Oliver Boyd-Barrett

OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT—The damage to the global economy caused by the closure of Hormuz is hardly limited to oil and gas, but also extends to fertilizer (manufactured from natural gas), shortages of which will decrease food production in coming months and increase food prices and, therefore, hunger, something of concern to Iran too, given that it has faced food and water shortages for quite some time in advance of this war, which is why it is allowing some grain ships through the Strait. Just as the shortage of oil is benefiting Russia, so also is the shortage of fertilizer, as Russia is a preeminent supplier worldwide.

OB-B—The approach of a Russian tanker to Cuba could lead to an escalation of what has been up until now mainly a proxy war between the US and Russia, but even then the oil would take a month to process and refine. I don’t know if the tanker has a military escort.

Cuba cannot wait that long. It is almost without power. In Russia itself, Moscow, Belgorod, and Russian oil refineries are targeted every day by hundreds of Ukrainian drones; Moscow is shutting down the internet almost every day for long periods. Russia’s total territorial advances in Ukraine after four years of fighting remain glacial; last month it lost more territory than it gained. The argument that this is attritional warfare has merit but exactly who is being attrited grows less certain by the day.

OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT—US war expenses are increasing rapidly, reaching $1.8 billion per day according to Max Blumenthal. At this rate it is inevitable that the White House will have to raise more money from Congress. The Republicans have a razor-thin majority in the House, while the minority Democrats in the Senate have the power to filibuster if a vote in favor does not achieve 60. Not only are there questions as to whether the US government will have the necessary support to pursue the war, but it may at some point in the future have to consider whether it is vulnerable, given the entirely unprovoked nature of the war, to demands for reparations.

OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT–The sting power of US missile attacks on Iran, while enormous, destructive and, as when civilians are the target, Gaza-like cruel, is also limited, as we are learning today from an interview between Dan Davis and MIT rocket expert Ted Postol who noticed for the first time as he watched footage Davis showing him of an Iranian missile being launched from the desert that the launch site was covered by a layer of dirt so that prior to launch it had been entirely invisible from the air. This immediately rubbishes claims from the US that it has taken out half of Iran’s missile launchers. The US claim cannot be true because the US surely does not know how many launchers there are in the first place, nor where they are located.

OLIVER BOYD—Europe still yearns for a return of the US to a more full-blooded involvement over Ukraine. Europe so desperately needs the US because its politicians know that to replace US investment in European defense they would have to spend 10% of their GNP on military expenditure. So strange, therefore, that European political Russophobic rhetoric continues in full throttle to persuade itself, in the absence of any evidence, that Russia is about to invade Europe, and is a far more dangerous threat to European security than the US (which, as it happens, is the only country in recent years that has tried to seize European territory – Greenland – if we put to one side Russia’s SMO and corresponding reintegration of eastern Donbass in response to a series of Western existential provocations against Russian security.