- Is the Hormuz Strait open or closed?…
- We just need “a little more time”…
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Dear reader,
I view the Iran conflict and begin to feel as if I am viewing a television drama.
I struggle to keep pace with its dizzying plot twists, its contorting turns, its colorful characters.
One day the Hormuz Strait is declared open to maritime transit. The following day the Hormuz Strait is declared closed to maritime transit.
The strategic waterway — as I write — is closed to maritime transit.
By the time you read this dispatch? The Hormuz Strait may be open once again to maritime transit.
Yet at present it is not.
My agents inform me that no tanker traffic whatsoever transited the Hormuz Strait yesterday.
The Yo-Yo-ing Market
In response to the closure, United States stock market futures opened sharply and distinctly lower last evening.
The oil price also leapt some 7%, cresting $89 the barrel.
Perhaps the president can take to social media and report news of impending peace.
You can be certain the markets would seize upon the “news”… and go rampaging in bullish assuredness… as is their eternal wont
It cannot be denied, or at least plausibly denied, that the conflict has manufactured several stock market killings by those fortified with inside information.
See, for example, this past Friday — when the Iranian government declared the Hormuz Strait open to all commercial traffic.
Suspicious Timing
Reports The Kobeissi Letter:
- On Friday, at 8:24 AM ET, there was a sudden surge in buying volume in S&P 500 futures as $325 million worth of longs were purchased.
- This is the same exact timestamp that $760 million worth of oil shorts were taken.
- Just 21 minutes later, Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi said the “Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open.”
- By 12:45 PM ET, S&P 500 futures had surged to a new record high with this $325 million trade profiting +$50 million in 4 hours.
- That’s +$50 million over the same exact timeline as oil traders made +$70 million on shorts.
Thus I begin to question the value of my spies. Why am I never informed of such developments in advance?
The Fraying Ceasefire
Meantime, the ceasefire — set to expire late Tuesday — dangles by its fraying thread.
An armed vessel of the United States Navy took an Iranian cargo vessel under fire in the Gulf of Oman yesterday… and Marines of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit seized control of it.
United States Central Command claimed the vessel was attempting to penetrate the American blockade of Iranian ports.
Iran, for its part, vowed retaliation both swift and harsh. And yesterday Iranian news outlets reported that Iran has in fact retaliated by unleashing armed drones against United States naval vessels.
These reports remain unconfirmed.
Yet the American seizure of their seagoing vessel has the Iranians in a state of very high dudgeon.
They have in fact walked away from fresh negotiations scheduled this week in Pakistan.
Trump Renews Threats
The cancellation came issuing mere hours after President Trump announced his delegation was winging off for Pakistan.
Iran’s recalcitrance got the president’s blood up… his back up… and potentially his dukes up.
Thus he announced that:
- If the deal isn’t done, the deal that we made, then I’m going to take out their bridges and their power plants. If they don’t sign this thing, the whole country is going to get blown up.
- We’re preparing to hit them harder than any country has ever been hit before because you cannot let them have a nuclear weapon.
Yet I am far from convinced that the president’s threats will daunt or cow the Iranian authorities.
If they were so desperate to secure peace with the United States, if they are truly upon their knees… why would they walk away from the negotiating table… as they have?
And if Iran was so heavily trounced — as the president claims — why negotiate with Iran at all?
Victors do not negotiate terms. They issue terms.
Iran Thinks It’s in Control
In every likelihood, the Iranian authorities believe the United States must approach upon its knees… and negotiate with them.
They believe, correctly or incorrectly, that they themselves are perched powerfully upon the catbird seat.
As reports The New York Times:
- Iran’s decision to flex its control over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flows… has upended war planning in the United States and Israel, where officials have had to devise military options to wrest the strait from Iranian control.
- The U.S.-Israeli war has significantly damaged Iran’s leadership structure, larger naval vessels and missile production facilities, but it has done little to restrict Iran’s ability to control the strait.
- Iran could thus emerge from the conflict with a blueprint for its hard-line theocratic government to keep its adversaries at bay, regardless of any restrictions on its nuclear program.
- “Everyone now knows that if there is a conflict in the future, closing the strait will be the first thing in the Iranian textbook,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iran branch of Israel’s military intelligence agency and now a fellow at the Atlantic Council. “You cannot beat geography.”
It is true — geography cannot be defeated — or at least defeated at fantastic cost.
Iran’s Non-Nuclear Nuclear Weapon
Here is a question: Has Iran already acquired its atomic weapon… in the form of the Hormuz Strait?
Continues The Times:
- American military and intelligence officials estimate that, after weeks of war, Iran still has about 40 percent of its arsenal of attack drones and upward of 60 percent of its missile launchers — more than enough to hold shipping in the Strait of Hormuz hostage in the future…
- “It’s not clear how the truce between Washington and Tehran will play out. But one thing is certain — Iran has tested its nuclear weapons. It’s called the Strait of Hormuz. Its potential is inexhaustible,” Dmitri Medvedev, a former president of Russia and deputy chairman of the country’s security council, wrote on social media last week.
“Just a Little More Time”
The rah-rah men inform us that Iran’s complete vanquishing is within grasp. They insist it merely requires “a little more time.”
I pray — upon both knees, I pray — for a timely conflict resolution. Yet I lack confidence in a timely conflict resolution.
That is due to Iranian confidence in its own mastery of events, imagined or real.
Thus I hazard Iran will hoist the piratical skull-and-crossbones flag long before it raises the white surrender flag.
And so I suspect that Iranian submission will require far more than “a little time.”
The rah-rah men will nonetheless plead for chronic patience.
Yet did not the Vietnam War’s rah-rah men habitually babble the identical counsel — that victory merely required “a little more time”?
The records reveal that they did, yes.
Thus one year from today, or perhaps even two years from today… I expect… or at least half-expect… today’s rah-rah men to chirp the identical counsel as yesterday’s rah-rah men chirped during the Vietnam conflict…
“We just need a little more time.”
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
