Iran

This is, of course, contrary to the impression that Trump has been trying to give in recent days to the effect that the war has been all but settled. On Truth Social two nights ago Trump claimed that the two countries had almost completed negotiations.

I suspect Trump was the only person with “knowledge” of such negotiations, and that the main purpose of his statement was to manipulate the market with a view to pulling down the price of crude and making his buddies rich, as seems to have been the case in previous weeks when softening comments of this kind from the President have ha precisely that effect.

Typical of Trump braggadocio, he has also warned that he is still on “the borderline” with regard to attacks, adding, “If we don’t get the right answers, it goes very quickly. We’re all ready to go.” In short, if the Iranians don’t agree to our demands we will kill them. What a wonderful way to negotiate binding, long-term, good-faith deals!

One reason that Trump gives for his pause in the fighting is because he is honoring the requests of Saudi Arabia and other countries to hold back. This is probably the case, given that Iran has warned that in the event of a resumption of hostilities Iran is prepared to extend the war beyond its current footprint. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE should understand that they are highly vulnerable to yet further attacks on US military facilities and on their own desalination and oil production plants. The first consequence of a renewal of the direct fighting may well be the collapse of Saudi Arabia and Dubai already under conditions of intense heat, as their populations are forced to evacuate to safety.

As I write, the price of Brent crude is around $90 a barrel, significantly better than recent peaks (although we should note that Brent futures are quite a bit higher at around $103, and, more important, that Global oil inventories are sinking fast, enhancing the likelihood of global recession or depression before the end of the year).

Iran said it was open to talks with the US but would never give up its missiles after Washington’s strike threats. Credit: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty

Because we must believe that markets have learned something from recent White House manipulations, the downward trend may be responding to something other than Trump pronouncements, and that “something” may be a belief that Trump is disinclined to attack. Why? Perhaps because even Trump has been persuaded that the US is in an unwinnable situation right now, with insufficient forces in the Gulf, competing pressures on Trump to salvage his reputation over the Gulf by looking mean and tough over a far tinier obstacles to US imperial ambition, Cuba, and intelligence that is telling him that Iran has restocked and upgraded its own weaponry significantly, possibly benefiting, as Larry Johnson’s sources claim, from anti-ship missiles from China and advanced radar technology from Russia. In addition, as indicated above, Trump has to take the anxieties of Iran’s Gulf nations into account, only one of which, Oman, has sustained neutrality, to the point that Iran may consider Oman as a collaborator in the work of the new Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) established to police the Strait of Hormuz. In the meantime, there has been a significant uptick in the number of tankers passing through the Strait on Iranian terms, paying tolls. Over the past two days or 48 hours my sources suggest the number may be as many as around 70 (and bear in mind that a typical pre-crisis number for 24 hours is around 130-150). These are mostly carrying oil for Asian and, in particular, Chinese markets.

Iran’s newly established Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) has formally delineated a maritime zone under its control in the Strait of Hormuz. Transit through the zone for the purpose of passing through the Hormuz strait requires coordination with, and authorization from, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority. The IRGC said yesterday that 26 vessels had sailed through the Strait of Hormuz in the previous 24 hours. The US blockade is still in place and, as conceded earlier today by Professor Marandi in Tehran continues to have a significant impact. According to Drop Site News, U.S. military said Wednesday its naval forces intercepted and searched an Iranian-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman before releasing it and ordering it to “change course.” CENTCOM claims that U.S. forces have so far “redirected 91 commercial ships” as part of the U.S. blockade.

While Trump’s Truth Social claims lack credibility, there has been some movement, for what it is worth, on the question of negotiations. Drop Site News (DSN), drawing on the Nour News Agency, cites Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei as saying that Tehran was reviewing the latest U.S. revised ceasefire proposal, submitted yesterday. According to this source there have been several exchanges of messages.

That Trump continues to speak as though for him the issue of Iran’s nuclear capability is paramount may be a good sign, given that Iran can almost at any moment reiterate its fatwa-backed opposition to nuclear weapons and provide Trump with an easy off-ramp. There is no cost to Iran to avowing, what it has always avowed, which is that it has no nuclear weapons, that it believes that nuclear weapons are morally detestable, that it has no desire for nuclear weapons. So, sure, it can tell Trump that it will never have nuclear weapons, if that is something that Trump really wants to hear. In reality, of course, that is not the issue. The issue is that Israel sees Iran as a threat to Israel’s Zionist ambition for a Greater Israel, Israel wants to cripple Iran and even take some of its territory, and that for reasons that are never clear, Israel, through AIPAC and its broader lobbying infrastructure, has a sinister control over all US administrations and a particularly strong hold, perhaps through blackmail, over the Trump administration and the Republican Party whose major sponsors are also Zionists. Their power was unleashed this week in the defeat of Thomas Massie.

Because the issue of Iran having a nuclear weapon is so egregiously off the mark, given that it does not have a weapon, and given that even some claims that it had a rudimentary nuclear weapon program back in the early 2000s I believe to be Israeli fabrications, Trump has elevated the issue of Iran’s enrichment of uranium - something that had been adequately dealt with in the JCPOA that Trump sabotaged in his first administration, by having Russia safeguard Iran’ stock of enriched uranium - to absurd proportions saying that Iran can have no such stockpile and that if necessary the US will have to invade and steal it (something the US likely tried and failed to do a few weeks back). Reuters claims, not incredibly, that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has issued a directive against sending Iran’s highly enriched uranium abroad, with officials reportedly believing surrender of the stockpile would leave Iran defenseless against future U.S. and Israeli strikes. If that is true it might add substance to US worries that in recent weeks Iran has enriched uranium to the necessary 90% or so that is required to proceed to weaponization of its energy program (something that needs far lower degrees of enrichment) and could within the foreseeable future develop a small number of warheads and attach these to suitable missiles for delivery, a process that some experts have previously said take perhaps up to a year. The significance of even this unlikely scenario is further exaggerated by Iran’s opponents who refuse to talk about the fact that not only do they (US, France, UK) also have nuclear weapons but that so also does Israel, which acquired its nuclear technology by stealing it from the US a few decades, has never signed the non-proliferation treaty (Iran is a signatory) and has now amassed an armory of some 100 to 500 nuclear warheads. said there is “deep suspicion” among Iran’s top officials that the current pause in hostilities is “a tactical deception by Washington to create a sense of security before it renews airstrikes.”

A condition for the end of war on Iranian terms is a cessation of continuing Israeli aggression in Lebanon St least 3,089 people have been killed, and 9,397 wounded in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March 2, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Over 16 people were killed and 35 injured in Israeli attacks across southern Lebanon on Wednesday, according to the Ministry (Drop Site News). Israel targets Hezbollah and Lebanon’s Shia community as well as its Christian community. Hezbollah has begun using fibrer-optic drones that are much more difficult for Israel to take down electronically.

Over the last 24 hours, two Palestinians were killed and 27 were injured across Gaza. Figures presented by Drop Site News today give a total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 of 72,775 killed, with 172,750 injured. Since October 11, the first full day of the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 883 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 2,648, while 776 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Five Palestinians were killed and several others injured in Israeli gunfire and airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, according to WAFA. Additionally, Israeli forces subjected Gaza flotilla detainees to widespread abuse and sparked international outrage from those countries of which the detainees are citizens. All of the activists have been released from the Ktziot detention facility and are currently en route to deportation, according to Adalah.

The US, of course, is persecuting the flotilla’s organizers, while the Inspector general of the State Department probes U.S.-backed Gaza “aid” group over spending. It is investigating the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) over how it spent a $30 million grant. The GHF was created to replace the existing UN-led aid system in Gaza and relied heavily on private contractors. 1,000 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces firing on civilians attempting to reach GHF’s distribution sites. In other news, we learn that only Morocco and the UAE (basically on the way to becoming an Israeli protectorate in the course of the Gaza war) have actually transferred funds to Trump’s outrageous Board of Peace.

The Armenia Complication

The land remains under Armenian legal jurisdiction and sovereignty. Armenian officials are slated to retain legal border control. Under the framework negotiated by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, Armenia plans to grant a 49-to-99-year lease to a U.S.-managed private entity called the “TRIPP Development Company”. This private American consortium will build, secure, and operate the infrastructure on commercial terms.

The project stalled when Trump directed his attention to the war with Iran. The joint Armenian-American company has not yet been fully established, and the final contracts remain unsigned. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan originally aimed to conclude the operational framework in early 2026, with construction using old Soviet rail paths scheduled to begin in late 2026. Broader peace talks have hit a roadblock because Azerbaijan is demanding changes to Armenia’s constitution to permanently renounce any future claims on Nagorno-Karabakh before finalizing transit logistics.

Should the project be successfully resumed, it will have placed a Western footprint directly into a region historically dominated by Moscow and Tehran, creating severe friction. Tehran views the U.S. corridor as a direct geopolitical threat that cuts off its own direct border connection to Armenia. Iran has condemned the project as an encroachment and previously warned of a “harsh response” if it proceeds. Moscow sees the U.S. presence as a maneuver to completely erode Russian influence in the South Caucasus, leading to the aggressive political and economic retaliation currently playing out against the Armenian government.

In addition, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned Yerevan that it cannot maintain economic ties with Russia while pursuing EU membership. In a series of retaliatory measures, Moscow has squeezed trade, including a recent restriction on flower imports from Armenia, while pro-Kremlin actors have targeted the country with a massive, sophisticated video disinformation campaign in advance of upcoming elections whose impact may exacerbate an upheaval in Armenia resulting from the clash between Church and State, arising from the government’s peace concessions to Azerbaijan and its shift away from Russia. The Armenian government launched a major crackdown on opposition and religious figures. High-profile opposition leader Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan - who led fierce street protests demanding Pashinyan’s resignation - was arrested over an alleged coup plot. A bitter public feud has erupted between Prime Minister Pashinyan and the Armenian Apostolic Church. After the Church denounced the government’s “anti-clerical campaign,” Pashinyan publicly accused the head of the Church, Catholicos Karekin II, of fathering a child and backing the alleged coup.

Armenia is also actively trying to mend centuries-old fractures with neighboring Turkey. Turkey recently lifted strict restrictions on direct trade with Armenia as a symbolic step forward. The two countries have also agreed to simplify visa procedures to make travel and economic exchange easier. Direct diplomatic commissions are actively meeting to negotiate the joint use of the shared Akhuryan and Araks rivers’ waters.

Russia-Ukraine

A further source of annoyance for Doctorow is the duration of an era of very high interest rates, a policy pursued by the Russian Central Bank, its ostensible purpose to control inflation. But the high interest rates (around 20%) still greatly exceed the level of actual inflation (10%) and in Doctorow’s perspective are difficult to justify when the trend of inflation is downwards (perhaps to 5% this year) and when the implications for business borrowing are so dire, even as Russian revenue from oil is booming.

One explanation for this, according to some of Russia’s critics, is that Russia has used high interest rates as a means of coercing the Russian economy more towards a war economy, and less of a consumer dominated economy.

That is all very well, one can argue, in the case of a short, sharp war. But in the case of a war that has lasted four years already and in a context of the almost complete absence of any prospect of serious negotiation (that is, that would satisfy Russia, Ukraine, the US, NATO, and Europe - especially Poland, the Baltics etc.), one that can bring this war to an end within the foreseeable future?

That could be a prospect of ruination for Russian small and medium-sized businesses. Which then places even more weight on the importance of credible assessments of Russia's ability to realize its objectives on the battlefield (and some analysts are saying that Russia will take the entire Donbass by the fall of this year), Zelenskiy’s ability to keep this war going even beyond a likely “defeat,” and Russian ability to distance itself from the “Zaraganov solution,” even as every day the trigger points for World War Three increase in number. These now include Finnish excitement about Ukrainian drones that they have persuaded themselves are being directed towards them by Moscow, comparable drone narratives from other European states, Baltic warmongering rhetoric that threatens Kaliningrad, and German rearmament and mobilization for the purposes of war.

On a brighter note, I see that the US has, after all further extended the exemption from sanctions on the purchase of Russian oil, and this could be another signal that the administration is not anticipating a resolution of the Gulf crisis in the immediate future. Europe will quite possibly, despite its own fanatical predilections, feel itself forced in the same direction.

Cuba