Summary

[Today’s Iran war post fired early. Please return at 8:00 AM EDT or refresh this page then for a final version] Even though the Iran conflict is not in a very hot kinetic phase, the accumulating pressures, both military and economic, have built to a point where they are generating desperate-looking from the Trump Administration. And that is before considering that Ukraine is now in visibly desperate straits. Russia now has air supremacy. Ukraine has effectively zero air defenses left. Russia has blockaded Odessa, which handled nearly 90% of Ukraine’s grain and oilseed exports, and is also essential to steel exports, weapons supplies, and other commerce. Nearby ports can’t adequately compensate, even before getting to Russian action. Barges are no workout either, particularly given low water levels in many channels now. Russia is also attacking Ukraine’s logistics centers after Ukraine engaged in the cute stunt of striking Wildberries warehouses (Russia’s Amazon analogue). If Russia were to be so kind as to reduce the severity of a humanitarian crisis over the winter, it would behoove them to make living conditions so lousy now as to get civilians to depart before serious cold set in. That might also usefully generate “Who lost Ukraine” debates in the runup to the US midterms. Back to the main event. It’s entirely possible that the uncharacteristic absence of Trump threats to reduce to rubble is a deception before his oft-threatened attack. Before, Trump had the cover of negotiations for his chicanery. But his team may hope that going quiet might do in getting Iran to relax its military vigilance. We’ll turn to how Trump is being checked on multiple Iran matters at once, and then turn to the question of why oil (as opposed to refined product) supplies don’t seem to be as tight as many experts posited. The short answer to that is the data on private inventories ex the US is terrible and so they may have been higher than believed. If the Wall Street Journal is to be believed, Trump is even more eager to find a way out of the Iran war than when he signed the Memorandum of Understanding on June 17. But his appreciation of how badly cooked the US goose is seems to be wanting. Again, it is not clear that the current halt in US attacks is a new normal, even in the face of the new lead Wall Street Journal story, Trump Thought Opening the Strait of Hormuz Was Imminent. Iran Had Other Plans. At the top, it breaks that Trump’s had had a climbdown scheme, that of course Iran would simply “open” the Strait if the US stopped the war and tooks its toys home (not unpacked further but one assumes at best only recently mobilized forces would decamp). It depicts Trump as recognizing that Iran has upped its demands, meaning no face-saving exit is possible. The article effectively says that Trump will now fall back on economic warfare and can be “patient”. That means US still expects Iran to break economically soon/ Even though the US will suffer less, its pain tolerance is low and war-inflicted economic costs are rising. The significance of Iran withstanding 47 years of fierce efforts against the revolutionary government still has not sunk in. From the Wall Street Journal story: For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said. But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things… “Iran’s recent hardline demands for reopening the strait make it increasingly difficult for the president to manufacture a face-saving off-ramp from the conflict,” said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank… Now, with less than three months until the midterm elections and the price of gasoline still much higher than it was before the war started in late February, Trump has been looking for ways to tell the American public that the war is won… The prospects of a deal appeared to darken over the weekend when the United Arab Emirates said Iran launched a missile attack on one of its ships and a top Iranian official laid out a series of tough demands for allowing traffic through. Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said the U.S. would need to permanently end the war, lift its naval blockade, withdraw its forces, end all sanctions, free Iran’s frozen assets, pay war reparations, end threats and insults, and stop military action against Iran’s militia allies around the region before Iran would open the strait, according to a report on state news agency IRNA. U.S. officials said Trump is patient and expected to ride out the latest diplomatic snarl, especially so long as gas prices remain where they are… On the nuclear concerns, Trump has told senior aides privately in recent weeks that Tehran is likely unable to revive its nuclear work during his presidency after the U.S. destroyed three primary nuclear sites last year, the officials added. U.S. intelligence capabilities would likely catch any Iranian attempts to rebuild those facilities or covertly build a bomb, the president has said in recent meetings, and he is confident the threat of more American attacks would serve as an enduring deterrent.” Yves here. It must be comforting to so believe your own PR. Continuing: Trump’s recent comments indicate he is looking for an exit. The U.S. blockade on Iranian ports meant the Strait of Hormuz was “sort of open right now,” Trump told reporters on Thursday, though the president acknowledged Tehran could still damage ships with missiles, drones and mines. He also has suggested Iran’s buried uranium stockpile was a nonissue. Barak Ravid of Axios, the Administration’s favorite messenger boy, weighed even more heavily on the US relying on economic pressure to bring Iran to heel. From Trump to Axios: “We are low-keying it” with Iran: What he’s saying: “We are low-keying it,” Trump said during a brief phone call. - “We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.” - He stressed that Iran “is in very bad shape” economically and has no money to pay its troops. The U.S. naval blockade has exacerbated the Iranian regime’s economic crisis, Trump said. - At the same time, Trump said that with oil down to slightly over $75 a barrel, U.S. consumers are feeling less pain from the war. - “It will work out. It always works out. It’s like a chess game,” Trump said of the back-and-forth with Iran. Admittedly, we don’t have a good picture of what conditions are like in Iran. However, Professor Steve Hanke (who has advised the UAE on oil policy) has more than once said on Mario Nawfal that Iran is not in terrible shape. He treats per capital GDP, measured on a PPP basis, as the single best measure of how ordinary people are doing. Hanke specifically has brushed off the issue of the falling currency and sustained high inflation, that they do not obviate the PPP GDP per capita findings. From 2008 to present, Iran is tied with the Saudis for growth in PPP GDP pre capita. Kuwait has contracted. UAE has contracted a teeny bit. In addition, Nima of Dialogue Works, who visited Tehran for the first time in 14 years during the war, found it to be more prosperous than when he had last been there. Iran has been forced to become substantially an autarky. So it is no doubt very exposed to the impact of sanctions for critical impart like medications. Traders who sell imported goods like phones are also no doubt in a world of hurt. But the severe pain may not be economy-wide, as the US is wont to believe. Even Fox News is registering that the Iran war situation is developing not necessarily to Trump’s advantage: We’ll turn the mike over to Larry Johnson for a shredding. From Is Donald Trump Serious About Declaring Victory Over Iran?: Trump reportedly has floated to senior aides that if the US can keep Iran’s nuclear program in check and traffic resumes through the Strait of Hormuz, he would be willing to extend the ceasefire “indefinitely” and effectively declare the conflict over…. If Trump’s decision to declare victory and end the war hinges on Iran, “fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping,” then prospects for a deal are slim. Iran will only agree to allowing ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz in accordance with the Persian Gulf Strait Authority guidelines it issued on April 22nd. In early May, the Supreme National Security Council and other Iranian bodies publicly confirmed the PGSA’s formation and role. It began administering a permit-based system requiring vessels to submit a detailed “Vessel Information Declaration” (covering ownership, insurance, crew, cargo, etc.) before receiving clearance. Fees for “specialized services” were part of the planned mechanism. Iran is not going to backdown on this point…. I think that there is growing concern within the Trump administration about the potential for a global economic crisis if the Persian Gulf remains shuttered, especially if this continues as is into September. And this is likely the main factor pushing Trump to do a repeat of the end of Operation Rough Rider… i.e., Declare victory and leave. Confirming that Iran is not backing down, a recent reshuffle at Iran’s National Supreme Security Council looks to have put hardliners in a stronger positions. Fro IRNA in Leader appoints Mohsen Rezaei as his envoy to Iran’s top security body: Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Sayyid Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei has appointed former Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) commander Mohsen Rezaei as his representative to the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC)…. Rezaei, who commanded the IRGC from 1981 to 1997, currently serves as a member of the Expediency Discernment Council and Secretary of the Supreme Council for Economic Coordination. The decree also extended gratitude to Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr for his “round-the-clock efforts” in the role, thanking the outgoing representative for his service. On role of secretary in Iran’s Supreme National Security Council: The Administration is more visibly flailing about in its sudden demand that military contractors figure out how to magic weapons into existence much faster. From the Washington Post in Pentagon presses defense firms to build weapons as Iran war depletes stocks: The Pentagon is asking the U.S. defense industry to rapidly escalate the production and delivery of weapons, including munitions that are in extreme shortage due to the war with Iran, according to a Defense Department memo obtained by The Washington Post. Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg wrote to industry leaders on Wednesday, saying they had no more than 21 days to submit plans to “drive significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities,” according to the memo, which is previously unreported. Anyone who knows anything about outsourcing, and Feinberg from his role as the head of Cerberus should, will recognize this demand as impossible. Defense contractors rely on subcontractors and outsourced operations. One brother works in outsourcing. It takes about 18 months to scope, negotiate, and paper up a contract. There is no way the prime contractors can ride roughshod over their suppliers. It would easily take a year just to re-negotiate contract terms to provide for greatly expedited production, even assuming that was operationally possible. And that is before getting to the fact that as Larry Johnson and others have been chronicling, that China has set out to choke US supplies of materials essential to the arms industry. And this is old news. There are stories dating from April 2025 in the South China Morning Post (China’s critical minerals dominance threatens US military supply chain, report says), along with an August 2025 Wall Street Journal account (China Is Choking Supply of Critical Minerals to Western Defense Companies) and June 2026 from the National Association of Manufacturers and others on new bans (China Imposes Export Controls on U.S. Minerals, Defense Firms). In light of merely those elephants in the room, this section of the article is even more entertaining: In the meeting — which included firms such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, autonomous weapons firm Anduril and data analytics company Palantir — company executives were asked to directly lobby lawmakers to increase defense spending through congressional reconciliation, the people said. Fox News earlier reported this meeting. The Pentagon has in recent months announced several “framework agreements” with the largest U.S. defense contractors and emerging start-ups to increase its supply of both low-cost munitions and sophisticated air defense weapons, like the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Patriot missile interceptors. These framework arrangements are legal, nonbinding contracts between the U.S. government and private sector partners that signal the Defense Department’s intent to purchase weapons but rely on congressional funding to become final, industry experts said. “They are agreements to agree, and so they’re not contracts,” said Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the think-tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “Almost nothing has been contracted, and that’s the problem.” So shorter: given the realities of contracting even with top-tier weapons firms, Feinberg is pushing on a string. But of course, it’s Congress’ fault: But moving forward with the Pentagon’s framework agreements to purchase weaponry, crucial to Defense Department strategy to expedite acquisition, depend on congressional passage of a $1.15 trillion defense spending bill, which remains deadlocked as Democrats object to massive spending increases. “That’s the dilemma, that’s the danger,” Karako said. “This really, really critical thing is in jeopardy because of congressional inability to appropriate.” Briefly, to the next front where Trump is stymied. From the Guardian in Netanyahu rejects US-led 15-point Gaza peace plan in rare public break with Trump: Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a US-backed 15-point peace plan for Gaza in a rare public break with Donald Trump… On Gaza, he said: “Israel does not accept the 15-point document. The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed. And when I say the disarming of Hamas, it means heavy weaponry, lighter weaponry, all weaponry. And we are talking about genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament. Right now, we are talking with the Americans about this issue.” Trump’s Board of Peace in July proposed the 15-point plan, which mandated that Hamas disarm in exchange for providing a full Israeli military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and an eventual transition of power to an independent Palestinian National Committee…. The Israeli leader’s main target in his remarks was the US… Israel had already signalled that it would reject the US-led plan. Soon after Trump announced it last month, Israel stepped up its bombing campaign in the Palestinian territory – strikes killed 18 people last Sunday. Netanyahu’s office had previously indicated it would not back the plan, saying: “The version that has been made public does not reflect Israel’s positions.” But Sunday’s rejection was far more forceful and direct, and appeared targeted at the Trump White House, as Trump and Netanyahu both face difficult elections. “Unlike all those who lecture us, we do what needs to be done for Israel’s security, and we can and know how to stand our ground, even against our best friends when necessary,” Netanyahu said. Some hot takes: Netanyahu’s rejection of the Board of Peace roadmap is more than a blow to the Gaza ceasefire—it is a direct challenge to Trump. After Palestinians and mediators made major concessions, including on disarmament, Israel is seeking to rewrite the deal. The question now: Will Trump… pic.twitter.com/4d6Za2J9Be — Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) August 9, 2026 It’s now official: Hamas agreed to disarm. Israel refused to withdraw. The hostages were an excuse. Hamas was an excuse. Genocide is the goal. https://t.co/xNLwlC8Otz — Shaiel Ben-Ephraim (@academic_la) August 9, 2026 Even though kinetic action is subdued compared to the hot phases of the war, it is not as if all is quiet. Iran is still striking tankers, First, an overview from NO1: Tanker struck inside the US-escorted Omani lane — HIGH (4 sources) - Iran launched multiple anti-ship cruise missiles from Sirik, hitting a tanker off Oman in the US-backed southern corridor; vessel on fire (HormuzLetter). - Footage of a commercial vessel engulfed off Kumzar, likely IRGC, transiting under US escort (MoloWarMonitor). - A second vessel, “ASHLEY,” apparently from the same convoy transited with AIS off; Iran also intercepted an unidentified drone at Sirik (MenchOsint). And: ⭕️🚢 DEVELOPING: Footage circulating online appears to show a vessel burning off Oman’s Musandam Peninsula near the Strait of Hormuz, following unconfirmed reports that another tanker was struck by a cruise missile. ➤ Open-source researcher and regional observer @bonzerbarry… https://t.co/WUwOSSLMoN pic.twitter.com/NBROShq3nD — Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 9, 2026 Ansar Allah again struck Jazan: Saudi says fire at Aramco refinery in Jazan was extinguished, that said this is clearly not a sign of de-escaltion > Houthis Say They Attacked Saudi Aramco Refinery in Jazan Yemen’s Houthis say they struck a Saudi Aramco refinery in Jazan with a drone, the group’s… — Tracy Shuchart (𝒞𝒽𝒾 ) (@chigrl) August 9, 2026 And: Iran-backed Houthis defy Mecca defense pact Hours ago, reports emerged of an attack on Jubail. That information has since been corrected: the actual strike took place at Mukha Port and targeted Saudi-backed forces. Around the same time, the Saudi Ministry of Energy reported… pic.twitter.com/kRZt4KEkON — Patricia Marins (@pati_marins64) August 9, 2026 Aljazeera’s live feed reported that as of 5 hours ago (6:00 GMT), Ansar Allah was making yet fresh attacks on Saudi ports, in an entry titled WATCH: Houthis launch missile and drone attacks on al-Makha port. On the economic front, experts are pondering why that oil cliff has not yet arrived. From the Wall Street Journal in Oil Analysts Stumped by the Case of the Missing Barrels: Back in March, analysts warned that the greatest energy crisis ever would send oil to the triple digits. Prices barely spent any time there. Five months later, benchmark Brent crude is around $83 a barrel. Part of the explanation is that, instead of a fifth of global supply being shut off, the Strait of Hormuz sprang lots of leaks… Even adding a fudge factor to all that, though, there’s a huge gap in the math… The simplest explanation is that, squeezed by higher prices, demand slumped. But that’s far-fetched according to Bob Elliott, a veteran macro hedge-fund investor who’s now chief investment officer at Unlimited Funds. Taking inventory drawdowns at face value, he figures it would mean about a 1 billion barrel drop in demand, a 6% reduction. That would be twice what was seen during the global financial crisis and close to the decline in demand when Covid-19 stopped the world in its tracks. Yet flight data and car traffic are normal. More likely is that we really didn’t know how much oil and refined product there was stored around the world at the outset. Unlike the U.S., which gives a detailed breakdown weekly of private and government stockpiles, much of the developing world is tougher to gauge. But one thing’s for sure—you can’t use the same oil twice. That means warnings back in March that the world was being complacent may have just been early. Another explanation is that more oil has been snuck out on the Oman side than picked up by the usual suspects. Oil maven concedes that that may be true up to a point but recent claims look exaggerated (as in directed to investors so as to keep paper oil prices down): Interesting US official claim re: 8 MMbpd of outbound Hormuz oil flow. This is currently ~33% more than I'm seeing (including dark transits, Gulf of Oman STS, etc) And critically it's 3-4x the pace of current inbound ballast, so even if it is currently true it's unsustainable. https://t.co/fi0niPHuwF pic.twitter.com/JsQIbrV3uB — Rory Johnston (@Rory_Johnston) August 9, 2026 Of course, traders who bet before on higher oil prices and having been repeatedly burned by Trump tweets have gone into hiding, as the Journal article above also mentions: Another oil tanker hit by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz right before oil futures resumed trading and I am still reading headlines of traders hopeful about a full reopening of the Strait soon https://t.co/KRwUDZuBea pic.twitter.com/Sup0zzV64N — JustDario (@DarioCpx) August 10, 2026 Some odds and ends. A useful entry at Aljazeera;s live feed: Mecca agreement is ‘just ink on paper’ Wolfgang Pusztai, a security policy and defence analyst, says the defence agreement between Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is currently “just ink on paper”. “We have not seen Pakistani or Turkish troops in Saudi Arabia because of the recent attacks by the Houthis,” he said. “We did not see a Turkish reaction to the Iranian missile attacks on the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia,” the analyst added. Pusztai stressed that if there are no boots on the ground in the three different countries, or if Pakistani and Turkish soldiers are not affected by an attack on Saudi Arabia, such a mutual defence agreement would not work. Finally, Haig in Links flagged Scott Bessent’s ridiculous statement that the Strait of Hormuz would become irrelevant because pipelines. Readers in comments pointed out that not only were the assumed construction times laughable, but pipelines are vulnerable because they require pumps that sit above ground. Shipping maven Sal Mercogliano roused himself to provide a full-bore takedown: However, Mercogliano, who is not cognitively impaired by proximity to Trump or off-the-charts arrogance, still cannot process what is happening. From the end of his talk, via machine transcription: I don’t think the Strait of Hormuz is going to be renamed the Strait of Irrelevancy anytime soon. I think he’s just trying to punt this down the road and try to get this out of his wheelhouse. That’s not going to work. You’ve got to fix this issue. More importantly, you cannot set the precedent that a nation can control a maritime choke point and force other nations of the world to have to find alternative routes. That’s a violation of UNCLOS the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea. And I don’t give a crap that Iran and the US hasn’t ratified it. Enough nations have ratified it. Not every state has to ratify something for it to become international law. Much like everything else in the world, there are laws that I don’t agree with, but I still got to abide by them. So, this is the law of the sea. And more importantly, transit passage is an essential component of free trade. And the fact that the US is resorting to a dark fleet to get around this and pipelines to get away from this is a big problem in my opinion. Mercogliano cannot process what Bessent is really saying: the US can’t “open” the Strait. The US and all of its allies cannot open the Strait. Even with more vessels, Iran could in no short order sink or disable many if not nearly all if they tried to force their way into the Strait of Hormuz.3 Too many otherwise smart people still fail to appreciate that the revolution in warfare and the rise of drones and missiles has considerably reduced the effectiveness of once-vaunted US weaponry. If the US can’t vanquish Ansar Allah, how can it possible subdue Iran? Done for today! We may skip tomorrow if there is not much new news since we also have competing obligations. _____ 3 Larry Wilkerson, in a new talk with Ian Proud starting at 33:10, describes how the Navy is vulnerable. Note that at the end, Wilkerson mentions briefly that Israel appears to be readying a major attack on Lebanon: From Wilkerson via a lightly-edited machine transcript: You know, the capital ship, as it were, of the United States maritime power is the aircraft carrier. It’s the one all the little countries in the world fear steaming up to their shore and bombarding them with Tomahawk missiles and planes and so forth. That ship is obsolete. And this very war could demonstrate that at any moment. So far it hasn’t and principally because Admiral Bradley Cooper, a surface warfare sailor, will not sail those carriers within the 1,000km limit of Iran because he knows if he does that capital ship or two are going down or suffer severe damage that’ll put them out of action. That’s going to be a blow to the United States Navy who will not accept this reality. One or two admirals I’ve talked with understand it, but most of them don’t. They still think the carrier is the cat’s meow. And look at China, building one and Britain trying to hold on to one and France trying to hold on to it. They’re they’re gone. In this age of Mach 5 missiles, they’re gone….. One of them’s going to go down with 5,000 souls on board. And here’s another thing about it. Admirals have written about this, retired admirals. They’re not paid much attention to. They write in such prestigious US magazines as US Naval Institute Proceedings. You can find articles in there. There aren’t enough escort ships with our battle groups, our strike groups, our carrier groups to rescue the people in the water because they don’t have the berth space. Even these these ships are so small now and so automated, even if you spread the people all along the deck of a DDG or a regular destroyer or cruiser, you probably couldn’t pick up more than a couple of hundred people in the water if a carrier went down. And the anticipation is there might be as many as 2,000 people in the water. She’s got 5,000 souls on board. So, what are you going to do with these other people that you can’t pick up? Let them stay there in the water and drown, get eaten by a shark, burned to death in the fires on the water? Wilkerson mentions but not at all clearly the Russian frigate that went on a world tour, including up to the east coast of the US, with a hypersonic missile on board. That was clearly meant to send a message that does not seem to have been received.