[Again we are launching our Iran war update before complete so as to provide the freshest information. Please return at 8:00 AM EDT or refresh your webpage then for a final version]
In some recent talks on the Iran War, Larry Wilkerson has stressed the importance of Clausewitz, specifically in understanding the nature of the conflict. Even though many Iran-sympathetic commentators, such as Alastair Crooke, were early to stress that Iran wants the US military presence swept form the region, even that formulation does not seem to be an adequate characterization of Iran’s aims. If we take a fresh presentation on Glenn Diesen;s channel by Professor Sayed Mohammed Marandi on Iran’s objectives and requirement as accurate (recall that Marandi is a commentator, not an official spokesperson), they amount to decolonization of the Gulf region. Iran is not merely seeking an end to the US military presence. It is also seeking an end to the Gulf states economic support of what Russia has called the Collective West, via its demand for reparations.
Perhaps scholars of wars can correct me, but I cannot think of a case where reparations were paid other than when an enemy was completely subjugated, either via conquest or surrender. That is not a conceivable outcome with respect to the United States. But given Iran having demonstrated that it controls any hope of economic survival of the oil and gas income dependent Gulf monarchies via its control of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and its ability to destroy energy and port infrastructure, it has the realistic prospect of breaking them.
Syrian-Palestinian journalist Laith Marouf has argued that wars of decolonization typically take six years.1 Even if you mark the start of this war as the Hamas raid of October 7, 2023, which Israel blamed on Iran when Iran in fact was very upset with Hamas throwing a spanner in its long-term efforts in the region, it would seem that there is an impossibly long time before resolution. With the prospect of wide-ranging, multi-fronted, lasting and severe damage to the global economy, it would seem that there would be at least an interim major reset well before then. But given that Iran has requirements that the US, Israel, and the West will now find impossible to swallow, how much damage will countries and citizens around the world have to endure before painful concessions are made to Iran?
Below is the full talk with Marandi:
Key sections:
Ceasefire is not an option. This war will continue until Iran’s demands are met. Iran will no longer accept a situation in the region where the United States can threaten it again. That’s that’s over. Iran will no longer allow regimes in the Persian Gulf to be bases to act as bases for the United States to threaten Iran. And Iran will demand and it will get full compensation for the slaughter and the destruction.
And the longer that this will last, the more compensation Iran will take from the regimes in the Persian Gulf or whoever else. What Iran will receive is compensation….
Iran is going to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed. He [Trump] can try his best to talk the markets down. It will work for a couple of days, but the fact is that there’s going to be a shortage of energy every day. 20 million barrels of oil at the and it could increase if Iran punishes the the regime in Baku, the Republic of Azerbaijan or if the Yemenis strike Saudi the Saudi oil pipeline that goes through the Red Sea and so on. It would get worse.
But or now for now 20 million barrels of oil a day are disappearing from the marketplace and every day an extra 20 million is added to it [as in the total loss is compounding]. So he can talk down the market for a couple of days and then and Western media and Western governments can help him do that and then they can release their reserves. But their reserves as far as I know that the G7 have can only last two months. I mean they can only compensate for two months. They have two months’ worth of reserves and I don’t think that Iran plans to open the Straight of Hormuz anytime soon. So, we’re heading for a global economic crisis.
Stop for a second to wrap your mind around this demand. Reparations is a Carthago delenda est, salt the earth level ask.2 They make the depiction of Putin’s comparatively mild requirements for ending the Ukraine as “maximmalist” in context.
Later from Marandi:
Just a couple of hours ago, they carried out air air strikes in tan and bombed highways and bombed civilian targets, slaughtering more people just like they did last night. Last night they carried out multiple massacres in terror. So what more can they do? If they want to destroy Iran’s key infrastructure, that’s a possibility. But then Iran will destroy all key infrastructure in this region. Everything. All the oil and gas installations in the Persian Gulf region and in the caucuses will be gone, finished. They won’t be damaged. They’ll be destroyed. And that will mean that the key infrastructure of the United States will collapse. The world will collapse because the we will enter a severe global economic depression.
The current Bloomberg banner headline:
From the body of the story:
• The IEA said to propose releasing record 300-400 million barrels from reserves. Still, brent pushes higher to over $90
• G-7 ministers to meet later to discuss stockpile release
• Market volatility follows a day of mixed messages from US officials
• Military strikes continue across the Middle East
• Three ships were hit in Middle East; Drones fell near Dubai airport
<>With G-7 leaders set to discuss a stockpile release to deal with the impact of the war in Iran, here is a chart showing how much oil reserves each nation of the group holds.
However, Alexander Mercouris in his Tuesday presentation expressed doubts as to how much of these reserves could be released to deal with a price shock. Starting at 4:00:
Eurointelligence also made the point that when talking about the strategic reserves of the G7, there are differences between the various the various G7 states. In some cases, such as France, the entire strategic reserve is held nationally by the French government. In other countries, and Eurointelligence didn’t name them, but in other countries, it is a mix with some of the reserves held by the government, but other reserves held by industry and by private companies and they might be less willing to release any part of their reserves. And anyway, the Euro Intelligence article made the further point that there are anyway legal limits to how much oil can be released from the strategic reserves in all of the G7 countries. There is apparently a legal obligation to retain at least 90 days of oil.
90 days of usage of oil in the reserves to cover major emergencies such as a war, a natural disaster, things of that kind.
And that the fact that the price of oil has reached a certain level is not in accordance with these laws the enough in itself or sufficient cause in itself to deplete these reserves beyond a certain level.
Given what we have seen with bureaucratic rule-bending and breaking during the financial crisis and in Europe over the Ukraine war, these strictures are sure to be ignored as the crisis deepens. But to Mercouris’ point, we might not be there yet.
Larry Johnson provided an in-depth treatment of the loss of oil supply, not just in terms of energy needs but also the impact on fertilizer supplies. He also has an important discussion of which countries are most exposed to these three vulnerabilities. Since there has been a fair bit of coverage on the risk of petroleum and gas shortfalls in various parts of the world, we’ll cite his sections on less-well-covered topic, fertilizer and combined risks from these three key needs. From his Choke Point: The Global Economic Consequences of The Persian Gulf Shutdown:
Let’s look at the three commodity categories most exposed …crude oil and refined petroleum products, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and urea, the nitrogen fertiliser upon which modern agriculture depends…
Of the three commodity shocks, the disruption of urea exports from the Persian Gulf may be the least immediately visible — but could prove the most enduring in its consequences……artificial fertiliser now sustains approximately half of the world’s population…
Crop yield decline. Without adequate nitrogen fertiliser, yields of staple crops — wheat, rice, maize, soy — would fall dramatically within one to two growing seasons. The effect would not be uniform: wealthy agricultural nations with domestic fertiliser capacity or large stockpiles (the United States, Canada, parts of Europe) would be more insulated. The developing world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia, would face acute shortages.
Food price inflation. Global food prices, already elevated by conflict-related supply disruptions in recent years, would surge further. The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s food price index would likely break historical records…
Geopolitical instability. Historical evidence linking sharp food price spikes to political instability is robust. The Arab Spring of 2011 coincided with a period of record food prices. A global urea shortage and its downstream consequences for food security would heighten the risk of civil unrest, state fragility, and humanitarian crisis across numerous countries.
India
India is the world’s largest urea importer by volume, consuming enormous quantities to support its vast agricultural sector. Despite significant domestic urea production, India’s demand consistently outpaces supply,..
Brazil
Brazil is among the world’s top urea importers, having dramatically expanded its agricultural output — it is now the world’s largest soy and beef exporter, and a major corn and sugar producer. Brazil produces almost no urea domestically at scale and imports a very large share from Gulf producers…
Australia
Australia is one of the world’s most import-dependent nations for urea, sourcing the overwhelming majority from Gulf producers..
Sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Nigeria)
Sub-Saharan African nations with significant smallholder agricultural sectors are acutely exposed to urea supply disruption. Most have no domestic production and rely heavily on Gulf imports, often through the Indian Ocean trade routes. Fertiliser usage rates in Africa are already among the world’s lowest — meaning yields are already suboptimal — but further supply cuts and price increases would price smallholder farmers out of the market entirely…
Southeast Asia — Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines
Southeast Asian rice-producing nations — Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines — rely heavily on imported urea to sustain their paddy yields. These countries are among the world’s largest rice exporters and form a critical buffer for global food markets…
Urea Exposure: Country Risk Summary
The Compounding Effect
Several countries face acute exposure across all three commodity categories simultaneously. These nations represent the most extreme cases of vulnerability.
Japan: The Triple Threat
Japan is uniquely exposed on all three fronts: it is the world’s most Gulf-dependent major oil importer, one of the world’s largest LNG importers with no pipeline alternative, and a significant importer of Gulf urea for its rice and vegetable agriculture. A full Persian Gulf shutdown would represent an existential economic crisis for Japan, requiring emergency rationing, international assistance, and an accelerated nuclear restart programme…
India: Scale Makes It Uniquely Dangerous
India faces critical exposure on oil and urea, and significant exposure on LNG. What makes India’s situation particularly alarming is scale: with 1.4 billion people, a fuel subsidy system that creates enormous fiscal pressure when prices rise, minimal strategic reserves, and a large poor population with little financial resilience, the social consequences of a simultaneous oil and fertiliser shock would be catastrophic…
Pakistan: The Fragile State Scenario
Pakistan faces severe exposure on oil and LNG, and significant exposure on urea. Critically, Pakistan begins any crisis from a position of chronic fiscal and foreign exchange weakness…
South Korea and Taiwan: Industrial Economies at Risk
Both nations face extreme oil and LNG exposure, and their economies are globally systemically important in ways that extend their vulnerability internationally. South Korea’s steel, chemicals, and shipbuilding, and Taiwan’s semiconductor fabs, supply global industries….
Johnson’s analysis has the US as much less vulnerable than the rest of the world. However, he focused on the biggest overall risks. We live in a world of tightly integrated supply chains. As we pointed out in a post last week, petroleum provides critical inputs for other major industries. Hoisted from an important article by Craig Tindale:
Here are 10 likely and immediate crises
Polyester -> apparel…
Natural gas -> fertilizer -> food…
Sour crude / sulfur -> sulfuric acid -> copper…
Propylene -> polypropylene -> medical and packaging…
Salt + power -> chlorine / caustic soda -> water treatment…
Natural rubber + synthetic rubber -> tires -> freight…
Iron ore + metallurgical coal -> steel -> construction and machinery…
Bauxite + alumina + cheap power -> aluminum -> transport and packaging..
Soda ash + natural gas -> glass -> buildings, autos, solar….
High-purity gases and chemicals -> semiconductors -> electronics and autos
Note that Tindale cited semiconductor supply chains, refining and industrial chemicals and mining and metals extraction as early to suffer body blows.
On a much cheerier note, Alon Mizrahi, who prides himself as an expert reader of the psychopathy in Israel, argues that Israel will not launch a nuclear strike on Iran. His talks tend to be very discursive but he does provide a transcript.
Day 12: the biggest military triumph in modern times by Alon Mizrahi
10 days ago, I already knew the US and Israel have lost the war. Now a new picture emerges, in which Iran not only achieve a historic victory, but also moves to change global power structures
Read on Substack
The core observations from his new talk are that US and Israel interest in the war are more visibly diverging, and that Israel still is maniacally committed because it wildly overestimates US power and willingness and ability to fund reconstruction. But he argues despite the fervor, Isrealis are not suicidal and recognize that Iran would retain enough conventional strike power even after an Israel nuclear attack to completely destroy Israel infrastructure. Key parts:
Already we are seeing, and this goes back to my separation angle, already we are seeing that the U.S. and Israel are not fully aligned…. The American angle on this is to remove this Ayatollah regime, as they call it, from power and let the Iranians rebuild their country. But this is not the Israeli agenda. Israel doesn’t care about who controls Iran. Israel wants to destroy Iran for sadistic pleasure, to satisfy its supremacy complex, and so on, and so on, and so on. But this is not the American calculation….
Israel doesn’t care. Israel doesn’t care about tomorrow. And Israel has this feeling that whatever happens, the U.S. will always protect it. That whatever the U.S. has, it’s going to give it to Israel first. …Israel has this strange confidence that things are going to be this way forever. And they have no consideration for destroying the global economy. They think that even if the global economy is destroyed, the U.S. is going to bail them out and save them. The U.S. and other international mechanisms that they have a lot of influence on, they are going to save Israel and bail out Israel. So they are not bothered by this kind of an apocalypse or an Armageddon scenario. Whereas the U.S., even in its current state, is not interested in this kind of an outcome…
Iran is going to work methodically to break Israel. This is not a symbolic inflicting of pain. This is something that goes way beyond this. Way beyond this. But this is it for now….
And if Israel, so I’ve covered the U.S. part of it, but if Israel decides to use atomic weapons, it’s going to create the same global impact as the U.S. doing the same thing. But the difference would be that Israel, this small, extremely sensitive and globally hated country, has now made it legitimate for any country that so desires to nuke Israel…
So for the US, using atomic weapons creates a risk scenario that is too much to bear and doesn’t make sense relative to the danger that Iran poses or the reward of getting rid of Iran. But for Israel, which doesn’t have this kind of considerations at all, using atomic weapons invites the kind of reaction that is most, by all likelihood, is going to finish Israel. Because maybe Iran will develop it itself. Maybe they will get one from Pakistan or from Russia. Or maybe North Korea is going to get crazy and decide that they have to get rid of Israel, because Israel is using atomic weapons. And this is not the 1940s.
There are several countries with atomic weapons, and each one of them is like 50 to 100 times bigger than Israel, with a much bigger strategic depth. And their ability to cope with a scenario like this, which is crazy and apocalyptic, And Armageddon Lake is much better. Israel is toast in an instant.
So for Israel, this is too much of an existential risk…Using nukes against Iran doesn’t guarantee the end of Iran or the end of the war. because much of Iran’s strategic capability is nuclear resistant. It won’t be destroyed because someone dropped adropped a nuclear bomb on Tehran or Isfahan or five cities and killed five million Iranians. It may only guarantee that Iran will itself apply the same logic and launch everything that it has, thousands of ballistic missiles, and hundreds of thousands of drones potentially, and cruise missiles, and everything that it has, not only at Israel, but its entire neighboring area, and cause another layer of destruction, that no one would be able to, maybe not survive, but survive normally. Because firing a thousand ballistic missiles at Israel guarantees the country is finished. Finished. Because this kind of barrage, if it’s directed at population centers, At Tel Aviv, five, three or four Israeli big cities. This ends Israel. This ends Israel..
But Iran doesn’t want to be seen as the one actively ending Israel, because in this scenario, it might invite Israel to use the atomic option. So short of bringing Israel to this point, Iran is going to do everything to bring down Israel and Zionism.
Other good videos in the last 24 hours. These Hindustan Times updates overlap only a bit:
And:
Given the US’ fondness for bombing fishing boat and claiming they were operated by drug-carrying nacro-terrorists, how sure can be be over what exactly the US shot, even assuming these images are current and from the Persian Gulf?
Wilkerson has been on fire:
And other tidbits:
From Reuters om US Navy tells shipping industry Hormuz escorts not possible for now:
The U.S. Navy has refused near-daily requests from the shipping industry for military escorts through the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the war on Iran, saying the risk of attacks is too high for now…
The Navy’s assessments spell continued disruption to Middle East oil exports and reflect a divergence from President Donald Trump’s statements that the U.S. is prepared to provide naval escorts whenever needed to restart regular shipments along the key waterway…
A senior official with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has said the strait is closed and Iran will fire on any ship trying to pass, Iranian media reported last week. Several ships have already been hit.
The U.S. Navy has held regular briefings with shipping and oil industry counterparts and has said during those briefings it is unable to provide escorts for the time being, three shipping industry sources familiar with the matter said.
The sources, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the shipping industry has been making requests almost daily during the calls for naval escorts through the strait.
From The Hill in Pentagon burned through $5.6B in munitions in first 2 days of Iran war:
The Pentagon churned through about $5.6 billion worth of munitions during the first two days of the U.S. war with Iran, a congressional source familiar with the matter told The Hill Monday night.
The Defense Department delivered the estimate to Congress on Monday, the source said.
From Axios in Central banks have an oil price problem:
The big picture: The geopolitical strains unleashed by the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran 11 days ago point to an ongoing reset … with downstream effects for global inflation, interest rates and more.
Markets are pricing in a relatively temporary surge in energy prices, but they are just the latest in a series of supply shocks …
It creates a particular challenge for the Federal Reserve and other central banks. They must decide whether to try to fight supply-shock-driven inflation — or look through it….
Reality check: The moves in yields and inflation expectations have hardly been the stuff of nightmares.
Longer-term Treasury yields were higher just a few weeks ago and through most of 2025.
Treasury markets priced in 2.6% annual inflation over the next five years at Monday’s close, up from 2.4% before the attacks but far below the levels seen at the height of the Ukraine invasion four years ago (3.6%).
Futures markets are now pricing in better-than-even odds (57%) that the Fed will leave interest rates unchanged at its June meeting. A month ago, the CME FedWatch tool put the odds of a rate cut by June at about 75%….
Traditional monetary policy theory holds that energy price shocks are one-time events that policymakers should look past.
But coming after the pandemic supply shocks, the Ukraine war and the U.S.-launched trade war, the world economy is looking more like one in which rolling price shocks are the norm, not the exception…
I was remiss in not including this post on Glenn Greenwald’s site, yesterday, by Core Crystal, Iran War Supporters Invent a New and Absurd Justification: It Is All About China. A key part of its argument:
At the very least, if China were really the motive, one would have expected the Trump administration to offer this theory — “this is the chance to counter America’s greatest geopolitical rival” — as a major justification to the American people. One would think they would be particularly motivated to do so, given the consensus of polling data showing that public support for this war is far weaker than for any American war in decades.
But Trump officials never mentioned China as a core motive. In fact, even now, the administration and its backers have hardly mentioned China. This is a theory invented out of whole cloth by Iran-war supporters and/or Trump supporters, grasping for some cogent reason why this new war is in Americans’ interests.
Late last week, Senator Lindsey Graham claimed that this conflict is “a religious war” waged by “radical Islamic terrorists.” On March 2, House Speaker Mike Johnson explained to a group of reporters that the United States “determined, because of the exquisite intelligence that [it] had, that if Israel fired on Iran,” then “[Iran] would have immediately retaliated against U.S. personnel and assets.” Therefore, the House Speaker insisted, because the U.S. would be attacked either way, it had to hit Iran withIsrael. President Trump announced on Friday that the U.S. intends to select “GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s)” for the Iranian people, in order to make their country “economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.”
Reader bob pointed out that the Strait of Hormuz monitoring sites are giving stuff-up readings, perhaps due to GPS jamming or spoofing:
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:459236/mmsi:538009584/imo:9561382/vessel:IMPERIOUS
99.5 knots
Does anyone know why they are reporting as way over speed? What would cause that? What sort of spoofing would lead to ships being reported at speeds of 100 knots?
The clusters of ships west of Dubai are the craziest. They’re doing 100 knots a few feet from each other. A few are slower at 50 knots.
Finally, some cheekiness:
Iran has asked its Gulf neighbors for the coordinates of Israeli and US shelters for strikes. TopWar
See you tomorrow!
____
.1 Yes, Marouf is controversial (see here, here, and here). But that does not invalidate his analysis of the history of decolonization.
2 Keep in mind how completely psychologically unprepared the West is for being met with a superior force that they have convinced themselves is weak and incompetent. Russia, aside from its stature as a peer competitor to the US during the Cold War, is a great power by virtue of its nuclear arsenal alone. Yet Putin’s comparatively mild requirements for ending the Ukraine war (which seem ambitious until you recognize that Russia will win and therefore can impose terms) are ritually depicted as “maximmalist” by Western officials and media. How long will they have to choke on their bigotry with respect to Iran’s military prowess and ability to bring the world economy to its knees before they recognize that they need to deal with a completely new reality?
