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Israel has been wanting to clear the region of Arabs for a very long time, because they aspire to Greater Israel, which would encompass all of Lebanon, all of Jordan, all of Syria, the Gulf states, and substantial fractions of Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. The blue lines on the flag represent the Nile and the Euphrates, and Israeli soldiers wear a patch of Greater Israel on their uniforms.

They’ve finally found an American president whom they could misinform, bribe, blackmail, and control who would help them make it happen. Marco Rubio admited that the US started the war because otherwise Israel would have, then Iran would have retaliated, and the US would have taken damage or casualties. In other words, the US went to war at Israel’s behest.

The Gulf monarchies are all extremely vulnerable. Provoking Iran was one way to threaten their existence, because they allow the US to use bases on their soil, and their airspace, to carry out attacks, which obviously invites retaliation. Key Iranian leaders were assassinated, which was a major blunder since the Khamenei chose to be martyred, and is now a powerful unifying symbol for a country where martyrdom is a high honour. Objects of critical infrastructure were hit, like Iran’s desalination plant. If Iran, which is only about 3% dependent on desalination, were to retaliate in kind, the Gulf states, some of which are 100% dependent on desalination, would become uninhabitable immediately. That would be the fastest way to clear out the region, but Iran is unlikely to do this. As annoyed as it is that the Gulf vassal states are helping the US and Israel in the war, Iran has no desire to inflict a humanitarian catastrophy that would further Israel’s territorial goals.

Israel, on the other hand, has no qualms about inflicting mass civilian casualties. They’ve already done so on a mass scale in Gaza, the West Bank and in Lebanon. They see Arabs as subhuman – as Amalek – and see no innocent parties. Israeli citizens have said on camera that the children grow up to be Arabs, so they should be eliminated before they do. The nature of war has been taken back 500 years, to utter barbarism. Whole populations are being subjected to collective punishment and genocide. The US has become a rogue hegemon, as it throws away its reputation and its superpower status. Israel has bought virtually all of Congress, and now wields its influence to send other young people to their deaths in a war of aggression. It isn’t only the Arabs whom the Israelis look down upon. They also have contempt for the ‘goyim’ who fight their wars for them. Epstein made this clear in his emails.

The resignation of Joe Kent could be a turning point, and does seem to be inspiring a growing minority of soliders to refuse illegal orders. He was MAGA through and through, but left because he could not support an obvious war of aggression. Unfortunately his boss, Tulsi Gabard, lacks his integrity, and has revealed herself to be a fraud and a sellout. Many people in the regime have their eyes on political elevation in 2028, and will do or say anything to remain close to the centre of power. Very few have a shred of integrity, and most are incompetent and corrupt. Of course incompetence and corruption are nothing new in American politics, but this group takes it to the next level. None of them are likely to get the ultimate power that they seek.

The war has escalated to mutual destruction of energy infrastructure, with Iran’s South Pars gas field being attacked and Qatar’s American jet fuel storage site attacked in return. This could spread, and would amount to yet another way for Israel to destroy the Gulf the states, using Iran as the instrument.

The correlation between energy supply and economic growth is almost one, meaning that energy is THE driver of growth – the single most important factor, and indeed almost the only one that matters. Global energy supply is about to collapse, and not just by the 20% that used to transit the Gulf. Now both sides are destroying each other’s energy infrastructure.

Steve Jermy, a fomer naval officer and energy expert, discusses the plans being formulated to invade either Karg Island or the northern coast of the Straits of Hormuz. The odds of success are vanishingly small. The US chronically underestimates it’s enemies, as it regards itself as inherently superior. This is shear hubris.

This departure from reality is what a combination of hubris and desperation looks like:

This is from facebook, from a site called ‘I Fucking Love Australia’. The link won’t post here, but this is the content (language warning). This amounts to a massive escalation. With each side blowing up each other’s critical infrastructure, restoring global energy flows will likely never be possible. Energy supplies will probably be impacted permanently. Please pay attention. Your futures depend on it. You must try to become as independent of the system as you possibly can. The plans of the elites for total central control will fail, and tnat failure is being hastened by the day because it critically depends on energy. You will need to radically reduce expectations, try to get out from under any leverage the system has over you, pool resources sith family, friends, and neighbours, and hope you’re collectively independent enough to outlast the plans of the western elites. We will be needing to rebuild a functioning system from the bottom up.

“🚨 BREAKING: Iran has just ordered Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE to evacuate their energy facilities. The missiles are coming. They named the fucking targets on live television.

This is what 5D chess looks like when Donald Trump plays it. The guy walked up to the board, threw his queen straight into the middle, and got taken by a fucking pawn. And now he’s sitting there telling everyone he’s winning while the board is on fire and the table is collapsing.

Israel, with full US backing, bombed Iran’s South Pars gas field today. The largest gas field on Earth. 70% of Iran’s domestic gas supply. Shared with Qatar. All burning. And Iran’s response? Cool, we’re going to blow up every refinery from Riyadh to Doha. Here’s the list. You’ve got a few hours. Run.

Now let’s talk about oil. Because you’re being lied to.

The headlines say Brent crude is at $103, $108. That is not the real fucking price. That’s one benchmark. The actual aggregate global oil price, what people are really paying for crude right now, is sitting between $120 and $130 a barrel. That’s the number they don’t put on the front page because it would start a fucking panic.

Iranian officials have said openly they will push oil to $200. An Iranian economics professor said $300. Three weeks ago that sounded insane. Today it sounds like a fucking calendar reminder.

The IEA just confirmed this is the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. The largest. Ever. Gulf production has been cut by 10 million barrels a day. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. A fifth of all the world’s oil used to flow through there. Used to.

And here’s what $200 oil means for you personally.

97% of everything you touch, eat, wear, and use involves crude oil. Your food. Your medicine. Your plastic. Your fertiliser. Your transport. Your heating. Even your tomatoes from the farmers market. Grown with petroleum fertiliser. Picked by blokes who drove there in trucks made from crude oil. Delivered on diesel. Wrapped in petroleum packaging. That little sticker on the tomato? Petroleum.

When oil doubles, everything doubles. When it triples, civilisation starts to wobble. This isn’t a recession. This is a fucking seizure.

You know what caused the Great Depression? Tariffs. Stock markets at all time highs. Reckless speculation. Sound familiar? We’ve got all of that. Plus an oil crisis that 1929 didn’t have. This is the Great Depression with a turbocharger bolted to it.

And the slow-motion part is what kills you. This is one of those disaster movies where you see the shockwave rolling outward in slow motion. Glass shattering. Faces changing from confusion to terror. Everything stretching out in this surreal, horrible, beautiful slow-motion moment. That’s right now. On every trading floor, every petrol station, every supermarket supply chain on Earth. The shockwave is moving. You can see it. And nobody can stop it.

Today alone, Israel ass@ssinated Iran’s intelligence minister. Third senior official in two days. Iran fired multi-warhead missiles and cluster munitions at Tel Aviv. Two dead. The Bushehr nuclear plant took a hit. Dubai Airport got hit. The Australian base in the UAE got hit. Expats are fleeing Dubai on $250,000 private jets and abandoning their dogs in the fucking street.

Iran has spent 25 years digging tunnels, building underground drone factories, hiding missile launchers in caves along the entire coastline. America is dropping 5,000 pound bunker busters and Iran is still firing hundreds of drones and missiles every single day. You’re not winning. You’re punching a hornets’ nest and bragging that the nest has a dent in it.

Meanwhile the Fed meets today and they’re completely fucked. Can’t cut rates because inflation is about to go nuclear. Can’t raise rates because the economy is already cracking. Gold is at $5,000 an ounce. American petrol prices have jumped 86 cents in 18 days. That’s not a spike. That’s a vertical fucking line.

And we’re only on Day 19.

This is what happens when 77 million people look at a convicted felon, an adjudicated r@pist, a twice-impeached insurrectionist who hid classified documents next to the shitter, and say yeah, give him the nuclear codes. What’s the worst that could happen?

This. This is the worst that could happen.

Donald Trump didn’t play 5D chess. He didn’t even play checkers. He walked into the room, knocked the board off the table, shit on the floor, and declared victory. And now 8 billion people who never got a vote are going to pay for it at the petrol pump, at the supermarket, in their heating bills, and in their fucking retirement savings.

The wheels of disaster grind slowly. The bombs make the news but the economics make the history books. $200 oil doesn’t kill you in a fireball. It kills you at the checkout.

Buckle. The fuck. Up.”

The petrodollar recycling scheme has been propping up the US economy for decades by assuring that all oil sold anywhere must be paid for in dollars that are then invested back into the US. This arrangement has secured the use of the US dollar as the global reserve currency, endowing it with exorbitant privilige at the expense of the rest of the world. The US can print dollars that other countries must have in order to buy oil, and commodities in general. The US has increasingly weaponised the dollar, which has led to pressure to dedollarise. Trump has repeatedly threatened other countries with economic destruction if they try to move away from the dollar. Tariffs are one way, but currency manipulation as they recently did to destroy the Iranian rial (and then bragged about it) would be another.

Without the exorbitant privilege, the US interest rates would rise on trillions of already unrepayable debt. The cost of interest already exceeds the trillion dollar (set to increase to 1.5 trillion) military budget. Interest is set by the market, not by the central bank, which must simply follow the market. US treasuries have long been considered top-tier collateral, but gold is now taking their place.

The petrodollar system is now ending. China has said that it already dominates the US in every way except financially, and that now it intends for the yuan to become the global reserve currency. This intention is now being reinforced, using oil transport as a weapon. The Straits of Hormuz are closed, affecting delivery of a large percentage of the global oil supply. It will remain under Iranian control, as they can defend it easily, having prepared for this scenario for about thirty years. Iran has said that ‘friendly ships’ may pass, but their oil cargo must be sold in yuan.

Iran also intends to drive the US out of the Gulf region entirely. All the US bases there have already been damaged or destroyed, including critical radar systems costing hundreds of millions of dollars that were taken out by cheap drones ( demonstrating the ineffectiveness if air defence). The US is now blind in this region. Iran has said it will begin to target US corporations in the region, and also Trump’s family assets. US embassies hosting major intelligence operations are also being targeted. There is no way to stop them from doing this. They haven’t yet used their most advanced weaponry, having used the older classes of missiles to overwhelm the existing poor air defence. Interceptors costing multimillions were fired two at a time, or more, to intercept drones costing $50K. A substantial fraction of all the interceptors that have ever been produced has been used up in Ukraine and the Gulf, and there is no surge capacity to produce more quickly.

Iran’s closure of fhe Straits of Hormuz is very likely to be joined by an effective closure by Ansar Allah (the Houthis) of the Bab-al-Mandab – the southern entrance to the Red Sea. This would render the Suez canal useless, and if sustained would mean the proposed construction of the Ben Gurion canal through Gaza would be pointless. The US failed to prevent the closure if the Bab-al-Mandab when it was previously closed in response to the Gaza genocide, despite sending carrier strike groups. The US simply declared victory and left, as is their pattern. The impact on global trade as a whole of the closure of both the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea would be incalculable.

Iran’s military assets are highly dispersed, and very well dug in in a mountainous region. They cannot realistically be taken out. There are multiple underground missile cities, some 500m below ground. The command structure is decentralised, and Iran has a ‘dead hand’ system like that in Russia, meaning that missiles can continue to be fired even if the leadership has been wiped out. Iran has mass produced inflatable replicas of military hardware, and drawn images of aircraft on runways. These are what the US had been bombing, while the critical infrastructure is not exposed. Launchers are invisible under the desert sand, with their crews safe underground. Iran is extremely well prepared, despite soending less than one percent of the US defence budget. The population is more dispersed and less urbanised than most, so even trying to nuke them into submission would not work. These are people who regard martyrdom as a great honor, and who don’t run when their street protests are bombed.

This is what Iran has to say:

The American regime has absolutely failed to understand the situation it has thrust itself into, or the scale of its vulnerabilities. The failure encompasses several past presidencies, but the current one is by far the most ignorant and hubristic, which is a fatal combination. Trump has no understanding of geopolitics, only mafia tactics of bribery, extortion, and threats, learned from his extensive New York mafia connections over decades (see testimony from Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano at his trial), and from corrupt mob lawyer Roy Cohn. He makes ‘deals’, but repudiates them a week later. His deals are ‘negotiated’ by two unqualified real eatate developers who are also ardent zionists, so they are uninformed, out of their depth, utterly biased, and set to benefit personally from the conflict (see Kushner’s plans for turning Gaza into a resort for the super-rich) .

Deals are ephemeral. They can be changed on a whim, and Trump is prone to changing his mind multiple times a day. Geopolitics requires binding treaties, painstakingly negotiated by well-informed serious people. Trump’s entire cabinet was chosen on the basis of personal loyalty to him, with a side emphasis on appearance (see Trump’s frequent comments on ‘central casting’) and moral ‘flexibility’. Some of them were chosen to destroy the departments they lead (see Lynda McMahon at the department of education). Most others are both incompetent and corrupt. Pete Hegseth, his Secretary of Defence (now secretary of War), is one of the worst. The man is covered in crusader tattoos and is emersed in end times theology, where the Middle East must go up in flames in order to secure the return of Jesus and the Rapture. No rational thought can break through the religious conviction. To call this a disaster in the making would the understatement of the century, if not considerably longer.

Patrick Henningsen is one of the best geopolitical analysts on the planet. This discussion covers range of critical issues. It begins with a discussion of the resignation of Trump’s Counter-Terrorism Centre director, and diehard MAGA supporter, Joe Kent. Kent has left the regime over the war, which he steadfastly opposes. This is very likely to focus the minds of many others, as opposition to the war is increasing rapidly, including in the military. The regime is lying about casulaties, which are much higher than they admit.

Yesterday Trump demanded that the American vassal states, including the rest of NATO, but also Japan and South Korea, help him force open the Straits of Hormuz. Today every single one of them declined to do so, because they know perfectly well that they’d be throwing away their ships and their men. French General Michel Yakovleff just compared joining Trump’s war to “buying cheap tickets for the Titanic” after it already hit the iceberg. In addition, Trump has been removing air defence from these places, and from all the Gulf countries, demonstrating that American equipment was never there for the benefit of these states, but for the sake of a protection racket. The equipment extracted is all being sent to Israel, which goaded the US into this war in the first place.

Many of these countries had previously been strong-armed by Trump, under threat of punitive tariffs, into commiting to significant investment in the US, although no actual trade deals were ever signed. All those agreements are now unlikely to be fulfilled, and since the tariff regime has been struck down by the Supreme Court, Trump’s ability to threaten foreign nations economically has likely gone anyway. The US will not be reindustrialising on the backs of its vassal states, and those vassals are beginning to notice that the man who wants to be the global emperor has no clothes.

The Straits are under the full control of Iran, with armaments dug into the hillsides along the coast, combined with the capacity to place mines, use missiles or artillery, use airborne drones, use submarimes, use manouverable torpedos etc. They are not short of options, and there’s nothing the US can do about it. Trump plans to send thousands of marine to Karg Island, in an attempt to take over the oil installations there, but this will simply mean thousands of dead marines. This war will end on Iran’s timetable, not America’s, and it won’t end until the empire has been driven out of the Middle East (actually West Asia) entirely. In the meantime, Iran has said the ships of friendly nations can pass through the Straits if the currency they use for the trade is Chinese yuan. They can break the petrodollar, which has been the support under the American economy for decades.

Iran is not stuck in 1979. It has evolved significantly. It is no longer the extremely repressive theocracy it was directly after the revolution. That revolution was a response to the brutal regime of the Shah, who’d been installed as a western puppet after the overthrow of the previous democratically elected leader, and who had introduced a secret police every bit as feared as anything under Eastern European communism. Mossadegh was deposed in 1953 for having had the temerity to say that Iranian oil should benefit primarily Iranians. Foreign interference in Iran goes back many decades, and they have had enough. This time they will fight to the end, and under Shia Islam, martyrdom is an honour. The US recently bombed a demonstration of over a million people in the streets, but no one ran. They are not afraid.

The days of the empire are coming to an end, despite Trump’s declaration of undying supreme power. The US is caught in Thucydides Trap, where an old empire in decline tries to maintain dominance in the face of the rise of a new centre of power. Global naval power under the anglosphere is losing its grip after hundreds of years, and land-based powers are rising. Iran is the lynchpin for the development of hegemonic power in the Asian heartland, as the power connecting Russia, China, and India. This is why it’s now a target, but the empire has over-reached, as all dying empires do, and it will break its back on the mountains of Iran.

Trump’s declarations of early victory are laughable. He’s completely unmoored from reality, and his increasingly insane pronouncements are dividing not only his voting base, but also his own cabinent and the military. A military coup is a distinct possibility.

Trump is also strangling Cuba through the most punitive sanctions, amounting to collective punishment of a country that has never been a threat to the US. The entire Cuban power grid has now collapsed and people are desperate. Trump is saying he can do whatever he wants with Cuba, and that taking it would be “an honour”. He also wants Greenland, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (so far), under the so-called ‘Donroe Doctrine’. This is simply delusional.

Always listen to Catherine Austin Fitts. She’s an expert on international finance and the developing control grid composed of programmable digital currency and the attempt to tokenise all assets on a single centralised ledger. This is a rationing system as a response by elites to impending limits to growth, and also an attempt to forestall a negative public reaction to a shrinking economic pie. Elites typically take the blame at such times, hence their attempt to avoid accountability for the exceptional greed and hunger for power that engaged in for a very long time. Populations have already been subjected to divide and rule over every controversial issue. Now they may well be locked down, not by an overreaction to disease this time, but by an impending energy crisis.

The implementation of the control grid has proceded extremely rapidly under the Trump regime, with the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, the Genius Act, and the Clarity Act. These lay the groundwork for a digital gulag. Trump was necessary for this project, since he acts as an effective distraction while facilitating the passing of legislation he likely doesn’t even understand, but is well rewarded for promoting. He doesn’t seem to see that in pushing this through, and claiming personal responsibility for doing so, he’s setting himself up to be the focus of blame for all of it.

Trump has made billions of dollars personally since his inauguration, mostly through crypto scams, but with the addition of an avalanche of petty grifts of all kinds. However, now that the framework legislation has been passed, his usefulness to the donor class is greatly reduced, if not entirely over. His health is crashing, both physically and mentally. The dripfeed of Epstein revelations continues, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the war is becoming a global catastrophy. Either Trump’s health finally fails, or he will likely be scapegoated by his own side as the consequences of highly damaging policies come home to roost.

Unfortunately the control grid is likely to outlast him, even though it’s an overly ambitious project destined to fail at some point for lack of the high EROEI energy supplies necessary to sustain a greatly increased level of socioeconomic complexity. They’re hoping the coming population reduction (by design) will make that task easier, but it won’t. The elites have bitten off more than they can chew. Whomever succeeds Trump will be reaping the whirlwind.

This will not be a short war, but even if it did end soon, the damage to global oil supply flow is already done. At least 25% of global oil supply flows through the Straits of Hormuz, much of which goes to Asia. Many Asian countries are now on the verge of running out entirely. Australia and New Zealand will be badly affected, since they have little (Australia) or no ( New Zealand) capacity for refining. New Zealand gets its fuel from other Asian countries, meaning indirectly theough the Straits of Hirmuz, but that leaves us completely exposed. Those Asian countries are not going to export their own supplies in order to postpone our problems, and postpone for a short time is all they could do in any case.

The Strait was blocked, not by Iran, but initially by the insurance industry, which refused to insure cargos in a war zone. Now Iran has said it will allow some shipping to pass, but only if not involved in any way in the attack on them. In addition, payment would need to be in Chinese yuan. This could destroy the petrodollar system that has sustained the American empire for so long. Iran is perfectly capable of destroying any ship that doesn’t follow its rules with missiles, drones, armed small ships, submarines, mines, and manouverable torpedos. The Straits will stay closed for as long as Iran wants them to.

Storage in the Gulf is full, meaning that production must shut down, and once shut down, production cannot quickly resume. This means that even if the war ended, shortages in downstream countries would remain acute for a long time. People respond to scarcity by increasing demand, because they’re trying to hold on to emergency supplies. This rise in demand comes as supply is shrinking, and the response is a major price spike. Rationing system is being proposed to limit this, but one can only ration something that’s still available at some level. Confiscations of personal fuel supplies could be institued as an anti-hiarding measure. Dependent countries could find themselves with little to no fuel at all, and then in a state of chaos. A severe economic depression would result, especially since the financial system is in trouble already. A large scale ponzi scheme seems poised to unwind. Look after each other. Times are about to get difficult.

Wherever there is conflict, bankers will be behind it. All wars are bankers’ wars. This historical summary about how the Middle East was carved up along lines conductive to bankers’ interests is accurate. The decisions made by those men have set the stage for erruptions of ethnic violence over a century of conflict. The current highly destructive war is a direct consequence.

It won’t be a short war. Iran has been preparing for decades, and is far more powerful than western leaders would have you believe. It is also far less repressive than propaganda suggests. Iran is not stuck in 1979. Today it’s a modern theocratic state. It does not slaughter protestors. The recent protests began after the US deliberately crashed the value of their currency, and then foolishly bragged about it. Those peaceful protests were then infiltrated by Mossad/CIA/MI6, with instructions to initiate extreme violence and destroy infrastructure. Those violent protests were suppressed by the government, aided by their ability to jam Starlink and trace those using the network to coordinate attacks. The government did NOT kill 30,000 protestors.

This war is also being fought for the interests of the wealthy, and the maintenance of a failing empire. The empire is overconfident, and despite overwhelming force is not going to be able to win this assymmetric war. The force they can bring to bear is antiquated, and cannot counter the weaponry of modern warfare – namely the drones and missiles which Iran has in abundance. American forces cannot defend themselves or their erstwhile allies in the Gulf. Air defence, which was never very effective, has now been depleted. Iran will now launch its more sophisticated weaponry.

in the meantime, the rest of the world is about to suffer a major energy crisis, and also critical shortages of other goods, most notably fertiliser. Even if the war ended tomorrow, it would take at least months to retore the flow of resources. A global economic depression is inevitable. The fact that the global financial ponzi system was already at the end of a major debt cycle, and economic pain is guaranteed, along with real physical shortages.

Here’s another valuable historical perspective, presented by a Rabbi from Montreal. He’s discussing the difference between Judaism and zionism, and the historical development of zionism. Judaism is a religion, while zionism is an ideology with roots in Judaism, Christianity, and secular socialism. Zionism isessentially an Eastern European import to the levant, with little or no connection to the region. Many religious Jews vehemently oppose the state of Israel, because they do not see themselves in an ideology or as an ethnicity. They regard zionism as heresy. This is the kind of distinction that people absolutely need to understand in order to make sense of the current situation. Anti-Semitism is wrong, but anti-zionism is not. Some of the loudest voices opposing it are Jewish themselves.

There are far more Christian zionists in the US, than there are Jews in the whole world. There are also many secular or atheistic zionists. Opposing zionism, which is an expansionist ideology laying claim to territory currently occupied by many tens of millions of Arabs, is z perfectly reasonable position to take. It is not anti-Semitic. Greater Israel is intended to occupy all of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and parts of Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. The level of violence required would be insane.

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Debt is secured by collateral, but in a financial system unmoored from discipline, which has been the case for decades, debt creation has ballooned, with the same collateral often being pledged multiple times to back multiple loans. In the City of London, it’s legal to infinitely rehypothecate your collateral, meaning to back an infinite number of loans with it. So long as the loans don’t go bad, requiring the handover of the collateral, the system continues blithly unaware of the systemic risk. But loans can go bad all at once and very quickly when confidence is lost. The current financial risk awakening is beginning to reveal a huge shortage of collateral, beginning in the unregulated private credit market. This is a game of musical chairs, with less than one chair per person ‘playing the game’. The music is stopping. Either the great collateral grab begins now, or the system finds a way to expand collateral through tokenisation of assets, making illiquid assets liquid so they can serve the debt ponzi. This could kick the can down the road a little longer if they succeed, although at massive cost to ordinary people who will be asset stripped. It’s critical to understand what’s happening in the financial system in order to have a chance to avoid this outcome.

I wonder how friendly that territory would be after being massively bombed in a way that will contiminate a wide area for a very long time. Can you imagine being the construction workers who would have to turn a bombed out and radioactively contaminated area into a functional canal? Israel has wanted to build the Ben Gurion canal through Gaza for a very long time, but I doubt they would want it to be done with nuclear weapons.