Australia

the current US government is literally built around a bunch of fucking morons entertaining a lunatic. Trump blarts out some bullshit on behalf of his puppeteers, the flying monkeys scurry about to make it Reality. This expands out further to allies and other nations.

Thing is, Iran doesn't want to play flying monkey. So Trump just keeps blarting his bullshit and wondering why Reality is not occurring any more. And the flying monkeys literally can no longer conceive of another way to function short of going yes sir no sir three bags full sir gargle gargle.

We've spent eighty years kissing american arse and now we don't know what to do when it's time for daddy to go into the hospice

There's not a lot of advantage to calling out Trump's BS. Firstly because Australia has no real influence over American foreign policy (hell America has no real influence over American foreign policy), and secondly because the average voter generally doesn't like Iran even if they don't approve of the war.

Oh, there is definitely price collusion happening - just take one look at the way the Oil futures contracts are traded, and the massive bets being placed on sites like Kalshi and Polimarket.

But that’s impacting every nation, not just us - the leash is getting yanked much higher up the food chain than people like to point the finger here domestically at Shell/BP etc. & all thanks to the US and Israeli attacks on Iran damaging or destroying something like ~40% of all Middle East oil refining capacity.

Bit of a tangent, but I honestly think we need to step out from behind the US’s skirt at some point, they have proven to no longer be a reliable and trustworthy partner.

But what do we do beyond that, to ensure our national sovereignty - and prevent us getting Ukraine’d or Iran’d - short of developing and stockpiling our own nuclear arsenal?