That will take the level below 250 million barrels, enough to last the country just twelve days in an emergency.
Iran war: Trump will release 172 million barrels of oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve
That will take the level below 250 million barrels, enough to last the country just twelve days in an emergency.
Iran war: Trump will release 172 million barrels of oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve
A little Iran humor for ya there.
Consumer prices rose 2.4% annually in February, as expected
... The data predates the recent surge in oil prices tied to the war with Iran, meaning any impact from higher energy costs will likely show up in the months ahead. ...
Outside the pandemic, we were last higher than this in Sep 2008.
... The UKMTO said it had received 17 reports of incidents affecting vessels operating in and around the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman between Feb. 28, when the war began, and March 11. These include 13 attack reports and four reports of suspicious activity. ...
Iran sends millions of oil barrels to China through Strait of Hormuz even as war chokes the waterway
... Iran has sent at least 11.7 million barrels of crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz since the war began on Feb. 28, all of which were headed to China, Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers, told CNBC on Tuesday.
The firm monitors vessel movements with satellite imagery, allowing it to capture vessels that would otherwise go undetected if their tracking systems are switched off. Many vessels have “gone dark” after Tehran threatened to attack any vessel attempting to pass through the waterway. ...
Over the years, China has built up large crude stockpiles, accumulating an estimated 1.2 billion barrels of inventory as of January, which could fulfill demand for 3 to 4 months, according to Atlantic Council. ...
U.S. forces sink 16 Iranian minelayers as reports say Tehran is mining the Strait of Hormuz
... A CNN report Tuesday said that Iran had started laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, albeit not extensively. Sources that CNN spoke to said only a “few dozen” had been laid in recent days.
The report also said that Iran still retains more than 80% of its small boats and minelayers, and could feasibly lay hundreds of mines in the waterway.
Located between Oman and Iran, the strait saw roughly 13 million barrels of crude per day passing through it in 2025, representing about 31% of all seaborne crude flows, according to energy consulting firm Kpler. ...
CBS News, which reported that Iran “may be getting ready” to deploy naval mines, said the country was using smaller crafts that can carry two to three mines each to lay them in the strait. While Iran’s mine stock isn’t publicly known, estimates over the years have ranged from roughly 2,000 to 6,000 naval mines, the report said. ...
... the U.S. had decommissioned four Avenger-class minesweepers that were stationed in Bahrain in late 2025.
The replacement vessels for the Avenger-class, the Independence-class littoral combat ships, have “struggled to meet the requirements of operational mine countermeasures missions,” according to global naval publication Naval News.
It's been one week.
Oil is currently trading at $93, falling from above $115. NASDAQ is in the green.
Iran ships most of its oil to China, and China sends back the ingredients for weapons of mass destruction.
Laden Iranian ships depart Chinese port tied to key military chemicals (March 7, 2026)
... “China could have held these vessels at port, imposed an administrative delay, invented a customs hold — any number of bureaucratic tools, but didn’t,” said Isaac Kardon, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to The Post. “That’s a deliberate policy choice made during an active war in which Beijing publicly calls for restraint.”
Although IRISL operates as a large commercial carrier, Kardon said the circumstances of these shipments strongly suggest the cargo is sodium perchlorate. “Given the track record, the most parsimonious explanation is that they’re loading the same commodity they’ve been shuttling for the past year-plus,” he said. ...
The U.S. and Israel strikes have hammered Iran’s missile storage bunkers and underground depots. “Tehran’s need for propellant precursors just went from urgent to existential,” Kardon told The Post.
Western intelligence says Iran is rearming despite UN sanctions, with China’s help (October 31, 2025)
... European intelligence sources say several shipments of sodium perchlorate, the main precursor in the production of the solid propellant that powers Iran’s mid-range conventional missiles, have arrived from China to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas since the so-called “snapback” mechanism was triggered at the end of September.
Those sources say the shipments, which began arriving on September 29, contain 2,000 tons of sodium perchlorate bought by Iran from Chinese suppliers in the wake of its 12-day conflict with Israel in June. The purchases are believed to be part of a determined effort to rebuild the Islamic Republic’s depleted missile stocks. Several of the cargo ships and Chinese entities involved are under sanctions from the United States. ...
Iranian projectiles continue to strike Gulf countries; Tehran says new leader appointed
... Iranian media said a new leader has been appointed, replacing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the opening salvos of the war. ...
Iran’s Mehr news agency quoted Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Alam al-Huda as saying Sunday elections have been held to replace Khamenei and that a new leader has been appointed. It did not give a name. “All the rumors and news that tried to pretend that the Assembly of Experts has not yet made a decision are pure lies,” al-Huda was quoted as saying. Iranian state media reported on Saturday that two influential Iranian clerics have called for the swift selection of a new supreme leader. ...
The Israel Defense Forces said Sunday it would “pursue every successor and every person who seeks to appoint a successor.” ...
Win or lose, Donald Trump has begun the last war the United States is ever likely to fight in the Middle East. ...
That's what we thought in 1991 about the victorious George H. W. Bush. And then somehow we lost our minds and elected blow-job Bill with his Sunday-go-to-meeting Bible under his arm, big enough to choke a mule.
The state of mind – and the state of the world – that made possible the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, has passed, never to return. ...
There wasn't a single state of mind from 1991 to 2003.
We didn't choose 9/11. It chose us and changed our minds. And the lunatics in Tehran are crazier and far more dangerous than Osama ever was.
Hell, we didn't even choose the Gulf War. Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, and set it on fire as it withdrew in January 1991.
We didn't choose this Iran War, either. Iran chose it for us when its proxies invaded our ally Israel in October 2023.
The state of mind and the state of the world . . . hasn't changed at all, except that Trump's a little slow on the uptake.
The passions that involve us in foreign conflicts in the future will be those of a younger cohort. ...
Yes, it isn't just about a state of mind, is it? Things happen which we can't control. You can't predict "no more wars" anywhere, even though you can pretend for a long time, for example from the summer of 1939 to late 1941, and then something forces your hand.
... if the Iran war goes badly – as badly as the Iraq War did for Bush – Trump’s new style of interventionism will be repudiated by voters as thoroughly as Trump’s own election repudiated the neoconservatives.
Bush 41 was popular because he won the Gulf War and suddenly wasn't because of the economy. And Bush 43 was re-elected convincingly in 2004, hello. If America didn't support his Iraq War, it had a funny way of showing it. There is no comparison with Trump.
Trump's economy already sucks and unsurprisingly right out of the box polling indicates Americans are against his attack on Iran. We're blowing up $1 billion a day over there and can't afford a lousy hamburger at home. We don't have to wait for Iran to go badly for the voters to repudiate Trump.
The only thing Dan is probably right about is this, unfortunately:
. . . what comes next will be an even more radical phase in domestic politics. ...
Here.
Republicans claim to be against more wars, but they let them happen anyway.
House rejects war powers resolution to rein in Trump on Iran
... The vote was 212-219, with four Democrats joining Republicans to torpedo the measure and two Republicans joining Democrats in voting for the measure. The Senate shot down a similar measure on Wednesday. ...
War powers vote fails in the Senate, allowing Trump to continue Iran strikes
... The measure, brought by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Rand Paul, R-Ky.,
faced steep odds and was largely symbolic even if it passed — Trump is
almost certain to veto any bill aimed at decreasing his authority to use
the military. The vote was 47-53, under the 50-vote threshold needed to
advance the resolution. ...
... The removals have cost the Justice Department and FBI decades of combined experience in identifying the types of threats that sources say could appear in the wake of Operation Epic Fury. ...