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Notes -
"Artificial" seems a strange word for a market. Typically, economists model market actors as rational. But rational people have a conception of the future, and how events in the present -- like an oil tanker stuck due to Iran blocking Hormuz -- will influence prices in the future.
Basically, if you own a depot full of crude and anticipate that supply will be tight in the future, you might decide to hold onto your oil -- unless you are offered a higher price than usual.
Now it is certainly debatable if markets are prone to irrational behavior, but a model of the world where the oil price does not move for three months until the tanker fails to arrive strikes me as naive in the extreme.
Qatar is a US ally. Throwing them under the bus is not the typical behavior of the US, and will severely change the tradeoffs of a US alliance.
This is actually not how the chain of causality went. When Putin invaded Ukraine, both the US and EU agreed that Europe should try to avoid buying fossil fuel from Russia to limit the cash flow for Putin's war. For the most part, we did. Now Trump became profoundly disinterested in Ukraine when he finally noticed that it was not an easy Nobel for him.
If the US plays "fuck everyone else as long as our needs are met", others will too. For Europe, Ukraine is a lot more relevant than Iran having nukes. Personally, I would just make a deal with Iran to keep the Straight open for ships to Europe in exchange for gas centrifuges. It would be the same "fuck everyone else" attitude you display. Why should we care about US interests in the ME if the US is unwilling to care about anyone's interests there?
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