As I will explain, the outcome that looks like losing may actually be the best path forward for the world’s remaining economies.
The fighting today is with respect to which parts of the world will get which energy resources, and at what prices. Even before the current conflict, there was a shortage of jet fuel and diesel. The only reasonable outcome I can think of is that the US will only be able to tap its own energy resources, plus those of its nearby neighbors (Figure 1). Consequently, the economy will gradually reorganize in ways that use fuels more sparingly.
The outcome outlined in Figure 1 implies that Donald Trump and the US-Israel coalition will lose the war against Iran. It appears that the physics of the situation (or perhaps the Higher Power behind the physics of the situation) has chosen the flawed personality of Donald Trump to accomplish the required result. This is a situation where what seems to be the US losing in its conflict against Iran is actually winning for the overall world economy. If oil can be used more sparingly in the future by servicing people closer to where end products are made, the available energy resources will provide greater benefit to society as a whole.
In the remainder of this article, I will try to explain the situation more fully.
[1] Background
In physics terms, an economy is a dissipative structure. In order to stay away from a dead state (collapse), it needs to “dissipate” energy of the right kinds. A human is also a dissipative structure. We dissipate food to stay away from a dead state.
From a physics point of view, fossil fuels are as essential to economies as food is to humans. Without fossil fuels, economies tend to collapse and die. With an adequate supply of easily extractable and transportable fossil fuels, economies are able to grow. However, when these fuels become less available due to the exhaustion of nearby resources, or for other reasons, economies are forced to shrink. Rising population can also be a factor because every person in the world needs food and at least minimal transportation. The war is about future standards of living in countries around the world.
An underlying problem is that the world now has too many people for the available resources, such as fresh water. One chart showing data through the end of 2023 indicates that the Middle East is home to 4,863 desalination plants, or about 42% of the world’s total. This region is acutely stressed for fresh water. The Middle East cannot grow much of its own food; it must depend on imports, which are grown and transported using oil.
Previous analyses (here and here) have shown that diesel and jet fuel supplies have been in increasingly short supply since long before the Iran War.
Critical minerals, used in electrification, are also in very short supply. In a finite world, the easy-to-extract minerals are extracted first, leaving the high-cost-to extract minerals for the future.
In today’s fossil fuel economy, oil is the largest component. Oil is usually the highest-priced of the fossil fuels because it is energy-dense and easy to transport and store. If oil supply fails, an economy is likely to collapse. Coal and natural gas are the other fossil fuels. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas that is super-chilled and shipped long-distance by boat. Similarly to oil, its price is under pressure today.
[2] The world’s fossil fuel economy already seems to be at a turning point in its economic cycle.
It is well known that economies exhibit cyclical behavior. Researchers Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov analyzed eight economies that collapsed and published their findings in their book Secular Cycles. They found that populations that discovered new resources were able to grow for a period of time until they came close to the carrying capacity of the resources available. After approaching the carrying capacity, economies reached a period of stagflation, characterized by slower growth, inflation, and spiking prices as shown on Figure 3.
At this point, the fossil fuel system has been growing for over 200 years. It has undergone stagflation since the early 1970s. It is now ready to begin the downswing of the Crisis Years.
Now, the Iran War seems to mark the beginning of a fairly long Crisis Period. The Stagflation Period was expected to last 50 to 60 years. The year 2026 is 56 years after the time US crude oil production stopped growing, so the timing is roughly in line with expectations. However, we don’t know whether the Crisis Period will really last between 20 and 50 years, since the situation is now quite different compared to cycles before fossil fuels were added to the economy. But it does look like the world economy is headed for reorganization based on the limited fuel supply.
[3] In order for an economy to “work,” oil prices need to be both low enough for consumers, buying end products such as food made possible by the use of oil, and high enough for oil producers.
This issue is not one most people think much about. There are really two different oil price levels that are important:
(a) The price level affordable by consumers. If consumers cannot afford food or basic transportation, this quickly becomes a problem that leads to unhappiness with elected officials. This is the reason why elected officials often try to hold down oil prices.
(b) The price that oil producers require in order to make an adequate profit and allow investment in new wells to offset depletion in existing wells. In the case of oil exporters, oil prices may need to be very high to permit high taxes on oil exports to support food subsidies and other government programs.
I believe that a major problem we have reached today is that countries that are primarily oil exporters, such as Russia and countries in the Middle East, need far higher oil prices than consumers are able to pay. Even if the wars in Ukraine and Iran stopped tomorrow, the world would still have this underlying issue.
[4] Since 2014, oil prices have been too low for countries that use taxes on oil exports as a major source of tax revenue.
Figure 4. Oil prices in 2025 US$, with ovals marking three different oil price periods. Oil prices are based on oil data from the 2025 Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute, adjusted by the US CPI Urban increase to 2025 levels. The 2025 average Brent oil price is from EIA data.
Figure 4 shows average world oil prices on an inflation-adjusted basis, to 2025 price levels. As such, prices for earlier dates appear much higher on the graph than past observers would have seen them.
The low oil prices from 1948 until early 1973 were good for economies around the world, including the US. In the early days of oil extraction, oil was easy to extract and close to where it was to be used. The cost of extraction and transport was low. Consumers started seeing many more products become available. Many families in the US could afford a car for the first time. Also, the US was able to support the recovery of European economies from the impact of World War II at a cost that was not excessive.
In recent years, costs have risen. This is especially the case for the price needed by oil exporters. Part of the problem is that the size of the population requiring subsidy keeps growing, while oil production has been close to flat.
A second part of the problem is that economies of oil exporters often have few other sources of taxable revenue. Oil exporters are trying to change this by adding downstream manufacturing that uses the oil and gas they produce. A third part of the problem is that, as population grows, the higher population tends to use more of the available oil supply, leaving less for export.
Figure 6 shows that, in the 2011-2013 period, oil prices seemed to be high enough for most OPEC members (except Iran). Fiscal break-even prices indicate how high oil prices need to be, including the amount of tax revenue needed to balance budgets.
The notation in yellow on Figure 6 shows that the expected fiscal breakeven break-even for the period under analysis for all OPEC members combined was $105. EIA data shows that the average Brent oil prices during this period were $111 in the year 2011, $112 in the year 2012, and $109 in 2013. Thus, prices were high enough for most producers. Iran was an outlier on the high side, with a range for the 2013-2014 period of $110 to $172. (A more recent forecast for Iran shows a 2025 fiscal breakeven price of $124, which remains far above the pre-Iran war oil price.)
Figure 4 shows that oil prices began to fall in 2014. At these lower levels, it became increasingly difficult for oil exporters to obtain enough tax revenue to significantly help their local populations. They started needing to use more debt to fund their local economies. As a result, they gradually became increasingly unhappy. Figure 4 shows that the average price 2025 for Brent oil was only $65.
To make matters worse for oil exporting countries requiring high prices, oil price forecasts by the EIA and IEA for the year 2026 were even lower because of an expected oversupply of oil. Countries with growing oil production included Argentina, Brazil, China, and Guyana. In addition, some counties on the coast of Africa are hoping to add oil production. Unless world demand is growing rapidly, more oil supply tends to lead to lower prices and a worse situation for oil exporters trying to balance their budgets with taxes on exported oil.
[5] Without the war, LNG prices would also have been too low for LNG exporters.
LNG is a “modern” way of shipping natural gas. Only about 13% of natural gas is transported as LNG. It tends to be an expensive method of transport. Recent reports indicate that a huge amount of future LNG supply is planned for the next few years.
Adding a huge amount of LNG would probably cause prices to drop significantly. This would be great from the point of view of consumers, but it would likely leave prices too low for producers. As I see the situation, Middle Eastern producers are likely to need prices in the $15 to $20 range per million metric tons of LNG, while India is not willing to pay more than $10 per unit, and those wanting to replace coal are unwilling to pay more than $5 per unit. Thus, without the war, LNG would have had a similar problem to that of oil, with prices far too low for exporters.
[6] From Iran’s point of view, I see the war as similar to a suicide, when a farmer can no longer support his family.
With Iran’s fiscal breakeven price at $124 per barrel and the pre-war Brent price at only $65, Iran was already in an impossible position. In fact, Iran could see that all of the Middle East infrastructure would be close to worthless, at expected 2026 oil and LNG prices. So why not take it down as well?
If nothing else, a war might help raise prices, at least a bit. Notice that on Figure 4, oil prices bounced up a little from their very low level in 2022, the year when the Ukraine conflict started.
[7] Losing any significant share of energy supply is likely to significantly reduce world GDP.
If the energy supply were to be lost, the world would be dealing with the losing something equivalent to its food supply. If the world economy loses even 10% of its oil and LNG, it is not difficult to imagine world GDP falling by 10%. At this point, we don’t know precisely how much energy supply, of which kind, will be lost, or for how long. The amount lost could be far higher than 10%. Also, the outage could last for years.
There are many issues involved. Supply lines are breaking down forcing businesses to find closer sources for both energy products and products made using cheap local energy products, such as fertilizer and aluminum. The war, as it is taking place today, is leading to major damage to energy-related structures in the Middle East. Destroyed LNG structures are estimated to take at least five years to replace. Damage elsewhere is also immense. Rebuilding the oil infrastructure will also likely take at least five years.
[8] The US understands the importance of Middle Eastern oil and gas. It uses its strong relationship with Israel to further its military presence in the Middle East.
Israel is a very high-level ally. In fact, a 2025 US Department of State Fact Sheet says that the US is committed to helping Israel in the case of an attack:
Steadfast support for Israel’s security has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy for every U.S. Administration since the presidency of Harry S. Truman. . . Israel is the leading global recipient of Title 22 U.S. security assistance under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program. . .Israel has been designated as a U.S. Major Non-NATO Ally under U.S. law. This status provides foreign partners with certain benefits in the areas of defense trade and security cooperation and is a powerful symbol of their close relationship with the United States. Consistent with statutory requirements, it is the policy of the United States to help Israel preserve its QME, or its ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties.
However, if we look to see where US military bases are located, they are not in Israel. Instead, a map shows that the “persistent” US military bases are all located around the Persian Gulf (Figure 8).
These bases were clearly intended to protect oil transiting through the Persian Gulf. At this point, all of the persistent bases have been severely damaged by missiles from Iran.
The major interest of the US has been the availability of oil and natural gas from the Middle East. No one ever considered the idea that low prices might be the force that would bring down Middle Eastern oil and natural gas exports.
Friendship with Israel provides the US a convenient close by ally. It also pleases both Jewish Americans who support Israel and those evangelical Christians who hold a religious view that Israel is needed for the second coming of Christ. Some of the latter may even believe that a war in the Middle East could perhaps hasten this event.
[9] Trump realizes that winning the war against Iran is absolutely essential if the US is to retain global hegemony.
The US has been the holder of the world’s reserve currency since immediately after World War II. It was chosen for this role because it was the most trusted and dominant country in the world. International trade took place almost exclusively in US dollars, creating a high demand for US government debt. This allowed the US to import more goods and services than it exported, year after year. This advantage tended to raise the standard of living of US residents.
At one time, Saudi Arabia insisted that all oil purchases be made in US dollars. This requirement has recently expired, but, as a practical matter, the majority of purchases have continued to be through trades in US dollars.
One of the main ways that the US has maintained its hegemony is by building military bases around the world. With these bases, the US can claim to protect countries against aggressors. However, recent events have shown that Iran is able to take down the radar systems at these bases. Without radar, the bases are virtually useless. If the US is to maintain the illusion that it is truly at the top of the pecking order with its sophisticated weaponry, it must show that, together with Israel, it can prevail against Iran.
A disadvantage of the role of being the chief hegemon is ever-rising US government debt and the need to pay interest on that debt. This growing debt and the interest on the debt has become an increasing burden.
If the US should lose its hegemony role, the advantage the US has had over other countries in trade is likely to disappear. Repaying debt with interest is likely to become an even worse problem. If this should happen, Trump will no longer be able to think about making America great again.
[10] Conclusion
The world is now facing a problem that most people never considered possible: Oil and LNG prices can fall so low that production becomes unprofitable for major oil and LNG exporters. Until now, the trend among world leaders, including President Trump, has been to try to hold prices down for consumers, so that food and fuel for vehicles would remain affordable. However, this has created a problem in that prices have become too low for countries whose primary industry is being an oil exporter.
At this point, the world economy needs to make a major transition in order to deal with the inadequate level of fuels available for long-distance transportation. These same fuels are heavily used for farming and for many for commercial endeavors, such as building homes and roads. It is therefore necessary to find ways to use these fuels more sparingly. One way to achieve this is by reducing the length of most supply lines, as shown on Figure 1. Shorter supply lines will also be needed elsewhere in the world.
It is ironic that the world economy cannot make a change such as this without a war to focus our attention in this direction. Other changes will also be needed. Governments will probably have to become smaller and provide fewer services. Vacation travel will become the exception rather than the rule. “Working from home” will become the norm, whenever possible. I expect that the world’s population will need to fall, albeit in a fairly subtle way. I expect this will mostly be the result of shorter life expectancies.
We are fortunate that economies are self-organizing. If resources are available, even after a major schism such as the loss of the war against Iran, the self-organizing nature of the economic system will try to knit together pieces that can productively provide goods and services. This cannot happen instantly, but this feature means that there are likely to be some jobs and some goods and services available. Past cycles of the type illustrated in Figure 3 have eventually led to new beginnings.
If the US and Israel lose the current war against Iran, I expect President Trump to be blamed for this loss. However, I believe that this outcome would be best for the world as a whole.
Are we running out ? A chart .
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-04-04_09-56-33.png?itok=E_5QIjX6
Sorry , forgot this .
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-04-04_09-56-33.png?itok=E_5QIjX6
Thanks.
Nicely depicting how the [ lean storage ] infrastructure deployment backfired in [ SouthKorea and Taiwan ] vs mainland CHN and Japan, ..
In other words one of the key aspects in their price competition strategy not to invest in these “dead assets” ( assuming global supply chain ~BAU for ever ).
Nice chart. Too bad Australia and New Zealand were not included.
The US seems to have good oil supplies, compared to other countries shown.
I am bored with the argument by the US ” we have enough oil ” . When will the “barnyard animals ” ( FE) understand that this is a poly (meta ) crisis . This is not your shoelace tie this is the Gordian Knot . Zip at C§E nailed it .
” The Gordian Knot
There is a knot lying on the table. Not a piece of string you can casually untangle, but a tangle without beginning or end. Whoever pulls on it finds that everything moves with it. Whoever waits sees it tighten.
We call it, for convenience, an energy crisis. The price of Brent surges, tankers stall, refineries are hit. But that is only the visible thread. Pull on it and others follow: diesel, jet fuel, sulfur, fertilizer, food. What begins as a disruption in the Strait of Hormuz ends on a farm in Australia where sowing is postponed because there is no fuel.
This is not a chain of cause and effect. It is a web.
Within that web, physical and financial systems become entangled. Higher energy prices suppress production, lower production undermines growth, and without growth, debt becomes heavier. Markets respond, but not in a corrective way. They amplify the tension. Sovereign bonds come under pressure, credit tightens, funds close their gates. What was liquidity yesterday becomes illiquidity today. Price is no longer the signal. Availability becomes the boundary.
At the same time, geopolitics shifts. Alliances waver, military spending surges, countries seek autonomy in weapons, energy, and resources. Trust gives way to precaution. Trade routes become strategic risks. Payment systems become potential weapons. What was once an integrated system begins to fragment into blocs, zones, and competing interests.
And at the bottom of the system, reality appears without filter. Shorter working hours to save energy. Rationing. Panic, violence, criminalization. Not as exceptions, but as logical consequences of scarcity that can no longer be mediated by price. Where nothing is left to distribute, the mechanism of distribution itself disappears.
All of this is still often described in terms of correction and adjustment. As if the system learns. As if shocks lead to a new equilibrium. But that assumes a stable foundation. A table that remains steady while objects on it shift.
That table is now moving.
The idea of antifragility—systems that grow stronger through stress—holds only within limits. Within a toolbox, within a controlled context. Beyond that, feedback ceases to be corrective and becomes entangling. Loops intersect, no longer reinforcing but obstructing one another. What remains is not dynamic equilibrium, but a Gordian knot.
The myth tells us that Alexander the Great solved the problem by cutting through it. This is often seen as decisiveness. But it is something else: a departure from the logic in which the problem existed. The knot was not untangled, but terminated.
Today, similar moments are being sought. Military, economic, political. Decisions that attempt to reduce complexity by bypassing it. But what disappears then is not only the knot, but the network that held it together. The threads remain, but no longer connected.
What emerges is not reordering, but fragmentation. Not a world rearranging itself into a new whole, but a world breaking into parts that no longer move in sync. Energy here, finance there, stability somewhere else. Without any guarantee they will converge again.
The Gordian knot is not a problem awaiting a solution. It is a condition that arises when systems become too tightly intertwined. Whoever tries to untangle it pulls it tighter. Whoever cuts it changes the world in which it existed.
And meanwhile, it lies there. Not as a riddle, but as reality.”
I agree fools like Art Berman will propagate this meme. Remember when trump was elected Art was invited so now you know
Gail , Patrick Raymond on your article .
https://lachute.over-blog.com/2026/04/perdre-la-guerre.html
I read somewhere that the nitrite fertilizer production was reduced 30%-40%.
I have to say that world population will be reduced by a billion, possibly 2, by next Easter.
I have read extensively about the Irish famine. I even commented it in my seldom read blog which I have not updated for years.
https://kulmthestatusquo.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/the-1846-irish-famine-helped-civilization/
Here is the original article for those who do not want to visit my blog.
https://crookedtimber.org/2012/12/13/the-economist-and-the-irish-famine/
The cold truth is the people who were prosperous to live in Dublin felt hardly a thing.
The landowners, even if they were celtic, felt nothing about the starving. Such was the norms of the day. Something which was repeated in Bengal in 1943; in a Satyajit movie made about the famine, the protagonist, a poor teacher who is still a Brahmin, does not die. His family does not die. Most of the dying occurs off screen among people the teacher does not bother to see. The teacher does not have it easy but he still keeps his family alive while most others did not.
Distant Thunder, the best movie about the irish famine while featuring no Irish at all.
https://youtu.be/IvkE0qi0OUw?si=dFNQggKdZ1Jk_Z0v
Those who survived the famine were among the better to do in Ireland and they do not really feel anything about the famine, and few of them were aware of it when irish Americans began to invest in Ireland after WW2. Even now the Irish academics who have no ties to USA are not too critical about the famine. They have plenty of friends in UK whom they do not want to offend.
Something like that is going to take effect this autumn. It is already baked in. Even if every fanatic in Iran drops dead tomorrow and the conflict ends, the screw has already turned.
However most misery will occur in regions people in the core will never visit. So the Core will not even be aware of it.
The analogy will be simple. Those who can afford $10/gallon gasoline will live. Those who can’t won’t live. it is that simple.
Most of these percentages we read regarding reductions are relative to “amounts transported by sea.”
I figured out that with respect to natural gas, that amounts to only 13% of the total, transported as LNG, but I didn’t have a place to include it in the article.
I am also guessing that only part of nitrogen fertilizer, say half, is shipped by sea. The US makes a lot of its own nitrogen fertilizer. So does China and probably Russia. I would not expect any of these to be reflected in the calculation. So, I think the nitrogen fertilizer problem is probably smaller than people are assuming. There has also been a problem with farmers using more nitrogen fertilizer than really is needed. This effect needs to be considered, as well.
I had in the last post linked a podcast of Steve Keen + Micheal Hudson . Steve said 20% of the world’s population gone by 2027 because of the urea problem . My contribution where — Indian Subcontinent + Africa + MENA , yes add small islands example Madagascar , Fiji , etc . Sad , very sad .
There are two potential oil routes from the Middle East. One route is through the Persian Gulf; the other is through the Red Sea. In fact, Saudi Arabia is already exporting more through the Red Sea. There is a huge problem of too much population relative to resources through this whole area. Current civil wars in many countries is a sign of overshoot. After the part I quote, this article goes on to talk about civil wars in Ethiopia. But there are also the Houthis in Yemen, which this article doesn’t even mention.
From Zerohedge:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/has-concern-over-hormuz-made-us-forget-red-sea
Wartime concerns about the security of maritime energy traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—connecting the Indian Ocean/Gulf of Oman with the Persian Gulf—have overshadowed the fact that the related issue of Red Sea security is far from resolved and is, in fact, becoming more dynamic.
The Red Sea–Suez link between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean is of equal strategic importance to global trade as the Hormuz choke point and is, through geography and common players, intrinsically linked with the Persian Gulf conflict.
But it is Ethiopia’s civil war, brewing with different factions and with varying intensity since the coup against Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1974, which is again moving in ways that could prove decisive.
Always, in the background, is the reality that Ethiopia could revive its historical influence over the Red Sea–Suez sea line of communication (SLOC).
Those who say pipelines can replace the sea routes should go and visit someone who is getting a dialysis.
Dialysis is only 15-20% effective. It is just enough to make the patient alive; someone who can’t get a transplant and is stuck on dialysis machines twice a week doesn’t have a fun life.
Plus these pipelines will be vulnerable to attacks from people like the Houthi.
Some people just talk without thinking.
it was the colossal surplus of oil that put the excess population in the middle east
it will be the depletion of that all that removes it
Reindeer at St. Matthew Island
yup
same thing—different species thats all
But we have options…sure we do..there was a 40 country brain storming meeting…
When senior officials from 40 countries met virtually this week to discuss how to bring shipping traffic back to the Strait of Hormuz, Italy’s foreign minister had a proposal. He urged them to establish a “humanitarian corridor” allowing safe passage for fertilizer and other crucial goods headed to impoverished nations.
The plan, described after the meeting by Italian officials, was one of several competing proposals from Europe and beyond that were meant to prevent the Iran war from causing widespread hunger. But it was not endorsed by the envoys on the call, and the meeting ended with no concrete plan to reopen the strait, militarily or otherwise.
European leaders are under pressure from President Trump to commit military assets, immediately, to end Iran’s blockage of the strait and tame a growing global energy and economic crisis. They have refused to meet his demands by sending warships now. Instead, they are hotly debating what to do to help unclog the vital shipping lane once the war ends.
But they are struggling to rally around a plan of action.
That partly reflects the slow gears of diplomacy in Europe and the sheer number of nations, including Persian Gulf states, that are invested in safeguarding the strait once the war ends
New York Times…
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/04/world/europe/strait-hormuz-shipping-iran.html
Looking in the rear view mirror, I’m afraid today, bye, bye surplus useless excess eaters of the world per our Kulmmie
Yummie, yummie,yummie I got 💕 in my tummie
Haha.. wishful thinking
CTG , agree .
” there was a 40 country brain storming meeting…”
The problem is that they left their brains at home . 🤣
Correct me, if I’m wrong, but didn’t you mention earlier, to be the same genetic “Slovakian”, similarly to MG? That would explain it all…
He probably meant / mentioned earlier M. Sefcovic (SVK) who is EU’s Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security.. and Ursula supposedly having crush on him lolz, ..
the humanitarian corridor is a non starter. Not everyone is Putin, allowing Ukraine exports declared as help to the 3rd world go to Europe instead (for a year I think). Hey, if the price of fertilizer goes up enough, poop trucks in Dubai could become an exportable asset. I am sure the Iranians would let *that* through.
” Hey, if the price of fertilizer goes up enough, poop trucks in Dubai could become an exportable asset. ”
drb , agree today , but would not yesterday . Poop would be available to a la infinite from India ( 1400 million ) , however because of the LPG crisis now they must use it for the domestic market . Good idea ” “In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.” — Albert Einstein . Who am I to argue ? 🤣
Some people think the Don has gone gaga, or is suffering from some form of cognitive impairment, or is not playing with a full deck. And for all we know, there may well be something to such assessments. But all that is by the by. IF he is not actually in control of his administration but is merely a front man following a script while others call the shots, OR alternatively, IF he does have a degree of control but is working to a well-mapped-out-in-advance Machiavellian game plan that straight folks and normies would have trouble wrapping their heads around, THEN questions about senility or competence may the wrong questions.
Craig Murray—and they don’t come straighter than Craig—has written about this in his latest Substack post:
Seeing Trump Clearly
The Calculated Plan Behind the Iran War, Venezuela, and Greater Israel
What if Trump’s apparently chaotic thought processes and intuitive decision making are all a blind, a charade? What if we are really witnessing, in the Middle East and more widely, a carefully constructed plan with very definite objectives? Has Trump in fact “planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway”, while flinging the chaff of apparent chaos? I realise that this is not intuitive, but bear with me…
What kicked off my thinking was the revelation by Lockheed Martin that they had been instructed by Trump, months in advance of the attack on Iran, to massively increase production of interceptor missiles, with a short term goal of quadrupling capacity of THAAD. In January, before the start of the current conflict, Fox News was already reporting on various deals, including a trebling of PAC3 MSE interceptor deliveries, having been finalised between Lockheed and the Department of War.
While obviously there are supply chain and production line constraints on the ability to ramp up production within months, the urgency of this activity—almost entirely focused on interceptor missiles—that started in 2025 is in hindsight a clear indication that early war with Iran was expected. It is plain evidence of premeditation.
The second thing that triggered my thought that this is all carefully planned, is the nature of the breakdown of the nuclear deal talks. It appears there was a broad consensus that Iran offered concessions which made a deal very practical, in particular giving up its stocks of enriched uranium into trust (a proposal Iran had historically rejected when Putin offered to hold the material). Both the hosts, Oman and the British thought a deal was there.
The failure of the talks is being spun as due to the incompetence and lack of technical knowledge of Witkoff and Kushner. But I just don’t buy this. The sending of unqualified negotiators was part of a ploy to use the negotiations as cover for an attack—the second time in a year that the United States had pulled the same trick.
They didn’t need competent negotiators, because they had never intended a good faith negotiation.
The attack on Iran was always planned by Trump. He was not “bounced into it” by Israel. It had been in gestation for months. That fact had been held within a very tight circle to avoid both political opposition and institutional opposition from the US military and intelligence community……
https://savageminds.substack.com/p/seeing-trump-clearly
I would agree with the Saveageminds author.
We have been hearing about a planned attack on Iran for a long time. The US was looking for an excuse to attack, just as it was looking for an excuse to attack in Ukraine. Perhaps the situation was so desperate that the people advising Trump felt that attacking Iran needed to be tried. The US was desperate to keep its hegemony. This is an approach that might work.
For example, this is a comment I made in January 2026, responding to a post if Quark’s, which I had translated from Spanish to English. Quark’s post talked about Trump’s plan to increase the Defense Budget to $1.5 billion dollars.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2025/12/31/2026-expect-a-very-uneven-world-economic-downturn/comment-page-5/#comment-499182
[Quark:] Trump’s recent comment regarding the increase in defense budgets by 50% , to reach 1.5 trillion dollars, seems to reflect the intentions for the coming years to establish world control, via the Pentagon.”
I suppose that could be in the back of Trump’s mind, and in the back of the minds of the oligarchs pulling the strings, but I think it is a far more ambitious plan than is doable. The US doesn’t have the resources. It has already backed down on its Iran efforts, I understand.
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/us-withdrawing-some-personnel-qatar-air-base-over-iran-threat
Quark points out that most of Venezuela’s oil exports now go to China, and Trump would like them all for the US. That sounds quite likely.
He also points out that most of Iran’s oil exports now go to China, but as I say, I am doubtful on the US’s ability to steer Iran’s exports to the US. I suppose Trump can try.
Quark also says:
The US wants to control the oil market, not only because of its importance, but also to strengthen the petrodollar .
That is probably true, but I was of the impression that the petrodollar situation is already beyond saving. The US has made so many enemies with its sanctions that countries are very much interested in leaving the US dollar. Also, the long term agreement that the US had with Saudi Arabia has now run out. It is my understanding that as of January 1, 2026, Saudi Arabia is now accepting other currencies than the US dollar.
Unless China agrees to the deal (which means basically giving up Taiwan allowing Chinese suzerainty in Southeast Asia and probably Australia) petrodollar is not sustainable
The author is a former Uk ambassador to Uzbekistan, meaning he has some govt connection, and still clings to the old ideas.
Toujours préférer l’hypothèse de la connerie à celle du complot. La connerie est courante. Le complot exige un esprit rare. (Michel Rocard)
Translation:
Always prefer the hypothesis of stupidity to that of conspiracy. Stupidity is common. Conspiracy requires a rare mind.
I would agree! A recent link was this one:
https://no01.substack.com/p/so-much-winning
The very first item in this Substack article is about a War Game:
In 2002, the Pentagon spent $250 million on the largest wargame in US military history called ‘Millennium Challenge’. 13,500 participants, 2 years of planning, the works. The idea was pretty straightforward: simulate an invasion of a Middle Eastern country in the Persian Gulf. Suspiciously resembling Iran. The purpose was to demonstrate that America’s technological dominance could steamroll anything in its path.
They picked a retired 3-star Marine named Paul Van Riper to play the enemy.
Van Riper, who spent 41 years in uniform from Vietnam to Desert Storm, took one look at the scenario and did what any self-respecting adversary would do. He ignored it completely. Instead of radios, he used motorcycle couriers. Attack orders were hidden in the daily call to prayer. Swarms of explosive-laden speedboats were sent through the Strait of Hormuz.
And in less than 10 minutes, he sank 16 US warships. An aircraft carrier, 10 cruisers, and 5 amphibious ships. Over 20,000 simulated American casualties. The equivalent of Pearl Harbor, executed with small boats and cruise missiles by a retired Marine with a phone and a bad attitude.
So the Pentagon did what any self-respecting institution does when reality disagreed with the plan.
The ships were un-sank. Van Riper’s forces had to turn on their anti-aircraft radar so it could be easily targeted and destroyed. They even told him he wasn’t allowed to shoot down the incoming 82nd Airborne. The whole rest of the exercise was scripted to guarantee an American victory.
Van Riper walked out in disgust. His parting words: “Nothing was learned from this. A culture not willing to think hard and test itself does not augur well for the future”.
Murray, like a good Scottish apparatchik for the British Empire, still believes that USA (and by corollary UK) will win in the end.
Of course it is planned. However whoever did the planning underestimated the persian strength and overestimated the US Israel alliance strength.
>Given another year of destruction at the current levels of intensity, I do not believe that Iran would effectively be sending many missiles and drones back in self-defence. In a week or two we will hit the period of maximum Iranian effectiveness, where depletion of US-supplied interceptor missiles coincides with Iran retaining significant strike power. Israel’s fragile civilian morale will then be tested severely for a few weeks.
>Iran’s capacity to defend against massive, years-sustained aerial bombardment is limited. We should not blind ourselves to that fact out of current joy at the Americans and Israelis getting a bloody nose.
Again Murray thinks this is a repeat of the World Wars, when USA bailed out the misadventures of United Kingdom. Who will bail out USA and Israel ? China?
Granted it was well planted. But not as perfectly as planned since they never really spent too much time about researching how the persians would react, and forgetting that UK and USSR tried to divide persia during WW2 and so Iran’s leaders did not trust Russia.
Interesting angle..
There are many sites on this topic, this one is ~less propagandized than by usual globo-standards. They claim Soviets were promised oil concession in northern Iran proper ( not just -stans northerly swallowed by USSR earlier ), which was after WWII not followed up through..
https://www.gw2ru.com/history/87809-stalin-tried-to-annex-iran
as per search: ” iran oil ussr 1946 ”
PS perhaps interesting in the unspoken underlying sense all key parties worrying eventually NOT having of these OILz enough..
According to Iranian media, the US and Israel have attacked several large petrochemical sites in the Khuzestan province near the border with Iraq.
The area between Mahshahr and Bandar Imam Khomeini are home to some of the Iranian largest petrochemical complexes.
$ 200 oil is coming up .
https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/2040372287849865356
One of the commenters on this thread says:
Khuzestan isn’t just oil. It’s the industrial core of Iran’s entire petrochemical export capacity. Hitting Mahshahr and Bandar Imam Khomeini isn’t a warning shot – it’s a structural decision. The difference between disrupting supply and dismantling the infrastructure that produces it is the difference between a temporary shock and a multi-year reconstruction problem. Oil markets haven’t priced the second scenario yet.
Another commenter says:
Khuzestan isn’t a random target. Mahshahr and Bandar Imam Khomeini are where Iran’s petrochemical export capacity lives.
You don’t hit those sites to slow oil flow — Hormuz already does that.
You hit them to remove Iran’s ability to rebuild revenue after a ceasefire.
This is about the postwar economy, not just the current one.
Of course, if it is not possible to get a high enough price for selling these products, the whole system would be non-economic. That seems to be an underlying issue.
David with many names will be happy that he is vindicated