> Reserves are irrelevant, you can’t pump oil from the ground at a moment notice and building the infrastructure requires long-term stability especially for oil infrastructure which is large and hard to protect.

Who says these are rational actors. I think it is a bit much for coincidence.

> Iran does x4 times the volume of Venezuela in oil and x10 in gas.

Until yesterday. We'll see whether their infrastructure is going to survive this war.

> The issue with Iran is that it’s selling energy outside of the US system.

I'm well aware of that.

> This was less of an issue 20 years ago when the persians needed to funnel the money back to the Western system at a cost so that they can access world trade. The situation changed today as they can mostly survive on China imports and completely bypass the US financial system. Iran has half the exports (in total value!) of Tunisia at x8-9 the population. Something doesn’t add up.

What doesn't add up is that there are a lot of parties that would like to see regime change in Iran, including a lot of Iranians. The question always is whether the fire that you light remains contained or not and Iran is very much not like Venezuela in that sense.

> That’s not how the world works.

I'm well aware of that too. But that doesn't change how I feel about it.

> The relative peace of the last 20 years or so was mostly because US hegemony was uncontested. This might be no longer the case.

In no small part because of the idiot-in-charge.

> Someone in the far East will be watching for opportunities.

And that's precisely why I think there is a massive potential for escalation here.