“US Israel Iran War”

Alternative-energy advocates see an opening, but reality points to more oil drilling, not less.

One-fifth of global oil trade transits the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic risk that, given current events, has shattered supply-chain complacency in world energy markets. Similarly shattered is the illusion that the world is any less dependent on oil today than it was during the epoch-setting 1973–74 Arab oil embargo.

Supply-chain complexities in energy markets make forecasting a fraught business. As one complexity expert notes, “small perturbations can produce disproportionately large effects.” When it comes to energy realities, however, the “direction of travel”—the International Energy Agency’s favored phrase—is robustly predictable.

Donald Trump warned there would be “no more nice guy” in negotiations with Iran as he prepared to extend a naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.

The US president posted an AI-generated image of himself holding a rifle in front of several explosions and ordered Tehran to “get smart”.

He wrote: “Iran can’t get their act together. They don’t know how to sign a non-nuclear deal. They better get smart soon!”

If the people of Iran had the right to bear arms, the regime that oppresses them would no longer be in power. That’s not far-fetched speculation. It’s a reality we can see by looking at how power works inside the Islamic Republic of Iran. When only the state has weapons, only the state has power. Defenseless citizens cannot rise up against a brutal regime.

War has imposed a heavy cost on Iran’s economy: more than a million people out of work, soaring food prices and a prolonged internet shutdown that has slammed online businesses.

The question is how much more pain Iran’s leaders are willing to tolerate as they try to negotiate a favorable end to the war.

Talks between the U.S. and Iran have stalled. American officials are betting that Iran will soon crack because of the deepening economic crisis. Iran is betting the U.S. will crack first and end its blockade of Iranian ports to calm global markets and bring down American gasoline prices.

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the genocidal Iranian regime is collapsing and ready to cave on reopening a key economic waterway.

The U.S. Navy has been enforcing a partial blockade of the Strait of Hormuz after the Iranian regime refused to remove its mines from the strait and repeatedly attacked ships sailing through it. But on April 28, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Iran has just informed us that they are in a ‘State of Collapse.’ They want us to ‘Open the Hormuz Strait,’ as soon as possible, as they try to figure out their leadership situation (Which I believe they will be able to do!). Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Apparently, Iran’s oil crisis grew too desperate.

The United Arab Emirates said it would leave OPEC, dealing a heavy blow to the oil cartel as the war in Iran scrambles alliances and investment priorities among the world’s top oil producers.

The sudden departure of OPEC’s third-biggest producer further weakens a bloc that despite producing up to four out of every 10 barrels of oil pumped worldwide has been hobbled by internal disunity and the rise of American oil output.

The war in Iran has piled on more pressure by exacerbating rifts among the Arab countries at the core of the group and by closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which the group’s biggest producers export most of their oil, making it impossible for the group to influence the market during its biggest supply shock.

The Iran war is now in an artificial stasis, in which practically all of the vast international coalition of people who are repelled and horrified by U.S. President Donald Trump, in the United States and elsewhere, have reflexively bought into the Iranian claim that since that ghastly regime has ostensibly survived, Iran is winning the war.

This is a false conception. This has been the most one-sided war between serious combatants in modern history. Iran has been deprived of much of its military capacity, including related defence production, and is now being tightly blockaded by sea. American casualties have been minimal.

famous saying of Anton Chekhov’s has been making the rounds. “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall,” Chekhov advised, “in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

I wonder if the thugs and theocrats who have been plundering Iran for the last 47 years have read Chekhov. If so, I conclude that they are slow learners. In January, the Iranian authorities slaughtered more than 40,000 protesters—Iranian citizens, mind you, who were fed up with the oppressive death cult that has been oppressing Iran since the dour clown Ayatollah Khomeini waddled off that plane from Paris in Tehran in 1979. Over the course of about a month this past winter, the US assembled a huge military presence in the waters around Iran: two aircraft carrier strike groups and innumerable air assets.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—President Trump scrapped a trip by U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan for talks with Iran, leaving himself tough choices over how to force Iran to make concessions the White House wants to strike a deal.

Trump said on Saturday that he had decided to cancel the trip after receiving an offer from Iran that fell short of the White House’s expectations. “We’re not going to spend 15 hours in airplanes all the time, going back and forth, to be given a document that was not good enough,” he said.

The operatives of Sepah, Iran’s state within a state, are many in number. They include the construction workers digging out underground missile bases, the skippers on speedboats harrying oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and the co-ordinators of militia activities in neighbouring Iraq. All of them will be reading the runes on how and when the war with America and Israel will end, as continued efforts by Pakistan to mediate a peace deal continue this weekend.

Sepah-e Pasdaran, usually translated as the Guards Corps, but habitually referred to by Iranians by that single word, grew from an army of the ultra-faithful during the bloody 1980s war with Iraq into an entity that controls up to one third of the economy and the military units used to crush dissent in the theocratic republic. However, its future power may depend on the degree to which sanctions on Iran are eased.

With the Hormuz crisis, another element falls into place in the mosaic of the new world order. This order is dominated by the titanic struggle between the U.S. and China, manifesting in commodity and energy markets. That Europe has slept through this transformation is a sign of blatant reality denial.

We are currently receiving conflicting reports from the Strait of Hormuz — that strategic chokepoint where global geopolitical weather is shaped like nowhere else. Sometimes a Greek tanker passes through, sometimes a French one. Most often, tankers destined for India or China navigate without incident.

If you listen to the mainstream media, you might come away with the impression that Iran is somehow prevailing — resilient, defiant, and still shaping events across the Middle East. The narratives often suggest that the US campaign has failed and that Tehran remains firmly in control. In reality, however, US President Donald J. Trump has pursued a strategy that departs radically from decades of precedent — one that has left the Iranian regime cornered in ways not previously seen.

Imams in West Portray Khamenei as Victim, U.S. as Perpetrator

In the wake of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death as the result of joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes against Tehran on February 28, 2026, various Shia Islamist institutions and figures in Western countries have issued statements of mourning that frame his death as an act of “martyrdom” and express solidarity with the Islamic Republic—even after U.S. troops were attacked, and in some instances, killed by Iranian ordnance. Such responses, often from registered charities, student groups, and community centers, portray Khamenei—who led a brutal regime that has murdered tens of thousands of its own citizens—as a victim and the United States as under the control of the Jews.

There had been little hope for any diplomatic breakthroughs this weekend. Now, what little there was is gone entirely.

The proposed US delegation, led by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, already lacked the weight of the vice-president. JD Vance was “on standby”, but was not going to be initially involved.

The fact that even the lower-level team have now cancelled their trip is a sign of how far apart the sides are.