[Today’s Iran war post fired before complete because I did not plan to produce one today. Please return at 8:00 AM EDT for a final version]
Today’s Iran war post will be sketchy, but that may not be a bad thing, since there is a lot of noise in the informational signal so it seems better to say less until more solid details emerge.
To start with a general comment: I anticipate that (as has already been starting) my commentary may alienate readers since there is now a large contingent that is rooting for Team Iran and takes umbrage at criticism of Iran’s actions and public position. The fact that the US is joined at the hip with an ethnosupremacist, genocidal state, and on other fronts is engaged in a geopolitical smash-and-grab operation does not make Iran a paragon of virtue, even if one can legitimately celebrate the prospect that Iran will permanently diminish US and Israeli power.
During the 2015 Greek bailout crisis, this site attracted a lot of vitriolic comments because we assessed, early on, that Greece had already unknowingly ceded its position to the Troika by signing a memorandum to secure an interim funding that committed it to an IMF “program” as in austerity. Describing how Greece was destined to lose was treated as if we were advocating for that outcome, as opposed to merely describing what looked likely to play out. And indeed, Syriza’s protracted fight with the IMF, ECB and European states resulted in Greece getting worse terms in July 2015 that if it had accepted the deal on offer in February 2015.
Having said that, the current power struggle between the US and Iran, with Israel and the Gulf States as actors that can also affect outcomes, is far too complex to say much with certainty now. However, quite a few commentator of the anti-globalist persuasion are cheerleading Iran to the degree that they are engaged in sloppy analysis, like omitting facts that are potential major challenges for Iran, or amplifying Iran claims that are nonsense (it is a sign of Iran encountering issues that it may not have adequately anticipated that Iran seems to be deviating from its previous posture of generally being quite credible).
The US Attacks Iran After Iran Fires on Vessels Transiting the Strait of Hormuz
From Bloomberg in Iran, US Trade Accusations of Violating Ceasefire After Strikes:
Tehran and Washington traded accusations that the other had violated the ceasefire after Iran claimed on Saturday that it had targeted US sites in the Persian Gulf after American aircraft hit Iranian weapons sites on Friday.
The US strikes — on missile storage and coastal radar installations — were in response to an Iranian drone attack on a Singapore-flagged container ship in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday. The back-and-forth threatens to unravel the fragile detente that had largely ended fighting in the Middle East, though an unnamed US official told CNN after the US strikes that they didn’t constitute a return to major combat operations for now.
The US fired on Iran 33 minutes after the markets closed on Friday.
Updates on Iran’s retaliation came after the post first fired:
🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran HITS U.S. Base in Bahrain After Sirik Island Strike
The U.S. Fifth Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain. At dawn Saturday, June 27, Iranian drones struck Bahrain in answer to the U.S. attack on Iran's Sirik Island.
A projectile also hit an oil tanker off Oman, damaging… https://t.co/JTfllkJbss pic.twitter.com/ZZ0In9tY9d
— Ryan Rozbiani (@RyanRozbiani) June 27, 2026
From Aljazeera:
This looks to be a limited response:
Bahrain says Iran launched drone attacks on its territory
Bahrain’s foreign ministry issues a statement, saying it strongly condemns the Iranian drone attacks in the early morning hours, describing them as a “serious violation” of sovereignty and international law.
It said several drones targeted its territory, without specifying the exact location or the nature of the target. The incident endangered civilians and undermined regional de-escalation efforts, the statement added.
However:
BREAKING: Iranian state media says the IRGC has targeted several locations of US Army deployment in the Middle East following US strikes on Iran.
The IRGC says any further attacks by the US will draw a "broader response."
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) June 26, 2026
And there was another vessel hit in the Strait of Hormuz:
UKMTO says vessel struck by ‘unidentified projectile’ in Hormuz
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) says a tanker has been struck in the Strait of Hormuz.
The captain of a tanker said the vessel was struck by “an unidentified projectile”, the UKMTO said.
It added that the vessel sustained damage to the bridge, all crew members are reported safe, and no environmental damage has been reported at present.
Authorities are investigating the incident, the UKMTO said.
The Continuing Struggle for Control of the Strait of Hormuz
Even though Iran clearly can control traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, it is not doing so now. Even with Iran having fired upon ships in the Oman channel and getting the UN to drop its initiative to use that route to get ships trapped in the Gulf, vessels are still departing on the Oman side, via a clearly not-Iran-approved route. From Lloyd’s List (before the US attack on Iran) in Ships keep moving through Hormuz despite strike and suspension of IMO exit strategy:
- Discussions between the foreign ministries of Iran and Oman on Monday helped finalise the IMO plan before its abrupt suspension
- The IRGC continues to insist that the only legitimate passage through the strait is the northern route under its control
- At least four vessels reversed course after the IRGC Navy reiterated its position on the northern route
- Traffic through the Omani lane nevertheless continued on Thursday and Friday despite the attack on the Ever Lovely, Iran’s warning and the IMO’s pause on the evacuation plan
The International Maritime Organization’s evacuation plan — developed with Oman, Iran and the US — remains suspended as secretary‑general Arsenio Dominguez again seeks firm assurances that ships using the corridor will not be attacked. Yet traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has continued largely unabated, even after the strike on Ever Lovely and despite the IMO’s decision to pause the initiative….
Nevertheless, the attack on Ever Lovely was enough to bring the plan to a screeching halt, just days after it began, although vessels continued to sail through the Omani lane on Thursday and Friday despite the attack and the IMO’s decision to pause the plan.
Dominguez confirmed that 115 vessels and around 2,500 seafarers had been able to exit the Middle East Gulf during its short lifespan, though he said those figures did not include some transits that had taken place on Friday morning….
Despite the pause, ships continued to move through both the Omani and Iranian lanes on Thursday and Friday. Several vessels that initially turned back after the IRGC Navy statement later resumed their voyages and completed their transits.
Lloyd’s List Intelligence data shows at least 26 vessels of over 10,000 dwt transiting with AIS on using the southern route from 1410 hrs on June 25, when Ever Lovely was hit, to 1200 hrs on June 26, excluding vessels that were mid-transit when the attack took place. Eleven used the Iran-approved northern route.
Iran is attempting to justify its intervention on the Oman side of the Strait of Hormuz as consistent with the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). There is simply no way to reach that conclusion based on the clear language of the MOU. It clearly contemplates Iran acting to facilitate, not impede transit. It does not give Iran authority to violate Oman’s sovereignity via aggression in Oman’s territorial waters. The germane sections:
4 — Immediately upon the signing of this MOU, the United States of America will begin the removal of its naval blockade and any disturbances or impediments against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and will fully end the naval blockade within 30 days. During this period, the traffic of vessels will be in proportion to the numbers of pre-war traffic being restored by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America further undertakes to remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days after the final deal.
5 — Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge, for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles, and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran will be instated within 30 days. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialog with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.
Even Trita Parsi has cleared his throat to object:
The IRGC argues that the US encouraged a violation of clause 5 of the MOU by pushing ships to transit through the southern part of the Strait without coordinating with Iran, claiming that the clause stipulates that all transits must be coordinated with Iran.
Here's what that…
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) June 26, 2026
A lot of anti-globalists read more into a Bloomberg story with new remarks on the Strait of Hormuz than was there. From Oman Tells Allies Ships Going Through Hormuz May Have to Pay:
Oman has told European officials there’s no way of going back to the pre-war status quo with the Strait of Hormuz and transiting ships may have to be charged some fees, according to people familiar with the matter.
While Omani officials said they will always abide by international maritime law, they added there could be fees for services related to de-polluting the strait or helping ships navigate it, the people said, asking not to be named discussing private matters. It’s unclear if Oman said all these fees would be obligatory.
Oman is analyzing systems used for chokepoints across the globe, including the Malacca strait in Asia, said the people, an area where there are no mandatory shipping charges.
Mario Nawfal said as an aside in one of his new talks that Oman walked back the statements reported on Bloomberg, but I did not find corroboration on a fast pass on Twitter.
Sal Mercoglino admittedly has a strong bias in favor of freedom of navigation, but he has bothered studying the relevant law, which he admits it not exactly clear with respect to Iran via it not having signed UNCLOS. However, Oman has signed UNCLOS, which means it has agreed to a regime called “transit passage”. The short version is that it gives states very little in the way of rights to interfere with vessel passage or impose levies. I can imagine Gulf States going to the International Court of Justice to try to block Oman if it tries to impose a fee regime…and if the ICJ accepts amicus briefs, that a huge number would be filed supporting the Gulf States’ opposition.
Another way to look at this is that Oman is an extremely difficult position, since it has made a point of being scrupulously neutral. But in situations like this, actions speak louder than words, So far, it is acting (albeit in as limited a manner as possible) in line with what the US and its Gulf neighbors want.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but Iran has lost a great deal of leverage with the US and China succeeding in keeping oil prices so low even as the underlying crunch has gotten worse. Perhaps Iran can regain some of this advantage if it really does choke the Strait. But the MOU commits Iran to keeping traffic moving.
Jeff Currie, in a new talk with Mario Nawfal, still believe an oil crunch will come, but only after the predicted mini-gusher of the supply bottled up in Gulf getting to its destinations.
Currie also opines that Iran is a weaker escalatory position than before. It is trying to mend fences with its Gulf neighbors, so attacking them again, even any hollow remnants of US bases, would set that way back. Attacking energy infrastructure is off the table unless the US were to hit Iran energy facilities. Having said that, Ansar Allah could still choke Bab-el-Mandeb, but againn, that hurts the Saudis, who are believed to have denied the US the use of its bases and airspace in the last exchange of volleys over Israel’s bombing of Beirut (as attested by Iran striking only Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain in its retaliation).
Israel-Lebanon Framework a Spanner to Israel Withdrawal from Lebanon, as Required in MOU?
Benjamin Netanyahu made statements about a framework agreement between Lebanon and Israel, the key provisions of which effectively ceded southern Lebanon to Israel in return for Israel withdrawing from some small areas. If this were to become effective, it would largely vitiate the provisions in the first clause of the MOU, which effectively required Israel to withdraw from Lebanon.
But do not despair yet! Netanyahu has oversold that state of play. From Shaiel Ben-Ephraim on Twitter:
Here are the details of the framework deal between Israel and Lebanon signed today. Here is why it is a non-starter:
1) The deal is not a peace deal but just a framework for future talks. No recognition is involved.
2) The core mechanism is two “pilot zones.” The Lebanese army deploys, takes exclusive control, and dismantles Hezbollah infrastructure. One zone south of the Litani, one north of it. This is not the first time this kind of deal has been reached. It has never come to fruition.
3) One zone sits in territory Israel seized in the last two weeks. Netanyahu openly says the IDF does not need it. So Israel is “conceding” land it grabbed specifically to hand back.
4) The two sides sold opposite deals at home. Netanyahu: we stay in the security zone, this is a great achievement. Salam: this brings us closer to full withdrawal. Same text. Two contradictory promises. No doubt Israel is the one to listen to. They will not withdraw.
5) There is no timeline. Israel ties any withdrawal to Hezbollah disarmament across all of Lebanon, with full freedom of action retained. That is not a deadline. That is a permanent veto.
6) The parties who can break it were not in the room. Hezbollah rejects the pilot zones. Berri rejects them, “Lebanon is divided into districts, not pilot zones.” Iran calls continued occupation a breach of its MOU with Washington. None of them signed anything.
This is another deal without Hezbollah, resting on the illusion that the Lebanese army can force anything on Hezbollah. They can’t and they won’t. Israel knows this and will use this as a pretext for continued occupation and ethnic cleansing of Lebanon.
Middle East Eye confirms the idea that any Israel-Lebanon agreement will meet fierce domestic opposition:
Hezbollah supporters protest in Beirut against Israel deal
Hundreds of Hezbollah supporters took to the streets of Beirut from late Friday into Saturday to protest against a framework agreement reached between Lebanon, Israel and the United States.
The protesters rode motorcycles through the Lebanese capital, including central Beirut, near parliament and along the airport road, hours after the agreement was announced.
Footage shared by local media and on social media showed hundreds of Hezbollah supporters riding motorbikes and mopeds through Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahieh, which suffered widespread destruction in Israeli air strikes.
Some protesters gathered near the seat of government and blocked a nearby main road, while other footage showed soldiers dispersing demonstrators who had blocked the airport road with burning tyres before the army reopened it, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said.
And:
🇱🇧 BREAKING! Footage circulating now shows Beirut's government Serail surrounded by furious crowds after the Lebanese regime signed an agreement with Israel.
Protesters have laid siege to the Serail, the seat of the Lebanese government, after news broke that Beirut formally… pic.twitter.com/hEYPIedlkq
— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) June 26, 2026
But Israel would be happy to precipitate a civil war.
Finally, by any logical standard, the MOU is dead. Not only has the US not taken steps to get Israel to stop violating the ceasefire, Defense Minister Katz said the US had not asked Israel to pull out of Lebanon. We can see why. If the Lebanon-Israel pact is consummated, there is no basis for a withdrawal demand. The US and Iran are still sparring over the status of the frozen assets. The $300 billion reconstruction fund looks destined to be stillborn.
So why has Iran not walked away? The fastest thing it could do to restore leverage would be to get the Trump Team and the global business community worried that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz could fall back to its recent, badly choked level.
Mind you, Iran could throw down a marker by not participating in the technical talks. But why continue?
1. Even though Iran likely knows full well that the US and Israel intend to rearm and attack Iran again, Iran can restock much faster. So delaying a resumption of a hot war works to Iran’s advantage
2. China and Russia really want the conflict settled because the alternative of a global depression is bad for them too.
3. However, at least some key Iran decision-makers may have become captive to endowment effect, of valuing something you possess more than the value you assigned it before you received it. Iran has gotten two valuable things from the MOU: a 60 day reprieve from sanctions on oil shipments and the US blockade. Iran has per Professor Marandi been shipping oil like crazy and may be stocking other goods such as pharmaceuticals that got to be in dangerously short supply. Some may also be banking on the idea of reparations somehow, when trying to snooker the damaged-by-Iran Gulf States into ponying up for an Iran rebuild is a non-starter (save at more than symbolic levels).
#3 may seem like a stretch, but Alexander Mercouris has said Russian officials are very concerned that Iranians are giddy with their apparent success and are losing sight of how the US plans to out-maneuver, Iran or just renege.
For instance, Section 5 of the MOU is a poison pill as far as the Iran and Oman jointly operating the Strait of Hormuz so as to control traffic and charge meaningful fees is concerned:
The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialog with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.
It clearly invoked littoral state rights, as enshrined in UNCLOS, for transit passage,1 which means Iran cannot charge meaningful fees or restrict passage.
All for today! Hope not to see you till Monday!
_______
Transit passage is a concept of the law of the sea that allows a vessel or aircraft the freedom of navigation or overflight solely for the purpose of continuous and expeditious transit of a strait from one part of the high seas or an exclusive economic zone to another. The requirement of continuous and expeditious transit does not preclude passage through the strait for the purpose of entering, leaving or returning from a state bordering the strait, subject to the conditions of entry to that state. The transit passage may be exercised regardless of the nationality (flag) of the ship, its form of ownership, the merchant or government status of a ship or warship, or the private or government status of an aircraft (under the Convention on International Civil Aviation of 1944).[1]
Within such straits (article 37 of UNCLOS), including Arctic straits,[citation needed] all ships and aircraft enjoy the right of transit passage (article 38 of UNCLOS), in accordance with Part III of UNCLOS, which means the right of navigation and overflight solely for the purpose of continuous and expeditious transit of the strait between one part of the high seas or an exclusive economic zone and another part of the high seas or an exclusive economic zone.
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oil cliff floating?
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The Next 100 days
Waiting for China
Jun 27
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How did we get here? Indices in contango, physical differentials at historical lows in some cases, ships that effectively have no price, and flat price about to break the 70 handle. Some of this we had already discussed and it was kind of expected, but this week events accelerated and took on a dynamic of their own that caught even people in the industry by surprise… (by people I mean me)
Before we start pointing fingers, let’s look at where we are, because part of what we are seeing can now be explained by what had already happened, only now we finally have better information and can extrapolate to months ago.. yes we have been lied to again.
Only now do we have more reliable data, and there are already some surprises, UAE producing at 90% of pre-war levels, Iraq’s ramp up far more violent than expected, Kuwait, Qatar, everyone started producing much earlier than we anticipated. So this idea that it would “take months” to restore original output was not entirely true. Maybe the last 10% is the hardest part, but 90% could already be online next month.
On the refining side, this is probably where we may see more lag because there is some structural damage at some sites (SATORP, Ras Laffan), plus refineries like Ruwais and Duqm lowered throughput in order to export more crude. Still, the trend is definitive, and if nothing changes we are back at full output within two months.
In both cases, the bottleneck remains freight, where the market is still frozen purely because of money. But if it is only about money, eventually it will unblock itself, and something like that happened midweek.
We have more than enough ships in the area, what we did not have was price discovery. After weeks of rumors we finally got a print from inside the Gulf, (Delos IMO9844851) presumably loading from Ras Tanura to China, which by the way returned to activity after three months.
Two VLCCs caught leaving Ras Tanura
Either way, we now have a more reasonable freight level, WS310, or roughly $8/bbl, enough to halt shipowners’ ambitions of daily million rates. Now begins the race to avoid being the last one offering a vessel once there are no more cargoes left to cover, because it is also true that the number of reported cargoes remains extremely small, but once again the key word is: reported.. we should have like 10 cargoes per day but we are probably seeing 2 or 3.
Why did oil collapse?
Because there are more sellers than buyers… yes, obviously, but why are there more sellers than buyers? Is not the paper people, is the industry who is selling futures, and there are only very specific situations where the industry becomes net short.
The natural futures sellers are oil producers hedging production, but they rarely hedge the front of the curve. Then there are inventory holders, which as we know practically no longer exist because nobody is holding crude in tanks. Refiners have a natural hedge through refined products, and if they want to lock in margins they buy crude futures and sell diesel or gasoline futures, so nothing here either..
That leaves only traders, the people buying and selling crude. When a trader acquires a physical cargo, the moment they have price exposure they immediately neutralize it by selling futures, and what we are seeing now is that more and more cargoes that used to move directly from producer to refiner are now being lifted by traders, what I call “orphan barrels”, because inside the industry, people try to avoid selling cargoes to traders whenever possible, that is a way to tell your boss knows you are leaving PnL on the table. But when there is no other option, you simply transfer the problem to the trader.
Today we are seeing many of these cargoes being lifted by traders, and those barrels end up floating around the world far longer than until it finds a home.. optionality also has a cost.
Beyond that, we still need to find an explanation inside the price formation process itself, because that is ultimately all that matters.
Every pricing hub defines prices based on the quantity of crude sitting around that area over a certain period of time. Right now we simply have too many barrels congested near the pricing points because the natural destination for those barrels, Asia, is also clogged, for reasons we already know.. but if Asia does not absorb barrels, I cannot clear my front yard.
And we have a bigger problem, timing, or more precisely the change in the way Middle Eastern crude is now being marketed.
Let’s assume a producer in the Atlantic Basin sells crude to a refinery in Asia. If “T” is the delivery date at destination, those cargoes are usually transacted around 70 days before arrival. At this point, only the loading window is agreed, generally within the next 20 or 30 days, along with a differential or discount against a benchmark, nobody talks about outright price yet.
Before the war, if that same refiner wanted to buy from the Middle East, they had a 10 to 15 day handicap advantage because those cargoes transacted roughly 50 to 60 days before delivery.
Today we are averaging 35 days because everything is sold via tenders since the Dubai mechanism no longer functions properly and Oman is far too limited. Kuwait and Iraq are offering July cargoes. That is literally next week! Nobody buys cargoes with such little lead time because refineries are already programmed for the next two months.
Well, nobody but traders buy them, because those cargoes are now distressed.
Let’s analyze the full sequence. Let’s say 75 million barrels remained trapped during these 100 days. Those barrels were transacted back in Dec and Jan, and then got trapped in March.
Those barrels coming out now are definitely pressuring the spot market, but they are not the entire problem. Think of the market as a pipeline. These trapped barrels are clogging the flow, so logically the best solution would be to stop injecting more barrels until the natural flow clears the blockage. The Middle East is doing the exact opposite, they are injecting prompt barrels that are now directly competing against the recently released barrels.
And there are several reasons for this. First, there is still no established loading program because nobody knows exactly how much they can produce, how many ships they can secure, whether demand will still be there, and so on. So they are simply dumping whatever barrels they have at hand into the market however possible.
And that desperation is effectively undercutting Atlantic barrels, which are taking the biggest hit, so…
How does this get fixed?
First, we need a sharp cut in Atlantic exports, especially from the US, and if we look at Brent-Dubai and WTI differentials, that adjustment is already happening. Exports should collapse and inventories should begin rebuilding, but WAF and LatAm exports cannot really decline. Those barrels are effectively a pipeline straight into the sea, they have to move no matter what. Price becomes the adjustment variable and boy if it is, Brazilian Tupi is being offered at Brent -9 and no takers..
Then comes demand. Let’s assume we now have a structural surplus of 50 to 100 million barrels that will eventually become “oil on water”. Only China has the ability to clear that floating inventory in let’s say… 30 days? (2.5Mnbpd), 60 days? (1.25Mnbpd) is either that or Atlantic flows decline by the same amount.
Either way, this is only beginning and it will take time, unless China suddenly reactivates. But that will not happen this month…nor next month, possibly not in the month after that…. We are already selling August cargoes and the Chinese still have not shown up. And the signals coming from Beijing are not encouraging either..
In June they refined just 12Mnbpd and still authorized incremental exports of gasoline, diesel and jet outside the official export quotas. That tells us about the state of domestic demand.
Oil Physical
For every action there is a reaction, and this is the reaction to those “Dubai +60 headlines” we saw back in March… well now it’s Dated -10… Freight is eating much of these discounts but even with that landed values in Asia are starting to look “pre war levels”… even the Chinese teapots could make money. …
‘First, we need a sharp cut in Atlantic exports, especially from the US’
Won’t that happen automatically as the strategic reserve gets low enough in the US that they have to cut it off before those salt caverns start to collapse? The strange thing is that the strategics reserve was meant to keep America going through any shortages but the Trump regime is selling it overseas instead. And when crunch time comes, that reserve will no longer be available. Helluva way to run a railroad.
China has been a primary reason that this gulf war hasn’t blown everything related to oil to smithereens.
Cui bono? What are they getting out of being the only party with the flexibility to make this all happen?
Here’s a spot cut to Jeffrey Currie (see above) pondering how and why of China reducing is oil imports by 6 million barrels/day. At one point, he says, “Nobody knows.” He speculates that Xi and Trump made some kind of deal, but even if he’s right, why would China do this?
It’s also part of the equation that if countries in Asia are being hit extremely hard, China wouldn’t want even more accelerated destabilization all around them.
The poor people (not just in the Asia region) get hit hardest. That actually might bother some people.
I appreciate you supplying all of this information….BUT posting entire articles from other sites is a theft of copyright (posting from an original item on a social media account is different, that is fair game for hoisting in full).
Please don’t do this again, since I will have to rip out or overwrite the comment.
this article was free, believe it or not there was even more with a minimal paid subsricption which I don’t have.
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I’m too dense to have the foggiest idea what all that means, but it reads a lot like the COVID supply chain disruptions that drove semi random shortages and price spikes.
The thlot pickens…
I really know nothing; really glad I decided early on that that’s true and didn’t go long oil futures. I’d be completely smoked right now.
Whenever everybody is saying the same thing, it’s usually a good time to start looking for the things not being said.
Pythia said:”Socrates insisted that he did not know that he did not know, and was the wisest man in Hellas”
Or as Dirty Harry put it-
‘A man’s gotta know his limitations.’
I have been wondering for a little while about the why of the huge drawdown of the US reserves. Supposedly, I’ve gathered, the US produces very roughly as much oil in overall quantity as it consumes, but it’s not all the right type for distilling to diesel and some other products. So, I suppose it has to ship some out to get some back of the “right” stuff. Now there’s an over-all world shortage, I guess, of that “right” heavy stuff and we have to make some kind of accommodation to acquire it.
That doesn’t explain to me, though, why we’re having to draw down our reserves so powerfully, reserves which, I assume, are mostly light crude. Where are we sending it to, and why? We are shipping most of it, no? You seemed to indicate that above. Is it just to manage the price of Brent, worldwide? What would be happening if we weren’t drawing down our reserves and shipping them out?
Well… the US sabotaged Nordstream and sanctioned Russia with the intent of making the EU dependent on the US as en energy supplier, and also pressured Japan to buy more oil from Alaska (dunno if the Japanese can refine that but … details details), so now there’s an opportunity slash obligation perhaps.
Somebody with a better understanding of this could explain more, but that’s how it looks to me.
If the US wasn’t drawing down the SPR, the price of oil would be higher and more participants would be openly critical of the US/Israel plan to topple Iran. As it is, Trump can point to the market and shrug off the economic effects of this imperial adventure.
I honestly haven’t gone all the way down the rabbit hole of how exactly the oil side of this war will play out. I still think Iran doesn’t actually see Hormuz as the decisive issue, but they took a risk early on, won it easier than I think they even hoped, and now it’s more to “keep a timer” on the war overall.
For the US exports, I heard one suggestion a while back that makes sense to me. Essentially we’re trying to keep allied economies in East Asia & Europe afloat. It’s not a selfless thing so much as the fear that if any collapse, it will take the pro-US governments with them. A more China-leaning gov in Japan is I think a particular nightmare scenario for the US strategists (if you can call them that).
Also, I could be wrong, but when it comes to the mix, while most US crude is too light to economically produce diesel, I think you can get an ok yield of naphtha and lighter jet fuel grades. Obviously it would depend on what the refinery is tuned to.
exactly.
this part is about china vs usa.
usa pumps out its spr onto world market , plus trumps friday-sunday pump and dumps…to calm oil futures(speculators…wti, brent, etc…which are NOT Physical Oil).
meanwhile china has a buffer…they need oil mainly for plastics and such….and they have plenty of reserves, because they are strategic thinkers. they remove their demand from global oil markets, relieving upward pressure on futures. so usa depletes its reserves, and we’re very dependent on constant oil supply.
china is not and just lets it go.
the latter is gonna make bank…and friends…by selling all that kit to get off the black gold in the near future.solar, geothermal, modular nuke plants, etc. all the shit theyve been pouring money and thought in to while our “leaderships” have been focused on ruling the world.
while the usa does what?
keeps doing what its been doing, assuming that fossil energy is the only kind of energy?
This analysis is wildly optimistic from the perspective of private oil buyers and state economy managers.
For one thing, oil is just one part of the puzzle, and not the largest part. The others include nitrogen fertilizer, sulfur, and metals such as aluminum.
Without sufficient fertilizer, modern crops will not produce yields anything like what has been seen in the recent past. There will be widespread shortages of fertilizer and in consequence there will be widespread crop shortages.
Sulfur, in the form of sulfuric acid, is necessary for extraction of all sorts of metals from their raw ores. Watch for steep increases in the price of those metals.
Oil remains the primary fuel for long-distance transport of goods, whether by ship, train, or truck. While oil may quickly resume flowing from wells, it will take a good while for actual supply to match demand. The world oil economy has been coasting on petroleum reserves and the oil prices you see in print or on the internet are almost all based on wagers (a.k.a., futures). They do not reflect the market reality.
So, what will follow: a large global recession or a major global depression?
At this point, I don’t believe anybody knows, and you might as well ask the boy who shines your shoes by the news-stand.
re:
“Middle East Eye confirms the idea that any Israel-Lebanon agreement will meet fierce domestic agreement. ”
Did you mean disagreement?
I had “opposition” but had a sentence cut and paste kludge. Thanks for the catch. Fixing.
It would be nice to have some fierce agreement for once. Fearsome peacemaking isn’t talked about a lot.
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The real problem is Lebanon, even if unspoken. It was the Israeli-Lebanese agreement to destroy Hizbullah which triggered the Hormuz Strait crisis (and also massive protests in Lebanon, which may well end up toppling the rather treacherous pro-US Aoun government). A real ceasfire between Israel and Hizbollah is necessary for the MoU to be implemented and the main weapon Iran has to put pressure is closing Hormuz (could also bomb Israel mercilessly, I guess, but that’s a more costly and risky action, maybe later?)
As I understand it, it’s not that the MoU justifies Iran’s actions but that the MoU is semi-inactive because of Israel’s actions in Lebanon. All this is measures to try to force the USA to effectively reign on Israel (also a warning to Oman to stop playing games and probably a warning to Pezeshkian not to be too soft in the negotiations and to remember where the real power lays in Iran).
There is no Israeli-Lebanese agreement to “destroy Hezbollah.” There is no agreement at all, and all sections of the population in Lebanon continue to refer to Israel as “the enemy.” No-one except a few lunatics in Washington (and Tel Aviv of course) talks of “destroying Hezbollah” anyway. What there is, is a long-term consensus plan to recover the monopoly of legitimate violence for the state, and slowly turn Hezbollah into a purely political organisation under conditions of the nearest thing to “peace” with Israel that is possible. This became possible to imagine after Hezbollah was badly knocked about in 2024, and limited progress was actually made in forming a government electing a President and deploying the Army into the South of the country. All that has gone to rats now.
The origin of the current conflict between Hezbollah and Israel was Iran’s mobilisation of Hezbollah as a second front during the US/Israeli attack. This was logical from Iran’s point of view, but it was the excuse the Israelis were seeking, not just to go after Hezbollah leaders and command centres, but to begin methodically turning the southern part of Lebanon into a wasteland from which, in principle, Hezbollah could not operate. I think Iran would be very happy to see the conflict end now, although it’s a useful lever against the US, because the longer the fighting goes on, the higher the casualties Hezbollah will take and the more devastation Lebanon will suffer, both of which will reduce Iranian influence there. But the Iranians have lost control of the conflict now.
And who does have control?
It is not the US, and not israel with the US
The residual ability to project destructive nihilism does not mean control.
With an empire thoroughly experienced with sustained low intensity conflict, piracy and extralegal covert action and information control across the globe, the bet now is “The Resistance”, Russia & China won’t be able to overcome the collective action problem to kill the empire at its weakest.
I agree with Will Schryver Iran should fave obliterated northern Israel when they first violated the MOU, that opportunity won’t easily return.
The empire can go on with this sort of thing indefinitely until we stop it from inside, which is so far impossible, but fracture lines are appearing everywhere.
And the imperial structure is such that destructive nihilism is a profit center with a substantial constituency in the governing oligarchy.
Insofar as it’s a high-intensity battle between Israel and Hezbollah, both sides have to agree to stop the fighting. Hezbollah will stop if told to, but that implies Israel stops first. The problem is that the only state in a position to influence Israel is the US, which shows little sign beyond hand-waving of doing so. Military, it’s important not to get Israel/Hezbollah mixed up with Iran/US and Hormuz. The Iranians made this connection (and may now be regretting doing so) but their proxy in this conflict now can’t get out of it, since the other side won’t stop. That’s why Iran has lost control.
I think that internal political considerations within Israel are driving the current conflict in Lebanon. The settlers in northern Israel have been apoplectic for decades about living under various “threats” both real and imagined. They tend to vote as a bloc for whomever will promise yet another bloody incursion to “mow the lawn” in the Litani littoral.
The right-wing/fascist coalition saw the U.S. attack on Iran as an opportunity to go in and create a “buffer zone” in southern Lebanon while Iran was occupied with defense of the homeland and unlikely to re-arm Hezbollah or retaliate on their behalf in any meaningful way. The Nut’n Yahoo coalition won’t withdraw until after the votes have been counted in this year’s elections.
That doesn’t seem to include the president and the prime minister.
I think they’d be very surprised to hear that.
I don’t think Hezbollah needed any prodding from Iran. Israel clearly intended to invade Lebanon again, has been amassing forces for it, and the obvious plan was to quickly knock out Iran and then go into Lebanon. So even if for some reason we want to claim that what Israel was doing in Lebanon was peace and Hezbollah “fired first”, them joining the US/Israel vs. Iran war straight away would be textbook definition of preemptive self-defense and the most logical thing they could do.
Not to mention the 1000’s of ceasefire violations by Israel on Lebanon leading up to Feb 28.
Here’s a problem I’ve had since Israel’s early 1980s invasion of Lebanon. It has to do with the notion that Israel’s incursions into Lebanon have been mostly unprovoked, or else that they have been provoked to some extent or another is a fact that is simple ignored by those who condemn Israel as some kind of aggressive, predatory monster.
Israel, as I recall, was being attacked by Hezbollah from within Lebanon before they invaded in back then. How meaningful these attacks by Hezbollah were, how righteous, I don’t know. But doesn’t the fact remain that both in the earlier invasion and this one, that Hezbollah had been lobbing missiles from Lebanon into Israel, that is, attacking Israel, before Israel invaded?
So, is Lebanon actually sovereign? Is it not responsible for actions that initiate from within its borders? If it cannot control those, then can we not say that anarchy reigns there and that it is not actually sovereign? And if that’s the case, then can it be said that Israel is invading a sovereign territory, but more that Israel is entering a functionally ungoverned territory in order to protect itself?
And if we say that it doesn’t have the right to make that incursion in order to protect itself from missile attacks from within territory that the putative government, Lebanon, either can’t or won’t prevent, then aren’t we really denying Israel’s right to exist? I know that people on these forums actually say just that, but I attribute that mostly to hyperbole or emotion. Maybe I’m wrong there.
Now, I’m not in these paragraphs here discussing whether Israel has gone way too far in its hostilities in its current invasion. I believe it has. I’m just discussing whether it had legitimate reason to in the first place. This, it seems to me implied by many in their comments or other discussions, is that it didn’t. I think it did under the right to self defense, and should be acknowledged when discussing its current responsibilities.
Israel experienced a holocaust on Oct 7 so it slaughtered and starved about 1/2million indigenous Semites in the concentration camp it had set up to defend itself.
It lays siege to and brutalizes anyone in international waters who attempts to aid the victims of its self defense doctrine.
It has laid siege to Lebanon in order to occupy and settle it.
Its people believe that territories of Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia are its right to occupy and settle.
And if you believe you are the chosen people, you believe, by definition, that God values non-chosen people less.
I think it’s important to differentiate between the right of Israel to exist and the right of Israelis to exist. Nobody denies the latter (I hope). Plenty of people deny the former, generally on the grounds that no country has the right to exist. (Israelis themselves deny Palestine’s right to exist).
I agree that having rockets shot at you by either a neighbouring country or a semi-autonomous force operating in that country constitutes an attack. People who are attacked have the right to defend themselves, but are expected to do so in accordance with the various laws and conventions of war – for example, by minimizing civilian casualties, not engaging in collective punishment etc.
Israel is not unique in ignoring those, but it is unusual in the lengths to which it’s prepared to go. Combating insurgent elements that are mixed in with a civilian population is a notoriously difficult task, but doing so by killing or permanently displacing the entire civilian population (by leveling whole cities or regions until they are uninhabitable) is considered beyond the pale by most countries. It’s pretty clear to the observer that the objective is to do to Lebanon what was done to Gaza, and some Israeli politicians state it outright.
The JCPOA was a 160 page document that took more than a year to negotiate. Thus, I’m not surprised the two-page MOU is subject to misinterpretations.
Referring to Clause 5, Trita Parsi said, “The text does not appear to support the Iranian interpretation conclusively, in my read.” I disagree.
The relevant part of the Clause states, ”Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements, using its best efforts, for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.
It doesn’t say Oman will make arrangements, or the UAE or anybody else. I think if Iran is not aware of every ship coming and going there could be a problem. We are still in a state of war and, besides oil, large ships can deliver weapons, missiles, drones, and even specialized troops. If I were Iran, yes, I would want to be involved and “make arrangements” for every ship.
Iran cannot exercise rights it does not have, any more than you can sell your neighbor’s house.
Iran can only AT MOST operate with respect to its own territorial waters. It does not have the right to interfere with shipping in Oman waters. Oman is not a signatory and has not separately agreed to that.
Iran cannot infringe on Oman’s sovereign territory by interfering with vessel operations in Omani waters. That legally is no different that Israel deeming that it can operate in Lebanon “because security zone”. Even if the human costs with Israel invading Lebanon are obviously entirely different, the shoddy legal basis is the same.
And the JCOPA was hard because it involved a LOT of very highly technical language that only nuclear experts could provide. This is not that. The need for extensive expert participation and review in any nuclear agreement is why the US could not deny Iran’s position that the other, simpler issues be resolved first and the nuclear enrichment related negotiations be deferred to the second phase.
Iran can’t legally exercise rights it doesn’t have, but possession is 9/10 of the law as they say. While China, GCC, Iraq and SE Asia and the golden billion want the strait opened, the question is can any power force it open? Iran surprised the Epstein coalition with its missiles and drones, Marandi claims some wonder weapons have not been used. The US has been in a standoff mode since day 1, stocks are depleted and forces have been deployed for 4 months now and need rotation (with what?). The FP realists still think Iran has the upper hand. Iran is not trying to win a popularity contest.
Oh, so you are all on board with Trump’s belief that predators win and everyone else has to suck it up? That is what you are advocating.
Both China and Russia believe in international law, even though they are big enough to arguably fare well in a world of might makes right, they would rather have a system that gives some hope of resolving conflict and having mutually beneficial trade. Their big beef with the current system is that the Collective West has too much power in the post World War II bodies like the IMF. If you read all the BRICS declarations, they call for upholding existing institutions but giving the Global South more say in them.
So your view, rule of the jungle, is at odds with the emerging system of multipolarity, which will require even more in the way of negotiation and compromise if medium sized and smaller states are not to be engulfed in wars and other crises.
Rightly or wrongly, Iran might have reason to believe that if it doesn’t maintain control of the strait, it might not be able to secure much in the way of reparations, frozen funds, or deterrence.Certainly, they risk opening themselves up to a great deal of international backlash if global opinion shifts against them because of a worldwide economic calamity to which their actions contributed. They risk losing the moral high ground, yes—but given the circumstances they faced up until the 12-day war (sanctions, economic sabotage, isolation, vilification), neither the moral high ground nor restraint had done much to improve their situation. So “might makes right” may well be the lesson they’ve drawn from their predicament. It did, after all, get them some leverage. Sure, it might not be the wisest course of action going forward, but who has the foreknowledge to what is their best path is for securing their interests?
I can’t speak for upstater, and I don’t want to over-generalize from myself or my read on the zeitgeist, but I think this may be one thing that’s very generational on average.
Trump is a partial exception because of his own mishegas, but I feel whatever the political struggles of the baby-boomer generation, there’s a last afterglow of medieval religion beneath it all. From the most die-hard cold warrior to the committed activist to even your most stereotypical “best-practices” wielding PMCite, there’s still a sense of “my true faith” & a world that could be saved (often in the form of “peace”) if only everyone could be assimilated.
With my generation though, perhaps that tide has receded. Beyond even international law, the basic sense of some common humanity to hang moral judgements or values on is going away. It isn’t a return to the old tribalisms either (e.g. racism or the xenophobic polis). Now actions are central; we love those who act in ways we love, even half a world away, & hate those who act in ways we hate, especially if they’re our neighbor.
That those things are sometimes wildly incoherent when viewed doctrinally only proves the point: doctrine doesn’t matter because there’s neither a universal (humanity) for it to redeem nor a constant state (be it sin or underdevelopment) to redeem from.
So I don’t think what follows is exactly a jungle of states or nations at war. It will probably be something weirder and more fractal… but yes, probably more violent. And while I agree that less powerful countries will need to be careful as always, there are as many opportunities to gain sympathy as aggression. Religion is also getting weirder because it’s not going away but is already continuously redefining itself in more operative terms, which is making different groups somewhat cross-compatible.
Having said all that, maybe I’m just a big weirdo imagining things. I’d especially be interested if any other millennials or zoomers see the same things I’m seeing.
Russia and China take a Realist approach to foreign policy. You are advocating an Idealist approach.
The Idealist approach has been tried and found wanting, because the US manipulated it to force its own ‘rules-based order’ onto every country it could overpower, whether by economic violence or direct warfare.
There are no international laws, because there is no power of enforcement. Such international laws as we see in place continue by the amicable agreement of the involved states.
Now that the US is entirely and openly a rogue state (and has been since 2001), it is not credible to propose that states such as Iran should adhere to ‘international law’.
More specifically, the US has been openly violating the Laws of the Sea by using its navy to seize or sink foreign vessels across the globe. The murder-by-helicopter of civilians in small boats off the coast of Venezuela is just a particularly graphic example.
Well said!
I’m not sure about “rights it does not have.” If you’re referring to UNCLOS, it’s my understanding UNCLOS does not does not come into play during war. UNCLOSE does define warships as such during peacetime, but only to suggest, for example, that a US aircraft carrier can transit the Taiwan Strait but it can’t begin to practice drills like launch aircraft, fire missiles for target practice, or spy on China. That is, it has freedom to transit but not much else.
War involves The Law of Naval Warfare which comes under the Geneva Convention and it’s my understanding, under the LNW, all the Persian Gulf states are belligerents including Oman. Though Oman said it’s neutral, it was attacked by Iran, oil crew members were killed, and its neutral status is questionable. This is an int’l conflict: US, Israel, all GCC countries, Oman, and Iran are belligerents, and the entire Persian Gulf is a war zone.
From Just Security: Expert Q&A on Key Law of Naval Warfare Issues in the Conflict with Iran By Michael Schmitt and Rob McLaughlin March 15, 2026
https://www.justsecurity.org/133999/law-naval-warfare-iran-war/
“The Sultan of Oman asserts that his country remains neutral. However, law of armed conflict classification rules hold otherwise, for an international armed conflict exists whenever there are hostilities between two States, even when one or both claim otherwise (1949 Geneva Conventions, common art. 2). Assuming Oman is now a belligerent, the Strait of Hormuz is entirely comprised of belligerent territorial seas. This means that while neutral merchant vessels and warships would continue to enjoy the right of transit passage through it, the Strait would now be a lawful location for exercising belligerent rights, including attack and capture under the law of the sea insofar as belligerent warships, auxiliaries, and merchant vessels of the belligerents are concerned.”
I want to add my interpretation to the final sentence which states “the right of transit passage through it [Persian Gulf].” You can transit passage through the English Chanel, Taiwan Strait, or Suez Canal without stopping. Entering the Persian Gulf with a ship full of supplies for your enemy, or loading oil to sell and then buy weapons, is another matter. IMO, Iran has the right to interfere with shipping and the other belligerents have the right to interfere with Iran’s shipping.
Iran is stopping the exit of ships from the Persian Gulf, which contradicts your fact set as well as Iran’s commitments under the MOU.
You might well be correct. I can only say, based on the above legal view from Just Security, the entire Persian Gulf is a war zone and every country in the gulf is a belligerent. And if you’re driving a ship from a neutral country like S. Korea, to deliver/exchange goods to/from say, Saudi Arabia, you run the risk of being sunk. I doubt you have a ‘right’ to enter the PG and do business with a belligerent during war while the MOU is still open to interpretation.
It is not a war zone while a theoretical ceasefire is on. And it is Iran that turned it back into a war zone by shooting at a commercial ship that was no threat to Iran whatsoever.
The bigger point, which I keep making and no one wants to hear, is that Iran’s control/fee plans are not viable in peacetime. Iran will have to be on a permanent war footing to achieve that. The only other way is if it gets the Gulf States and others to agree to fees for a certain period of time (which would be years) or up to a specified total in lieu of reparations (or that never gonna get done $300 billion fund).
Imo the point of civilization is or should be that we act in civilized manner, don’t make war. The opposite of the law of the jungle.
But Iran was attacked by the us and israel, both using bases in gulf states. Those gulf states have made no real effort to prevent us etc from using their airspace. And the us etc goal is to destroy Iran as a country, take control of their resources etc, it could hardly be more existential. And even the tattered MOU is only a 60 day pause that us etc has been breaking every day.
Given the above imo Iran would be well within its rights to block all shipping through the gulf at least until the war is over and the us has withdrawn from gulf states. Beyond that, imo tolls, or fees, are one way to repair infrastructure damaged be the belligerents, which include the gulf states.
Regarding outside pressure, Russia might see the gulf war as helpful in its own war and might see a clear benefit for Iran to succeed in dominating the gulf while removing the us from the region. Such a change might reduce us influence in Central Asia. I wonder if their advice favors Iran;s hardliners.
With China reducing oil imports, maybe the more serious problem will be fertilizer.
The signing of the MOU means the US and Iran are not at war at present.
Moreover, as you have conceded, Iran cannot use a war justification for its action after the war. So you have conceded it will not have a legal basis for asserting control over the Strait of Hormuz except when a war is on
Just Security is a neocon rag and not reliable.
Oman is not a belligerent. It has been pointedly neutral. Iran has not once attacked Oman in this war.
“The signing of the MOU means the US and Iran are not at war at present.”
This statement is a misapprehension of international law.
Under international law, a cease-fire is a temporary suspension of armed hostilities not a formal end to the war. Legally, the state of war remains active. Because the state of war has not been legally concluded, either party is free to resume military operations without the need to formally re-declare war if a serious violation of the agreement occurs.
You are further Making Shit Up in suggesting that Iran was hewing to the Law of Naval Warfare, which it was not. Firing on neutral vessels (unless refusing a request to be searched) and laying mines are both violation of the Geneva Convention. Iran and Iraq are both cited as violators in textbooks for just that conduct during the 1980s Tanker War.
A belligerent can operate a blockade (and therefore shooting at blockade runners is kosher, since they are presumably evading search) BUT the blockade must be announced. Iran did not announce any blockade.
I’m no expert on the Law of Naval Warfare but you’ve consistently been making legal assertions based on the International Law of the Sea when the current situation appears to fall under the definition of an International Armed Conflict (IAC) under the Law of Naval Warfare.
Under the Law of Naval Warfare an IAC may only be terminated by the conclusion of a peace treaty — a truce, cease-fire, or armistice are not sufficient to revert to the peacetime Law of the Sea.
The belligerents aren’t required to cite international law for each instance of force once an IAC is in effect. Merchant vessels also can’t simply declare their neutrality if they’re in the employ or ownership of a party to the IAC, even if that party claims to be neutral in the conflict. Belligerent naval operations may be conducted anywhere on earth except in the neutral coastal waters of a non-belligerent.
The Newport Manual of Naval Warfare is heavy on legalese but appears to be a good source: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3047&context=ils
Unless your are the executives of united states of americky, or the disunited states of europa.
Financial sensitivties might restrain sale, but allow occupation.
I might add, for my whole life, Iran has been repressed from exercising rights it did have.
And during that that time,another region has not been repressed from exercising rights it did not have.
Yes, and Iran is not that. So you are advocating that Iran behave like a rogue superpower, when it does not have that clout and is more likely to suffer blowback? Russia and China will not be on board with Iran creating a global depression out of Strait of Hormuz dog in the mangerdom. Iran would become more hated than Israel and with better reason, because it will have inflicted much more hardship on many many more people.
I would never advocate that.
Iran has been pushed into a corner.
Who has pushed them into a corner?
My selected government and yours have left them in a precolonial struggle.
As the russian dictator said; what is a world without russia
What is the middle east without Iran/Persia
I would love to hear better reasons to hate iran. What have they done for the past 47 years apart from trying to get along without the (copyright Macgregor) syckes picot (copyright marandi) family dictatorships.
Israel has effed up the region for longer and noone seems to hate them
Iran did not start this war.
Those who did should be compromised
Winner takes oil.
Where does it get you (as a nation) acting all rational?
Tell that to the cubans,ukranians and venezuelans.
The motivations that have produced this moment have nothing to do do with the victims.
I think the russian’s might have a little sangfroid, the chinese being the world’s amazon might be discomfited, but they will,in my opinion, adjust.
Iran has shown itself to be diplomatically,miltarily and economically independent. I
think 2 out of the 3 great powers can live with that.
Acting like a rogue state used to be called war.
Rogue states have brought us this.
The ball may be thrown back into the court of the people within rogue states to do something about it.
Please explain.
In the west you are offered a stale buffet of what wasn’t thrown out yesterday. (I offer andy eyeliner burnham as evidence).
Protest, as the orange glove puppet suggested to the beleaguered iranians, and we will support you with bombs.
Trouble is, you can’t do it domestically, otherwise you are just Pretti dead.
Open your mouth in the mother of all democracies, well that’s a 5 year stretch, and elon won’t post bail.
So Iran is in a quandary. Today Marandi said that Iran has not received any money and the Zionists are leveling Lebanon.
I’m not sure he is aware of all that is happening.
So USrael has not fully implemented the first point of the deescalation agreement.
So it looks like the only way Iran can get some cash is by taking advantage of the lifting of the naval blockade to sell its oil.
I doubt Iran will ever receive any reparations and have to resort to charging administrative fees in the strait to make itself whole.
Marandi was also saying that many are furious that the gov’t is negotiating.
How does one negotiate with genocidaires?
But evidently, the USA can sell its neighbours house, rape and kill it’s occupants, burn it down, whatever — so why are we, in the age of assassinating and kidnapping national leaders, bombing children’s schools, slaughtering Palestinian babies in tents, talking about rights and rules under international law?
I am not morally uncomfortable about declining to hold Iran to the standards of “international law” conceived of, imposed and trampled underfoot by its evil adversaries.
To me that that would be akin to primly averting our gaze from Israel’s latest frenzied orgy of genocide in Gaza because Hamas broke the rules on October 7.
Iranians and Palestinians are fighting for their lives; that is what existential means.
“Iran cannot exercise rights it does not have, any more than you can sell your neighbor’s house. ”
This statement is a misapprehension of International law.
The US complains about the “illegality” of Iranian actions and asserts Iran lacks the right to act in control of the strait.
The key principle is Article 51 of the UN Charter which gives every state the right of self defense.
Iran has twice been the target of unprovoked US Israeli aggression
First in June 2025 when Israel launched surprise airstrikes (“Operation Rising Lion”) targeting key Iranian military, government, and nuclear facilities, as well as senior leaders and scientists, and second in the Ramadan War commencing Feb 28th 2026.
In both cases there was no formal declaration of war, nor any genuine attempt to negotiate a peaceful solution. The parties US and Israel acted in violation of international law and killed the senior political, military, and religious leaders of Iran in a decapitation strike.
Under the provisions of the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea Part III Basic Rules and Target Discrimination, Section I Basic Rules clause 40 states:
40. In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.
Energy is a key military material as it is critical to the operation of military forces in the air, on land and sea.
All parties to WWII acknowledged the import of energy supplies and all combatants engaged in attacks on regions of oil supply in addition to regions containing refinery and storage sites and merchant vessels engaged in the transport of energy supplies. The Allies invaded and occupied Iran in order to deny Iranian energy resources to the enemy. These were legitimate applications of the use of force by all parties to the conflict.
Iran now seeks to take steps to monitor, control, and restrict, merchant shipping passing through the strait. It has every right to do so.
Iran confronts two despotic states both of which seek the destruction and total annihilation of the Iranian civilization. This is an act of genocide equal to similar acts presently being carried out in Gaza and Lebanon. Iran is well within its rights to respond to such threats, provocations, and military attacks.
Some comments have raised the fact that International Law has no meaning as there exists no enforcement mechanism. This is true. This fact further legitimizes Iran’s actions to exert control of the strait. Given the demonstrated barbarity of the “Chosen People” and the delusional rantings of their core enablers in the US, Iran has every right to act to protect itself against such reprehensible speech and despicable conduct.
The MOU has been correctly described as a “surrender document.” It was drafted following the defeat of the US/Israeli forces in the Ramadan War.
If any state party disagrees with Iranian actions taken under Article 51 or s. 40 of the San Remo Manual cited above, they are welcome to recommence armed conflict and attempt enforce their will. Maybe they will be third time lucky. I doubt it.
https://iihl.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/SAN-REMO-MANUAL-on-INTERNATIONAL-LAW-APPLICABLE-TO-ARMED-CONFLICTS-AT-SEA-2.pdf
It sounds like the US was trying it on. Iran damages a ship going out through the Strait. In response, the US hits four sites along the coastline which sounds like they were connected with monitoring and surveillance. This could also be interpreted as the US trying to blind the Iranians along that coastline for a future attack. In response, the Iranians counter attack US facilities but probably won’t go any further. Having said that, I expect more exchanges like this in the coming weeks as economic pressure ramps up.
One Middle East geopolitical development not talked about much right now is the possibility that some of the Persian Gulf polities may get “regime changed.” The Persian Gulf region is pretty much a bastion of the Middle Ages politically. Palestine is suffering through the effects of a long running Neo Crusade. The Gulf absolute monarchies are just that; ancient despotisms hanging on due to their fortunate possession of the most sought-after fuel in the world.
Russia and China could do worse than to foment regime changes of their own in the region.
The Middle East seems to be the longest running soap opera ever.
US, Iran disagree on Hormuz communications channel
Background: Vance announces unprecedented CENTCOM-IRGC talks aimed at reducing military tensions
= =
This is not the first time Iran has refuted a JD Vance assertion:
Iran says no new commitments on nuclear sites after Vance says inspectors to be invited back
Israel might be happy to precipitate a civil war in Lebanon but I don’t think that it will happen. The reason is that Israel has not been content to just strike the Shia part of Lebanon but other areas as well such as Christian majority areas. If it ain’t Jewish synagogues, then the Israelis have been blowing them up. This, I believe, has served to unite Lebanon against two enemies. The first is of course Lebanon and the second is their own government who wants to hand over Lebanese territory to the Israelis. Actually I will reverse myself partially and state that Israel did strike a synagogue once but it was in Iran. They were trying to kill a high ranking Iranian officer by which I take it that he was a high ranking Jewish Iranian officer.
Back in the 80’s there was this French comedian, he had a joke where he would mock-impersonate Heinrich Himmler and say “How can anyone be both Jewish and German, I can’t begin to comprehend…”
An updated version would ironically be Israeli : “How can anyone be both Jewish and Iranian, I can’t even…”
In 1966 my mother and I visited a rug merchant in Tehran called ‘Red’ for short several times, quite a few of the American community patronized his store. He was Jewish, his family had lived there for generations.
When Ferdinand pushed Muslims out of Spain and into North Africa in 1492 many Jews went with them to avoid the requirement to convert, which was anyway doubted in the inquisition. Jews were at least tolerated in many regions. a 400nyear-old synagogue in Sfax, Tunisia, was allowed to exist in relative peace until a truck bomb went off at the gate I think in the 70’s.
And, as noted, israel bombed an Iranian synagogue in an attempt to kill a (high ranking?) Iranian Jew, suggesting Jews are still better treated in Iran than Muslims are in Israel.
Well, one seat in the Iranian Parliament (not the exact name) is reserved for Jews who appear to be a tiny minority in Iran. Clearly dastardly treatment.
If Israel doesn’t stop bombing Lebanon what’s it to Iran to attack ships transiting the Oman side? Regardless why would Iran abide by any agreement it knows US-rael will break as soon as convenient?
Because Israel has the US in its corner and on top of that, Iran has done absolutely nothing to stop the ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon.
And Oman is Iran’s only friend in the Gulf.
Iran almost certainly has armed Hezbollah, which is more than any other country has done. If Hezbollah was not armed, I believe Israel would have done even more in Southern Lebanon.
So it is not correct to say it has “done absolutely nothing.” The question one might ask is “who has done more?”
As you say, Iran is in a tough position, but to deny that they have done anything seems ungenerous.
If the MOU is now invalid, per the US strikes or, if anyone prefers, violation of ceasefire regardless who started it, then why continue to hold the Iranians to its various unfortunate wordings. What was or wasn’t written or agreed to is now moot until the next MOU is written, if it is, right?
Please read the final section of the post. The US and Iran are still behaving as if the MOU is still in force. They have not returne to a hot war. The US blockade is off and the oil sanction have been stayed. They kept the tit for tat over the Oman attacks to a low level to preserve the talks. So for whatever reason, both sides assign value to keeping the pretense alive.
And in this PARTICULAR dustup, it was Iran who violated the fifth paragraph of the MOU.
The desire among readers to see Iran and the US in black and white terms is badly distorting perception.
An MOU is a non-binding agreement on general principles with a view to reaching a final, binding, agreement. It is not “holding” either side–what is preventing further escalation of the conflict is that both sides at this time do not want to escalate, probably because they calculate that they can use the cessation of hostilities to better prepare against their adversary for the future resumption of hostilities. The MOU is ambiguous, in part because both parties have a view that if there is a final agreement, they believe they will have won enough leverage through economic and kinetic means that they can force the other side to more unfavorable terms.
You are utterly missing my point. Please read the fifth paragraph.
Iran had repeatedly said they are acting in accord with the MOU with respect to the Strait of Hormuz. They are not.
And it is Iran that is acting as if the MOU has some force with respect to the Strait of Hormuz now (which if it did they should be behaving differently).
On top of that, the MOU is intended to somewhat narrow the scope of negotiations by setting down markers. Iran has astonishingly committed to (non-binding) undertakings which are at odds with its claims about controlling the Strait of Hormuz. Their position in the MOU is the opposite, as in they would have signed those right away if the agreement was enforceable.
As I understand your argument, you believe that Iran’s interpretation of what the Fifth Paragraph of the MOU means (e.g. Iran controls the Straits of Hormuz) contradicts the plain meaning of the document, is unreasonable and undertaken in bad faith, yet at the same time, Iran is pretending as if it is the party that is following the MOU and the US is engaging is bad faith.
Our divergence is that I see the document as ambiguous, I could make a straightforward argument for why Iran’s interpretation is correct, and I could make a counter argument for why the Americans are correct on this point.
the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge, for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.
This provision would seem to place the management of safe passage through the Strait solely on Iran, which implicitly confers sole control of the Strait on Iran. Otherwise, it should say the Americans AND Iran or Iran in conjunction with Oman and the Gulf Nations, or the UN Security Council, or whatever, etc. It does not, and it does not because the US and Iran agree that Iran has sole control over the Strait. Further, Iran is not agreeing to cede its control, it is pledging to use its sole control to manage safe passage of commercial shipping, which America is interfering with by attempting to route traffic through the Oman side.
The second part says:
The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialog with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.
The second part just says Iran will talk to Oman. I suspect Iran’s discussion will place much greater weight on the “sovereign rights of coastal states.”
I think its ambiguous too.
But USA has shorn-up their side of the ambiguity by bringing the Gulf States (and to some extent Oman) into the equation. That’s what Rubio’s trip was all about.
Not only are Gulf States demanding that the Straits be free of Iranian control but they are also demanding that Iran’s weapons be catalogued and controlled.
I think Iran saw MOU’s reference to Gulf States sovereign rights, “will talk” with Oman, etc. as diplomatic niceties, assuming that they would all go along (after all, Iran won the war). But USA (in my opinion) made sure they wouldn’t.
The Gulf States have made clear they are opposed to toll or fees or Iran control. That has been their position and they reaffirmed it at the GCC. Iran knew that when it signed the MOU.
So it is false to say Iran would assume that the Gulf States would go along. They made very clear that they do not want to become economic hostages of Iran. This is not hard to understand, so I do not know why you persist in not understanding.
Re: the mini-gusher.
HFI Research had a Substack Note yesterday with charts from Barclays.
https://substack.com/@hfir/note/c-283140512
Figure 3 shows the amount of barrels that were “stuck in the Gulf”. It jibes with what Jeff Currie was saying a few days ago, the “60 million barrels” ready to go.
I’m not sure I would call 18 hours of global oil consumption any kind of gusher but whatever.
I know, I was about to joke that it’s more of a squirt really, but decided to let it rest.
That being said, squirt or not, there is still much uncertainty about the real state of play in the oil supply chain, how bad are we gonna be clobbered, if that…
Hezbollah chief Qassem rejects Israel-Lebanon agreement, calls it a humiliation
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-900642
It’s astonishing how bad the information about world oil supply is. Back in 2021, before Russia invaded Ukraine, prices started skyrocketing, even though inventories were not low and were expected to increase. This year the opposite happened. Following a rea, serious supply disruption with no indication of its end, prices briefly surpassed levels seen in the early months of the speculation of 2021 and quickly settled much lower.
Now Jeff Currie notes that “people have been saying” since March that a supply cliff was imminent in 2-4 weeks. Yet he has no idea when it might hit. Oil traders obviously begged to differ, shrugging off any notion of a cliff.
Some people said that Iran was running out of storage capacity and would have to stop pumping. Restoration of production would take a long time. Those claims never materialized. Iraqi and Kuwaiti and possibly UAE production were forced to shut down, presumably requiring lots of time to restore. But now we hear that UAE production is already at 90%!
Does anyone know what time it is?
Oil prices are based on spot price. Spot price depends on flow, how much available supply at a given moment in time versus how much demand exists for that supply. Futures markets are generally in backwardation, oil prices for the future delivery are lower than in the present, which means you want to sell today without delay to maximize profits. (People pre-order heating oil because it is cheaper bought for future delivery than the spot price is anticipated to be in the winter.) When you have a supply glut, which were are seeing as oil which was floating inventory trapped in the Straits becomes available for markets, you get contango, where future prices are higher so there is a price incentive to hoard supply. This is not normal.
High price signals supplier to flow more product, low price signals buyers to buy more product. Inventory is irrelevant, until it impacts the volume of flow. Between aggressive draws from world strategic petroleum reserves and the disappearance of the Chinese from the spot market, flow has been more than adequate to meet demand. The bull thesis is that inventory will expend itself to beyond operational minimums before sufficient supply comes back on to replace depleted inventories, which will cause a significant price shock upwards and probable short squeeze. The bear case is the reverse, and the chicken little longs will get made into chicken soup.
If you have a house with a water pump, and the water pump dies, there is still water in your water tank, and you can probably flush the toilet a few times and you may not notice that your water pump is out. But when you run out of water inventory, you are left with something that you can’t flush. This seems to be the trajectory of the oil market.
I do not follow crude future or product merchantile trading….
Crude input to US refinery is steady yoy.
I do follow inventory.
US has imported about a million barrels a day less while depleting SPR about the same.
Main fuel inventory has been steady, with gasoline most down about 5% yoy.
Aside from Cushing commercial crude inventory is little changed yoy.
I do not know when U.S. begins to hit unusable tank bottoms.
Can crude supply keep drawing a million barrels a day for 100 days?
When does finished fuel supply dwindle ?
I suspect we are back to April 2026 transits in SOH. US will tap the north side of SOH and IRGC will thump rubble on US bases in GCC.
So it goes….. until it doesn’t.
I have also heard that it takes a long time to restart production, but we should remember that there is a lot of oil stored in the tanks in the SOH.
When this conflict was in its beginning days I remember that all of the Gulf States were continuing to pump and filling up their storage tanks. They did this to delay turning off the pumps because of the well-known damage that would cause.
So, while it would take a while for pumping to be restored to any appreciable level, there is the oil sitting in those storage tanks that could be transited out in another little spurt, but only if tankers are willing to enter the SOH.
and should we take statements by the GCC as truthful or perhaps exaggerated and politically expedient (Donigula needs to be happy) for whatever reason – there is no penalty for deviations from reality in public statements. Certainly, the US leader has found it very profitable (for families and friends) to dissemble. This is why industry analysts are in demand.
Why should anyone know what the world supply of oil is? There is no reporting. You are too used to financial markets in LISTED instruments where all transactions are captured and recorded on exchanges.
In OTC financial markets, when I have had to develop estimates of market size, the range was often 1-3x.
That would seem to be the obvious conclusion. Saudia Arabia, the swing producer, has always been particularly secretive about its production, exports, and reserves.
It does make you wonder about the value of the data in the International Energy Agency’s Oil Market Report. OTOH, last March it stated that “Global observed inventories of crude and products are currently assessed at more than 8.2 billion barrels, the highest level since February 2021.” Interesting that February, 2021 marked the last time we were on the eve of a major war. Curious! Maybe observed global inventories has predictive value?
Anyway we should soon know if predictions of an oil market cliff weere all a fantasy, or whether world oil supply has been more carefully calibrated and manipulated than we had previously thought possible. If so, someone–most likely intelligence agencies–would have the numbers and know what global oil supply really is. If anything counted as one of their highest priority jobs, this would be it.
Iran should never have agreed to any cease fire. They have opened themselves up to slowly be taken apart. The people they are dealing with are not capable of honest goodwill negotiations.They have no honor and no scruples.
And are lawless, ruthless and murderous. Think pagers… and all that gambit implies.
Will Schryver on this point last week,
IDK, my crystal ball is oddly fuzzy, but we should consider what the 60 day pass to the global crude markets means for Iran. They may not want to spoil that party yet. Maybe they have targeted a hard number of barrels shipped before they resume kinetic activity for real.
There has been a lot of focus on Iran, with justification, but there are a lot of moving parts in the world. Ukraine/NATO has been involved in an escalating drone war focused on primarily civilian targets in Russia. This may or may not have significant impact on Russian logistics, but will have significant political consequences as the Ukraine War has had limited impact on Russian citizens in Moscow, for example. This drone war has led to claims that Ukraine has turned the tide, although the ground war suggests otherwise.
Mearsheimer and Daniel Davis discuss this development:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klomRtbajV4
The consensus of both is that the most likely scenario is a Russian counter-strike along the lines of Karaganov, conventional strikes on Europe followed by tactical nukes if deterrence is not re-established. It is important that the timeline for the Russian response may very well be this Summer, while the MOU process plays itself out. The brilliant Western foreign policy establishment is certain that Russia would never dare strike NATO, the same way they were convinced that Iran would never shut down the Strait of Hormuz, so if/when Russia strikes NATO, they will be completely surprised. If this happens, I suspect it may radically shift what is going on right now between Iran and the US. There are several paths this may take, perhaps the US throws in the towel completely to focus on NATO/Ukraine, maybe the US blows off NATO commitments to focus on Iran, perhaps Russia joins the Axis of Resistance, etc. However, without knowing how it plays out, this will have a major effect on the conflict with Iran, and Western policy makers have no idea it is coming, and the Western media in so much as it is “informing” the public portrays the Ukraine drone strikes into Russia as a brilliant move to force Russian capitulation. We also don’t know where China will come down if this plays out, but a good guess is that it won’t be pro-USA.
It resonates with Germany’s brilliant strategy to win the First World War through its U-boat campaign to blockade Western Europe, sinking the Lusitania, certainly comparable levels of cope.
My hunch is that much diplomacy is taking place to shut down China’s drone parts supply to EU, “quietly” or not. Much depends on how “obviously” EU is involved in the conflict: in reality, of course they are, up to their neck. But are they so openly involved so that China would openly sanction them, with the attendant consequences (but without an open sanction, I suspect China can easily shut down export of drone parts)? FWIW, they’d been getting increasingly overt about their own part especially lately…
Not this madness again. Even if the US does nothing, is the idea that Europe will just stop arming Ukraine if Russia shoots directly at it? As opposed to, you know, shooting in response instead? And if Russia then escalates further to a nuclear attack, why would you expect Europe not to respond by doing the same? ‘Deterrence’ doesn’t mean being guaranteed that people won’t do anything you may dislike, nuclear weapons aren’t a fairy-tale magical object or helper that fulfils wishes. Few Russian citizens are so crazy as to think that an adequate response to Ukrainian attacks on civilian targets, or to Russia losing in Ukraine, is starting a war against Europe, let alone a nuclear one. I have to wonder whether Karaganov is paid by some aliens who want Earth to be freed of humans so they can settle here.
So Russia has to just sit there and take it?
US – Israel – Beirut tripartite deal….. too smart by half.
US balked at the1st paragraph of the MOU that left Israel out.
Back to the phony ceasefire as practiced from 6 April.
I agree with Chas Freeman’s take on this (he appeared on Dialog Works yesterday). What matters is capabilities. Iran will not allow ships to pass freely through the strait bypassing their control. So far, events confirm this.
Professor Marandi this morning on Dialog Works: Unlike Iranian behavior with the JCPOA, Iran will not adhere to the MOU if the US is not complying. Iranian opinion is divided on how hard a line to take but agree on that point.
I think that while a retreat from the Hormuz toll/fee mechanism would certainly be a major and pretty humiliating concession, if Iran hypothetically got everything else it wants for negotiations, then I would still be comfortable calling this overall war an Iranian victory, albeit a less convincing one. It might not have peacetime economic control, but everybody now knows who would control Hormuz if any anti-Iranian powers start sailing warships nearby.
However, given the US’s balking during negotiations, and the ambiguity of some of the wording, and last but not least, Israel’s behaviour in Lebanon, it’s increasingly looking like Iran isn’t going to get everything else it wants. Perhaps an oil shock or a return to war will… clarify matters, though.
From the hardliners’ perspective, the “worst case scenario” might be if the US and Israel were being perfectly polite and respectful during negotiations aside from getting tankers out via the Oman route, as that would make it very hard to plausibly restart the war: “You’d blow up this entire thing, and further exacerbate the already massive shocks hitting/soon to hit the global economy, due to what you perceive to be a violation of the MoU that others are credibly arguing isn’t actually a violation at all?!” As it stands right now, though, with all these explicit violations happening on almost a daily basis, the hardliners can much more plausibly say to Khamenei and those in positions of power: “We’ll be seen as weak and unserious and easily manipulated/bullied if we don’t pause/end negotiations and return to war! They’re violating all these clauses that we agreed to! While we’re at it, we can go back to the drawing board on the Hormuz situation now that we concretely know Oman’s stance.”
The US is in violation of the first point of the deescalation agreement in that Iran’s ally Hezbollah is under siege by USrael.
Therefore Iran is within its rights to defend its strait of Hormuz program because Iran is still under siege.
Iran is under siege by Usrael, NATO allies, and the sheiks and should consider destroying US corporate and military assets in the region.
MOU has made it difficult for Iran to counter-escalate where it’s easy for them: Hormuz is not really in play for now, without the excuse of an “active” conflict. It can’t strike sutes within GCC states without stiff diplomatic penalty. The only escalatory option it realistically has, imho, is to strike Israel directly and I think commentators here opined to that effect when the talks were starting.
For all the talk of Iranian missile arsenals, defeating Israel’s ability to wage a ground war in Lebanon is probably not easy. Iran would have to do something “big,” like wiping out Israeli refineries. Can that even be done? Even if it could be done, what would be the diplomatic fallout?
Then there’s the question of who’s playing which side in Lebanon. In the past, I’d have thought of the Gulfies of having huge influence over the Sunnis and while there was the active fight, more or less, between GCC and Iran, they were more visibly siding with Israel. What’s going on now, though? Superficially, at least, they seem to be quieter now. The role of Lebanese Pashinyan seems to have fallen to the Maronites. Are they even being run from inside Lebanon? (Both Lenanon and Armenia having oversized expat influence, especially the expats in the West, and most of (influential) Lebanese expats in the West are Christians, mostly Maronites (including in the Trump clan, incidentally), and I get that they are more hostile to Hizb’ullah than their compatriots within Lebanon. Openly selling out the country seems politically foolish, but I didn’t think Pashinyan could get away with selling the country to the Turks via the Azeris either and Armenia is far less messy than Lebanon…
Can the refineries be taken out? Sure. Take out the fractionation columns and the rest of the refinery is acres of dust collectors. As I’m sure Iran knows since they have their own refineries.
A fractionating column is a tall cylindrical pressure vessel filled with distillation trays flat have to be perfectly level to work. Punch a hole in that and it will take months to fix. Punch enough holes and you’d probably have to fabricate a new one.
Ukraine has not been able to do anything like this in repeated attacks on Russian refineries.
And refineries are civilian infrastructure. It is a war crime to target them. Iran has attacked only military assets in Israel.
Not arguing for it. But drones probably wouldn’t cut it. The columns are insulated pressure vessels but not armored. One hypersonic would take them out.
Maybe Iran wants to do something in response to us violating the MOU wrt Lebanon, but outright attack on Israel is difficult and has the disadvantage of bringing about major attack on themselves, whether that might run us out of standoff weapons or not. Plus, what to attack? Certainly not refineries, that might bring attacks on their own. But doing anything of significance violates the MOU.
It seems there are conflicts within Iran over what to do. Softies maybe especially wish to avoid hot war, hardies want something significant.
Reasserting control over Hormuz is not that hot and is significant, does not itself restart hot war, and meets the long term objective of dominating the gulf. Oman is trying to be neutral while many are hostile, but if Iran succeeds in driving us out of the gulf they will all learn to get along with Iran, a fellow oil seller and opec member that afaik supports saudi in opec.
Yves, though the comments have not yet borne it out, I think you were right to introduce the post the way you did. International affairs are complex, and our human brains look for ways to simplify them in our search for clarity, and so the safety of certainty. One way we do this is by personalizing entities to which that mode of thought does not apply, like states. It’s an ancient mental habit, to ascribe personality and agency to some entity, like the “spirit of the tree” or the “spirit of nature”; Freud thought that this was where the idea of God comes from. But states are not gods, sublime or malicious. In the case of the Iranian state, it is definitely an imperialist state according to the Leninist (or, if you prefer, Hobsonian) definition. In short, the international is not the interpersonal, but rather the inter-economic.
Transit passage through the Straight of Hormuz = good
Russian transit passage through the Baltic and North Seas = bad?
Iran wrt SOH is lily white compared to US, UK EU piracy of Russian commerce all over the maritime dimension.
If IRI emulated US there would be dozens of VLCC anchored off Kharg
Right. I understand that China and Russia want to hang onto the polite dialogue and rules-i-ness of the UN, but what can you really say about laws of maritime transit when the US regularly blows up fishing boats in waters both international and belonging to other countries, just so they can show home movies of it to the Pedophile-in-Chief? And when various EU countries pirate ships who don’t insure with Lloyds of London, just because? All this talk about UNCLOS is very nice, but at this point the UN only seems to exist to rubber-stamp the sanctions imposed by US/EU and tut-tut about the mass murders of people of non-European ancestry (without deploying troops or otherwise taking meaningful action to stop those murders). The UN as currently operating is not a serious organization. But I guess Russia and China are waiting till they’re triple-sure-with-sugar-on-it that they can impose their own rules and reconstitute the international order into something less dysfunctional. Good luck with that!
Iran’s only meaningful avenue of escalation at this point would be a concerted effort to destroy Israel’s air force and government leadership. So they need to catch planes on the ground, in quantity, and find out where exactly the bunkers are that the top people retreat into when their masses are getting missiled and droned. To achieve the first, they need to knock out as much of the early warning radar system as possible, including in GCC countries. To achieve the second, they need intelligence assets on the ground who can keep from being detected. Maybe the MoU phase is meant to buy time for them to do that.
And, with respect to intelligence, the same is true for Mossad in Iran. Buying time.
It’s kind of amusing that Trump lost the war, but they’re winning the non-military confrontation. And to reverse this Iran must become the belligerent. No plan survives contact with the enemy.
Some earlier comments stated that Iran may lose wars, but it “never lost a negotiation”. In the present case, it seems that Iran has been deftly cornered by the MoU statements on the passage of ships through the strait of Hormuz. It appears that the negotiators from the USA were much shrewder than the Iranians.
Which leads to the next question: it has been repeatedly stated that
(1) the USA never intends to negotiate in good faith, and so often does not bother to;
(2) other Western states, as often remarked by Aurelien, have lost a large part of their skills at negotiation;
(3) other countries, first of all China, Iran, and Russia, supposedly have excellent diplomats skilled at negotiations;
(4) these countries engage in negotiations seriously and thus try to achieve the best outcome, because their subject matters are truly existential for them, whereas they are not a matter of life and death for the USA or the EU.
But they keep getting shafted. Russia with the agreements in Anchorage, Minsk I, Minsk II; Iran with the MoU, the JCPOA, and even the 1980 agreement putting an end to the hostage crisis. Why is this so?
I notice that so far, China (and North Korea) do not seem to have been short-changed when negotiating with the USA or the EU — but I would be hard-pressed to find a significant agreement between those parties (as an example, the free-trade agreement EU-China has been put on ice for a while).
IMHO China is just too big and too distant for western antics to have any success. So they can claim one China policy and then send arms and Pelosi to Taiwan, but geographically and by relative size Taiwan isn’t Ukraine, it’s more like Georgia, where Russians kicked out the west with ease. Or they can start slapping sanctions under national security pretext to cripple China like Iran, but China can shrug it off, because it has the resources to develop own chip manufacturing. And when Trump becomes truly obnoxious, they politely wave the rare metals card to calm him down.
yeah. its that last part that points to china’s true power, here.
they have shit we really need(not just rare earths, btw. to my understanding, EU cannot give drones, etc to ukronazis without the wherewithal to make them, which china has a potential chokehold on)…and we dont have much that they really need.
i have always expected that when the usa/west goes past some unknown(to us) threshold of belligerent stupidity, China (and ROW soon after) will simply cut us off.
The whole point of the Opium Wars was to force China to accept something they didn’t want because they didn’t already want/ need anything else the British Empire produced.
That’s one of the problems with international trade. You actually have to make or have stuff that other countries want or you have to be strong enough to get your own way militarily, or be an autarky.
hence the usa curtailment of development across what we now call the global south….via imf, world bank, etc…and if that fails, we just overthrow their government and install one we like, or just bomb the shit out of them.
in my life, the more i have learned about allthis, the more ashamed i am to be an american.
we’ve really fucked up the world, in service of greedhead assholes who dont even care if the human race survives.
musk should be the first in line to upload his consciousness.
im interested to see how that turns out. and we can always unplug him, if he gets out of hand.
I hate to seem difficult, but how can a side that is agreement incapable be considered the “winner” when the only reason you could even make such an argument is because the other side does try to stick to the agreement and the US usually says family blog you.
Hardly a fair assessment of any nation’s strategy when they are actively getting shafted by the US. And no, saying they should have prepared for that response is not a good counter-argument because you cannot plan for all possibilities when the other side feels it has no limits and the rules don’t apply to them.
Try playing chess against someone who randomly takes your pieces off of the board…
That is false. Iran lost lots of negotiations when it was Persia in settlements of wars it had won. The vanquished side welched on the agreement, albeit not immediately.
I don’t see Iran as winning with the JCPOA. It accepted an agreement that did not become a treaty in the US so the Trump could exit and impose sanctions, yet Iran was still bound to it because China and Russia were big players in that pact and it was still otherwise in effect. So it was a lose-lose: economic punishment and nuclear enrichment restrictions. That was why Iran went to 60% enrichment, to try to force the US to come to new deal or re-join the JCPOA but that did not happen.
It agreed to the snapback which was supposed to let Iran out of the penalty box but was triggered by hte E-3, extralegally.
Yup. Sad, But it look like Iran won the war and lost the peace.
They should have never stopped bombing until opposition was destroyed.
OTOH, with this uncertainty of safe transit (all Iran has to do is launch a ship missile every other week or so) and yeah ships will leave.
Who TF is going to be willing to go back?
How?
Just like I think it is bad analysis to try and twist facts and events to put Iran in a better light, it is equally bad to consider that this recent wrinkle means it’s over and Iran lost.
Why do so many people resort to binary positions?
bc we’re subtly trained that way.
either/or…no nuance.
no grey area allowed!
an honest but cursory glance at american culture for the last 50 years proves this out.
this is one of the hardest things about discourse in the feed store,lol…or even out here at the wilderness bar.
getting past the binary thinking disease.
part of that is attempting to “walk a mile” in the other guy’s shoes…which, i admit, is exceedingly hard with such very different civilisations…eg iran, russia, china, afrifa, and on and on.
we tend to project our own prejudices, wants, needs, fears, etc onto them….when that might not necessarily obtain.(like China’s just gonna be the global hegemon…been very difficult to get cousin out of that knee jerk projectionism)
i’ll toss in one of my fave quotes right here, and please consider the source,lol:”what luck for the rulers that men do not think”_hitler, in mein kampf
the manichean worldview makes us easier to manipulate.
> #3 may seem like a stretch, but Alexander Mercouris has said Russian officials are very concerned that Iranians are giddy with their apparent success and are losing sight of how the US plans to out-maneuver, Iran or just renege.
It’s possible but I think the Islamic Republic finds itself in a novel position for which it is perhaps not well prepared. Since the revolution its main goals, I hazard, would have been defense (in the real sense, not the Western euphemism for aggression), deterrence and survival in the face of extreme isolation, economic difficulties, and use of the dark arts. I’m sure some are now “giddy with apparent success” but I wouldn’t assume that Iran’s politics and institutions are well prepared to formulate new ambitious strategic goals and develop operational plans for them. Many Western’s countries politics and institutions are not remotely fit for such challenges. I wouldn’t bet on the Islamic Republic being that much better.
Alexander Mercouris has said Russian officials are very concerned that Iranians are giddy with their apparent success
Unfortunately I have not seen/heard Alexander’s post but ” giddy with their apparent success” seems a trifle excessive. I am not saying this from any particular knowledge of current events but just a look at who those “giddy” people are.
If you look at the current government in Iran, most, if not all, are veterans of the Iran-Iraq War. Anyone who survived an 8 year war and maybe ¾ million casualties is not likely to be “giddy” Maybe a bit optimistic but they have seen the costs of war and are likely to be wary.
BTW, Prof. Marandi still suffers the effects of chemical attack(s?) in that war. He, too, is an IRGC veteran as is the Supreme Leader and the President.
Actually he also corresponded with me and I was not exact. This is what Mercouris wrote:
I see “dizzy” as functionally equivalent to “giddy”.
Mercouris was also recounted the content of communications of an Iran official with his Russian counterpart. Mercouris added:
I would imagine that in contrast with China, Russia wouldn’t mind if the conflict continues, especially now when it looks like US wants to go back to and further escalate its proxy-fighting with Russia. They are self-sufficient in things like energy and food and the West will take more damage from any economic mayhem.
I would argue China’s position is more complex. On an economic and societal stability basis, they absolutely prefer stability to a resumption of hostilities.
But China cannot have missed the various US politicians and leaders and military predicting war with China coming soon, or first Russia and then China, or even the way Trump sneered “China” hundreds of times, or the way the US blames China for self-inflicted problems (when not blaming Russia). I have been hearing about the upcoming US-China war for years on the evening news.
Further US military power attrition is definitely in China’s interest (See rare earths) as a US hot war almost certainly goes nuclear because the US conventional forces would collapse within a few weeks at most as missiles would start hitting the homeland on day 1 or 2. And that war is NOT in China’s (or the world’s) interest.
The debate over the interpretation of the English translation of various provisions of the MoU, might not be the equivalent to how it is interpreted in Farsi by the Iranian government.
The most famous example is when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comment was interpreted to mean “off the face of the map,” referring to Israel. Some Middle East translators have interpreted it to mean, “vanish from the page of time.” Two subtle different meanings.
Words don’t always translate exactly between languages, plus adding in cultural differences even within the same language in different parts of the world.
I can guarantee the English version is the governing document. This is what the US signed. And Iran is full of fluent English speakers.
A paragon of virtue? Those are for children. The U.S. is one of the most deadly, destructive, and morally depraved countries in all of history. It’s ruling elite, Democratic and Republican, has no genuine regard for human life and suffering. Repeat, no genuine regard for human life and suffering whatsoever. For many, this statement is fantastical, absurd, impossible to accept. However, I have lived in this country for over seven decades and know it to be absolutely true.
The U.S. must be deterred everywhere, every time, without exception, by whichever country or countries is/are able to deter it. Where it resorts to violence, it must be defeated, the more thorough the defeat, the better.
This is the world the U.S. has created. No other world any longer exists, if it ever did, nor is any other world possible as long as the U.S. exists in its present economic and political formation.
Long ago, the U.S. solely imposed upon the planet the doctrine of might makes right. There is now no alternative for the rest of the world but to fight fire with fire.
And I would like a pony.
Yves: And I would like a pony.
Where would you keep it? Though taking it for walks might get you some interesting looks around town. ;-)
I would like to offer what I believe is a relevant quote from Blue Oyster Cult (no, not about ponies):
But the war’s still going on, dear
And there’s no end that I know
It’s certainly interesting to, at this stage of the operation, pick winners and losers and rah-rah for one team (or boo them, as appropriate), but I think there’s still a lot of runtime left in the game and I don’t see as how the fat lady is even warming up, let alone singing.
It sure seems to me that nobody really knows the future. I’m generally finding models and predictions, in most domains, unconvincing. I *can* go outside and recognize that it’s hot. I *can* look at my own weather data for the last 10 years and see that temperatures are creeping up.
I do find people who believe that they can discern the future interesting, though.
As an anarchist, I am disinclined to assign positive motive to any government or bureaucracy.
Have a Nice Day, The Nicest of any Day Ever, Everybody!
My political life, if you want to call it that, has stretched from the mid-1970s until now. In that period, the US has pretty much been on the wrong side of every armed conflict that I have paid close attention to. That’s just the consequence of being an imperial power and trying to hold on to world hegemony. So it’s not an unusual experience for me to be “rooting” for some other country than the US, since this is usually the pro-peace, pro-life stance.
Having said that, I don’t think it’s your job, or the job of any other journalist, to cater to my proclivities or those of anyone like me. The most valuable thing you can do, and which you do do, is present an accurate view of the world as much as possible. It’s tempting to try to please your readership, but that’s a road that leads nowhere good.
I like to think that the arc of history, as the saying goes, bends towards justice. So I think we should all rely on the bending, not the people who make up our information system, to bring us the good news we need.
Agree with you. Yves gives a very balanced evaluation of what is going on, which is very rare in the online space. It’s too easy to fall into reading just the anti-Empire cheerleading sites (which I’m afraid Larry and Pepe fall into sometimes) because that inspires hope, when you’ve lived through many decades of the US and its closest “allies” slaughtering hundred of thousands of poorer people around the world, over and over, under one flimsy justification or another. But it’s better to have some sense of what the reality is, which often requires reading conflicting accounts or assessments that don’t lock-step agree. The complete devolution of the US mainstream media into a one-sided propaganda megaphone has made this even more urgent. (Well, I say one-sided in spite of there nominally being two “sides” where non-essential and optimally divisive issues are concerned; this recalls Julius Nyerere’s quote about American politics: “The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.”)
How the heck is this controversial? Neither the Israelis and the Americans or the Iranians are completely innocent.
Too many people insist on having view of reality being just a manichaean contest of Good versus Evil.
JBird4049 said:
“Too many people insist on having a view of reality being just a manichaean contest of Good versus Evil.”
I agree JBird4049..
Why do you think this is?
I can only imagine that it makes thinking easier; the world is a complex reality and the simpler you make it, the less effort you need to “understand” it.
It’s a reason for the popularity of conspiracies. It’s true that they exist, but presumable the existence of an all powerful cabal means that you don’t have to understand the interactions of all the many different factions.
aye. see my comment just above.
when i was laid up waiting for a hip, i had ample time to think, to research, and to get all around things as best i was able(without learnin russian or cantonese or farsi,lol).
the narrative framework we were handed…of amurka as a shining light, spreading democracy, etc was obviously bunk…but what to replace it with?
so i made the effort.
what i ended up with is rather comprehensive…but also ever changing…and thats hard for the Mundanes to accept,lol.
people just dont like to think all that hard…or o learn things that contradict what their dad…their preacher…or ronald reagan said.
so to get people out of such unexamined assumption-land, one must first determine if they are ready for the journey…then one must be patient.
and be ready for extraordinary pushback when you inevitably challenge one of their myriad unassailable opinions…no matter how idiotic or just plain wrong.
we are the most propagandised people in the history of the world, after all.
the Mindf&ck is a raging success.
one mind at a time is really all we have to undo it, even a lil bit
“but what to replace it with?”
When I first take a careful look at myself:
A big part of me loves having a fixed and firm view (on whatever). I love the rush of security and sense of power that comes with it.
I really don’t like not knowing and the sense of uncertainty which accompanies it.
I also love feeling in control but the older I get the more I reluctantly realize my sense of control is vastly overblown or, even worse, an illusion.
hence the value of the Tao, as Henry Moon pie is always and forever reminding us.
the water finds its way down the mountain.
or, if yer an xtian(no judgement from here): the Serenity Prayer.
nothing is fixed, as much as we might want it to be.
contingency is built in to the universe.
from a certain perspective, neither you nor i exist as a stable form.
we’re part of a swirling and forever rebuilding and destroying chaos that looks like Order to our monkeyminds….because we have not the timesense to contemplate that kind of reality.
and this is perhaps the point ive been dancing all around:
these places are not Western, at all.
i was first introduced to the idea of different, civilisational, way of viewing realty by Joseph Campbell masks of god.
India remains totally alien, to me(the names give me much trouble,lol)
China, as well…and the whole of the Ummah, writ large…all those sects and factions, arguing about minutia, just like the xtians have.
but the deeper, more foundational things, at the roots of their various civilisations are where it gets weird.
its hard for a texan to think like a chinaman.
i dont have the felt and embedded context.
same with Iran.
i cant think like them…i can merely observe and learn about how they think…and then make approximations of predictions,lol.
someone above mentioned the problem of translation…english to farsi, and the reverse…and theres allthat cultural and spiritual baggage on both sides…and historical!(from either perspective!) …all complicating things.
This intervention does have the feel of a panicked move (right?), and not the kind of thing Iran usually seems to do; as a country, they seem to have a leadership that is usually thinking 12 moves ahead.
My guess is they are having difficulty transitioning from a nation at war doing things based on arms, to a post-war nation doing things based on political look and feel. Iran also has a famously decentralized military command and control system, so it may be difficult for them to present a unified front when it comes to weapon releases.
Iran has worked very hard and spent a lot of blood and treasure earning the (sometimes grudging) respect of the rest of the world in the last year. Obviously they need to be very careful not to piss that away at this late stage.
I think the us also claims to not be violating the MOU.
Maybe moving to stop traffic through Hormuz is a measured, not hot response to the hot war in Lebanon that reasserts its claim to controlling Hormuz while also increasing pressure on western markets.
And everything Iran does might be some compromise between Iran factions.
This is a complicated war for Iran, there are bound to be adjustments to strategy.
As has been pointed out here, Robert Pape believes this struggle is about Iran’s ambition to become the fourth world power, and the MOU is its roadmap to achieve that, the key leverage point being control of the Strait of Hormuz. What I have not seen very much discussed is the point Yves has been making about Oman’s key role in this, and how section 5 of the MOU seriously dilutes Iran’s authority, if not power, to control the ultimate outcome of how the Strait is managed. Not only does Oman have the color of legal rights as the other sovereign nation with territorial waters in the Strait, but also the last sentence of section 5 of the MOU, by acknowledging both applicable international law and sovereign rights, seems to give Oman equal agency, on paper at least, in determining what control of the Strait will look like after hostilities end. However, Oman may not fully share Iran’s incentives regarding what that structure will be, and Oman, although it has been scrupulously neutral, is a much weaker and more vulnerable actor to outside pressure as compared to Iran. Iran may not be able to muscle Oran into fully submitting to Iran’s power ambition, and in any event China and Russia, which are obsessively legalistic, may not let Iran do so. Puzzling that I am unaware of this being fully addressed outside of NC. As far as I know, Pape has not brought it up at all. Also, Iran has denied responsibility for the drone attacks on Oman, so Oman is not a belligerent, and Yves is correct that Iran is clearly violating section 5 in attacking ships taking the Oman route.
Robert Pape believes this struggle is about Iran’s ambition to become the fourth world power
Well, it seems to me that Israel has been very vocal about being a major power via via the greater Israel project.
Perhaps Pape has it backwards? Perhaps Iran MUST BECOME a major power if it hopes to prevent being steamrolled by US-Israel.
Well, more US air strikes on Sirik. Going to be somewhat hard for Iran to keep the MOU.
I share Yves concern that Iran may have overplayed its hand (note: I may have misinterpreted Yves’ point on this…).
When the MOU was announced, I was all for it – with the caveat that many of those 14 points were politically impossible, and therefore – like unpayable debts – not really relevant, except as bargaining chips for later negotiations.
The first Impossible Thing was right there in the first point: the requirement for Israel to evacuate Lebanon. While I agree that the IDF “should” immediately leave Lebanon, I don’t believe that the US – in the current political climate, where both major Parties are rented by AIPAC – would/could force them to do so. Iran must have known this; presumably, they hoped that it would increase tensions between US & Israel (and internally, in both countries). Indeed it has, but that won’t do Iran any good in the short run.
Another Impossible Thing was the Reparations clause. I can’t believe that Iranian leaders are so ignorant of US politics that they imagined that Congress would actually allocate $300B. They presumably thought that they could get some portion of that from the GCC monarchies (who could easily afford it), and that having that more of their Reparations demand could then be recouped via Hormuz Tolls (renamed as “insurance” or whatever).
Worse, Iran must have thought that the GCC countries would now be ready to recalibrate their alignment with the USA. Iran’s attacks on them were calculated to send the message that their alliances with the US (and Israel) made them more – not less – vulnerable. For a while, it seemed like that message got through, but that illusion was shattered by the recent GCC meeting where they publicly reaffirmed solidarity with the US and against Iran.
I had hoped that those problems (and others) could be finessed or ignored while everybody (except Israel…) focused on getting ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz again, and that seemed to be working… until yesterday.
IMO, Iran’s “attack” on the Ever Lovely was a carefully executed message, *gently* reminding everyone that the Strait isn’t totally open yet. Hitting a ship that hadn’t followed the IMO procedures implied that Iran tacitly accepted the IMO “evacuation” program; and the “light tap” (no injuries, minimal/trivial damage) showed that they were still trying to be very careful about escalation.
But Trump – after a couple weeks of constant attacks on the MOU, from R’s, D’s, and MSM – took it as an excuse to show “strength”, and… Boom. Iran will again have to thread the needle, retaliating only proportionately to US attacks, and hoping the US follows suit. I really hope the shooting stops within days, and the IMO can revive its Evacuation program soon.
The first Impossible Thing was … the requirement for Israel to evacuate Lebanon…. I don’t believe that the US – in the current political climate … – would/could force them to do so.
US has all the leverage it needs to force Israel to abandon Lebanon and the MOU clearly says that they are required to make that happen.
Given what has happened over the last week, I think its reasonable to surmise that USA/Trump never meant to make good on that obligation. But it hasn’t been an issue (yet) because the requirement was relegated to a “deconfliction” committee. Nevertheless, I think Iran could demand that US fulfill that obligation before a final agreement is reached.
US history (and Trumpism) suggests the US never has any intention to make good on any obligation if it is even slightly more advantageous to violate an agreement. Only if it is significantly disadvantageous to double-deal will it follow through on commitments, i.e., from constraints. One sees this even internally – how Trump ignores laws, insider trading, court rulings, etc.
+1
Yup. Trump has always been a liar, grifter, scammer. And although damages were voided in NYC’s civil fraud case against him and his adult sons, deemed “excessive”, the verdict and liability remained. Much ink has been spilled arguing over whether he “believes” what he says to be the truth. But what difference does it make? Trump lies effortlessly, every day. I don’t understand why the press bother reporting his statements: anything he says is literally worthless. You cannot trust him. Ever. I don’t know if MAGA has learned this. Maybe.
Sunlight D –
you left out a key phrase I put in there to explain why US is *politically* incapable of saying No to Israel:
“in the current political climate, where both major Parties are rented by AIPAC”
Where is “Raspberry Jam”? He was a reliable source about conditions in izzieland. I have not seen any comments from him for quite a bit. Hope he is OK.
It seems like Iran has been very concerned (or has wished to be seen as very concerned) with non-Western world opinion. Professor Marandi, whom I enjoy listening to, both exemplifies and talks (relatively) frankly about this.
The problem with closure of the Strait as a weapon is that it is most justifiable when Iran is under direct attack, of the kind that Israel and the United States proved unable to sustain. So the possibility that Iran would fall victim to its own success was inherent in winning, not a product of the MOU.
Of course there probably will still be some kind of oil price spike, though it seems unlikely to be severe or prolonged enough to be a porcupine-quill-in-the-nose-level learning experience, if such a thing were even possible, for the Empire.
On the other hand, the Empire could just be dumb enough to re-escalate now—
Iran attacks back
Iran has quickly launched attacks to respond to USA’s latest attacks and IRGC issued a statement saying that under the US-Iran interim deal, “the arrangements for controlling traffic in the Strait of Hormuz” are with Tehran.
Al Jazeera quotes Abas Aslani, a senior Research Fellow at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies who says: “… the US wants now to pressure regional countries and to use force to pressure Iran in order to change the current status quo in the Strait of Hormuz, and bring it back to the pre-war situation.” [essentially, the outcome of Rubio’s trip to GCC]
So, it appears that the correct interpretation of the MOU (as well as who the Gulf States fear most) will be decided on the battlefield.
Article 5 of the MOU can be argued to be somewhat ambiguous…
‘5. Upon the signing of this MoU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa.’
Firing on a commercial vessel certainly doesn’t seem congruent with ‘best efforts for safe passage…’
But ‘with no charge for 60 days only (my emphasis on only) from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa’ seems to indicate that the US acknowledged by agreeing to this phraseology that there absolutely would be fees after the 60 days and that Iran would have a right to charge these fees irrespective of a commercial vessel’s path of travel. Nothing is said delimiting the fees to Iranian territorial waters. Iran did commit to creating the necessary structures in consultation with Oman and other Persian Gulf states. But what that ‘consultation’ would comprise is left undefined.
The important point here is that the US did acknowledge Iran’s right to fees for passage.
I don’t think that Iran has lost on the negotiations as much of the commentariat here at NC believes.
What I appreciate most about this blog is that it engages in reality and not peddling hopium