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Bloomberg: Goldman Says Gulf Oil Flows Two-Thirds of Prewar Level
A lot of ships are still making the crossing dark with transponders turned off but the trend is clear. Iran’s (supposed) leverage over the strait is basically nullified, oil is passing through despite Iranian proclamations. Independent analysts now agree with what the US government was saying weeks ago, that millions of barrels are passing through the strait under American auspices.
US CENTCOM agrees, putting out this statement that the US has escorted a few thousand ships through the Gulf, carrying through three-quarters of a billion barrels of oil over the past few months.
What changed?
Axios: "That sucker is open": U.S. gains the upper hand in the battle for Hormuz
The US has apparently de-mined the Straits of Hormuz, although, interestingly, there don’t seem to have been many mines in the first place!
It seems as though Iran’s capacities to threaten ship traffic the Strait were severely degraded by US military action, but that Iran was successfully able to convince news reporters and insurance companies that it could target ships.
For instance, Brady Sullivan at CNBC says
Meanwhile, Reuters: Pipelines and ports: Iran war spurs Gulf infrastructure investment
Not only has Iran lost control over the Straits, but Gulf states are building new pipelines to reroute oil around the Straits so that Iran can never threaten them again.
And how does it look inside Iran?
WSJ: Labor Protests and Panic Buying Signal Growing Pressure in Iran
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Some might remember Trump’s infamous comments on this subject some months ago:
The Shakes take: Iran will never toll the straits, Iran will never have nuclear weapons, Trump was right about everything, a lot of people who believed Iranian claims are looking very, increasingly, increasingly!, foolish.
This conflict has demonstrated an epistemic weakness in many people, not just in the media, but in supposedly rationalist communities that should know better too.
When you hear two competing claims, and the two claims are far apart, it's a pretty familiar human heuristic to "split the difference". So when CENTCOM is saying they've destroyed Iran's navy and airforce, and Iran is claiming they've blown up a U.S. aircraft carrier, many people will say, "The truth is somewhere in the middle. Sounds like a quagmire".
As anyone who tried to buy a rug in Turkey knows, this heuristic is lazy and exploitable. People make extreme claims to try to move the Overton window, then "settle" for the position they wanted anyway.
We should never be splitting the difference here because Iran is full of shit. Oil is moving through the strait. The United States has crippled Iran's offensive capability. The price of oil remains lowish, and Iran's economy is in shambles. At some point, you have to stop splitting the difference and start giving Iran the "Baghdad Bob" treatment. Any pronouncement from Iran's regime should just be laughed at. We shouldn't be making ANY Bayesian updates based on uncorroborated information from Iran.
In any case, that's why I love financial markets. You have to put your money where your mouth is and develop real epistemic hygiene, instead of just making the mouth noises.
While Iran is obviously full of shit and their word is worth basically nothing, their continued existence as an enemy power would seem to be pretty strong evidence against the maximalist US claim that they're defeated, have no military power, have no leverage, etc.
That's my worry: that Iran's only leverage is the same leverage that Gaza had, the misery of its citizens.
Iran doesn't have any military targets worth hitting. It has no operational military planes or ships. It can't produce or buy missiles. It can barely launch some weak drones that do little damage if they strike.
Any rational country would have settled on the first day and joined Venezuela in the U.S. circle of orbit. They didn't even need to be a democracy! They just needed to stop funding terror proxies. But clearly Iran, like Gaza, has leaders who are willing to sacrifice all their people to hurt their enemies.
They won't quit, and we're not going to do what it takes to make them because it would be a humanitarian nightmare. That's their leverage, and it's not nothing.
From Iran, we're going to see a pivot from "Death to Amerikka!" to "Halp! Call the UN, we're being genocided!"
From the US, it will be a frozen conflict which will consume about 0.1% of GDP and create a vague since of unease like Iraq/Afghanistan. Eventually, if that goes on long enough, something might change. That's if the Republicans can maintain the Presidency. If the Democrats win in 2028, then they'll make a shit deal with Iran, let them sell oil, and they'll start refining uranium almost immediately.
The one reason they might not is that I think Iran has a bit more national pride, rather than being built on being oppressed.
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