air defense, so that is possible.

I honestly have very little doubt, that the US can take Iran, if they wanted too. The issue is leaving it is a decent state after the war. However Israel does not care about that.

More like 3% and another 2% is for infrastructure. You only need to pretend that that infrastructure is really badly needed for defense, which is rather easy for a lot of it. Like say those are not metro stations, they are bunkers…

The US is “just” bombing Iran right now. Take for example Pakistan. They launched missiles against each other two years ago. It would be relatively easy for Pakistan to invade Iran and get support from the US and the Gulf states for that. Iran controls some islands in the Strait of Hormuz, which the UAE claims to be theirs. The Azerbijan and Iran also are not exactly friends.

A ground invasion could seriously dethrone the Islamic leadership.

Most of these countries are probably low key happy about the war. It distracts the US from invading Greenland for example. The only big issue is that the strait should be open, so the oil price does not go even higher.

The line is:

We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait.

That is not quite the same thing as safeguard. Appropriate efforts can just be working on peace in the region and brining in some minesweepers to clean up the strait after the fighting ends. My understanding is that most of these countries have ruled out opening the strait by military means.

Wealth inequality strikes again.

Which I think is silly given the obvious first continental divide to go would be the Eurasian one that only exists for historical reasons.

America makes sense for historical reasons as well. After all it is a massive settlers colony of different European nations. The Spanish influence very much connects both continents, if you want to do that.

This is about shifting media attention away from Iran. When Miami gets shelled, then the Gulf becomes boring.

Not just that, but Europe is able to pay the oil price, although Russia getting it is a problem. At the same time oil consumption is half of the USAs and falling due to BEVs and heat pumps. It is probably a lot cheaper then to go to war.