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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
————
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.
All of the following can be true:
In fact, all of the following were true before we attacked. We have spent six months and who knows how many weapons—for what? Delaying a nuclear program? Stimulating defense spending? Getting Republicans out of office?
If Trump expected a special operation, in and out in a couple weeks, he was wrong. If he thought Iran would concede after this level of ass-blasting, he was wrong. If he thought another Middle Eastern slog would boost his approval, he was wrong. If he thought oil prices would go back down, he was wrong. Iran had and has zero chance of winning this war on any conceivable metric. That doesn’t mean it was a good deal.
They were true, but we didn't know they were true. Many people thought that an attack on Iran would lead to U.S. casualties in the thousands (or much greater), a ground invasion, a complete shutdown of the Hormuz, oil at $250/barrel, etc...
None of that happened.
Yes, Iran has always been weak. But that fact was not well understood until now. In fact, among many people, it's STILL not well understood. This is the equivalent of saying, today, that Apple stock was an obvious buy in 2007. Easy to say in hindsight, isn't it?
Right. I remember the stress over possible consequences in what must have been Trump I: their population, their tenacity…none of that materialized. We have absolutely outperformed expectations.
But we still haven’t gained anything.
Like some of the other commenters, I’m not opposed to efficient intervention. I also think the current situation would be preferable to, say, letting Iran do whatever they want with the strait. If they’d started this off by closing it, I’d be impressed that we got back up to 2/3 transit!
What I don’t see are reasons to prefer it to, well, 3/3 transit.
I think it's too early to say whether the war was worth it, but some things have been gained.
Iran's nuclear program is set back a long time. I think in a counterfactual Harris Presidency, they'd be very close by now.
Iran's leverage over the strait has been reduced. Most people really thought they could close it! This was THE scenario that oil bulls pointed to. Now we know that Iran is a paper tiger. This information has value.
Iran is busy not being regime-changed so they have fewer resources to spend arming proxies and terrorists
Iran is isolated. Iran's missile attacks on UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, etc.. have shown to those countries that Iran must never have nuclear weapons or missile capabilities. Iran's only constraints were lack of ability, not willingness.
Despite this, I think the war has NOT gone how Trump hoped it would. The Venezuelan operation had been a massive success. At a trivial cost, we were able to bring Venezuela into the US orbit and increase our energy security while eroding China's. Trump likely thought Iran would go similarly: a decapitation followed by a new, more pliant leadership. Sadly, this has not come to pass and any gains we've made may prove to last only as long as the current administration.
I don't follow your logic here. Iran has long had the ability to launch such missile attacks on these countries. The constraint wasn't lack of ability but lack of motivation.
My logic is that Iran's attacks were seemingly random. They were angry. They wanted to hurt someone. They couldn't hurt Israel or the United States, their enemies, so they instead hurt whatever soft targets they could hit with their missiles.
I've asked ChatGPT to make a full list. Other than Israel, they've also attacked Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq, and Jordan. They've also attacked shipping from many neutral countries, including India and China, hilariously attacking one Indian vessel who tried to pay the Iranian "toll" but paid crypto scammers instead. (At least according to rumor).
The only reason they didn't attack countries further afield is that their missiles don't go that far.
They also have borders to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Turkey, yet they did not attack them. So your theory that they were simply lashing out at whatever targets they could reach has some more explaining to do.
Here is another theory: they were specifically targeting gulf monarchies, which they widely see as allied to the US, possibly because they have US bases on their soil.
Your list was: Bahrain (3), Kuwait (5), Oman (4), Qatar (2), Saudi Arabia (4), UAE (2), Iraq (2), Jordan (2). I have put the number of US bases (per WP) in parenthesis.
They hit basically every country ME allied to the US except for Djibouti and Turkey. I think they probably considered Djibouti to not be relevant, and wanted to avoid dragging the rest of NATO into the conflict through attacking Turkey.
But their attacks clearly followed a method. If you can not harm the US directly, harm their regional allies who give shelter and support to your enemies. This seems entirely rational. Qatar just bought influence in the US to the tune of one presidential airplane, why would you not incentivize them to spend that influence to deescalate?
Attacking neutral ships gives their flag countries a cause for war against Iran, but it was also entirely rational. Closing the Strait is the one thing Iran can do to squeeze the balls of the world economy, so irrespective of it being a violation of international laws, they were going to do it once Trump started bombing. The US would have done the same in Iran's place.
Iran did in fact attack Turkey, they just did not do so successfully.
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