Scrambled Eggs ala Trump
I guess you can't make war without breaking a few eggs. In today's news, they are scrambled all over the world.
Over the course of the weekend, Israel followed through on American intelligence and did what the intel said it would do. It attempted to destroy President Trump’s Big Deal. Israel and Hezbollah continued to fight, and that blew up the start of peace talks between the US and Iran in Switzerland as US intel had claimed is the Isreali plan. Iran walked, and, at first, no one talked.
Iran did more than just walk away, however, it closed the Strait of Hormuz AGAIN. That’s, at least, the second closure since the present ceasefire began and the strait reopened. That caused Trump to smoke out the top of his head, screaming at the Iranians in numerous expletives that in older days would have been illegal to print, and that’s also why Iran walked, saying it would not return to the table until the US president apologized for cussing the Iranian dignitaries out.
Trump did more than just swear profusely. (I’ll leave you to take his word for that by reading his words.)
Iranian negotiators stormed out of the high-level peace talks with the US in Switzerland on Sunday after a frustrated President Trump unleashed his fury on the regime — threatening to seize the Strait of Hormuz and “blow the s–t out of them.” [That was the least of his language.]
The talks were abandoned after just 80 minutes when the discussions entered a “difficult phase” following “an insulting message by the US president,” Iran’s state news agency reported.
After getting drubbed by a good cussing out, Iran clarified its own response, saying “the primary option is jihad.”
The Islamic Republic’s chief negotiator and head of Iran’s parliament, Mohammed Ghalibaf, slammed Trump’s threats as an act of “desperation.”
“We don’t take the Americans’ threats seriously,” he wrote on X.
Ghalibaf went on to warn the president that any force would be met in kind.
“They had better watch their statements,” he hit back.
“Our armed forces are ready to respond in another way. Whatever they say, we are the ones who will act.”
The US contradicted Iran’s claim that it had closed the strait again, but then the president threatened the Iranian negotiators saying that, if they didn’t immediately reopen the strait, they’d be lucky to even make it home. He threatened in his old familiar style to all-but-destroy Iranian civilization by blowing the excrement out of it. So, strait open/strait closed, who knows? Who’s telling it strait? I’m guessing the president of the United States would not threaten to bomb them to bits if the strait were still opening, but maybe he would.
The US also countered Iran’s claims that it was no longer present at the talks and that it had snubbed a handshake photo opt as well, while the US said “No snub. There was no snub.” Maybe, but there were also no handshakes with the Iranians.
A senior US diplomat engaged in the negotiations later downplayed the diplomatic row, insisting that the peace talks remain ongoing.
“The Iranian delegation is still at the negotiating venue and the US delegation expects to continue working through the night,” the official said, adding that the discussions have included “clarifying some of the confusing messaging from Iran on the Strait and building deconfliction mechanisms to ensure the Strait will remain fully open.”
I guess they were confused, too. I’m glad they got their messaging clear, because it’s still as clear as the smoke of burning tankers and crude to me; and, by that, I’m not referring to the president’s language.
VP JD Vance did set it all straight though, by saying he hoped the talks, which he had arrived to just as the Iranians were leaving, would turn over a new leaf in Iranian relations. At the end of the meeting that the Iranians said didn’t happen, Vance announced a major victory, saying the Iranians had agree to allow UN/IEA inspectors back into the nation, something that the Trump-Israel-Iran war blew completely apart.
So, that was tremendous news because it means that, at least, on one issue Vance has gotten us back to where Obama had taken us with the JCPOA before Trump blew that up. With any good luck the Turnip administration will recover the entire JCPOA but simply at the small additional cost of destroying the global economy, delivering us vastly higher prices for everything for months, if not years, to come, and slaughtering a lot of people and things in many nations at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. All to the good in the “Golden Era” of greatness I guess.
Bringing clarification to the likely costs to come, Vance’s boss also spent more than four hours talking with his war-monger buddy Lindsay Graham who returned to the press from the meeting with the Prez. to say that the way this ends, if Iran doesn’t get back to the negotiating table and/or doesn’t get oil flowing again right away through the strait that the administration said is not closed, is that the US will …
… take the Strait of Hormuz over by force. The United States will control the Strait of Hormuz. We’ll charge a fee for all those who go through to pay for the operation. And we’re going to expand the Abraham Accords in calendar year 2026. We’re going to get Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords, which is the biggest change in 5,000 years in the Mid East.
That, of course, means big-time boots on the ground in the center of the hottest zone on earth. To make everything that entails clear, Graham added that, if Iran contests the US control of the strait, “we’ll obliterate them.” However, talk of enforcing the Abraham Accords into action, surely put a smile on Jerod Kushner’s face.
Oil apparently liked the news because, even with many stories this weekend of a raging oil shortage going on in Russia right now, oil prices dropped. In fact, the oil shortage is so peculiar right now, that even though Russia is rationing oil in many parts of the country and in Crimea, Saudi Arabia turned to Russia to buy fuel oil so they can generate electricity to keep the air conditioners running. Nevertheless, jet fuel prices crashed, leaving airlines that have priced higher fuel costs into tickets already sold with a substantial windfall. However, that said, Europe is running out of fuel, so gasoline prices are skyrocketing all over Europe, especially as it faces a hellish heat wave, driving up fuel use for power generation. Prices down/prices up at the same time in different places.
At least, we know the strait is open for the Iranians. They are now moving peak oil through the strait, as in what is described as a “wartime high.” So, that’s good, I guess. Somebody’s getting oil, and it means that much is going according to Trump’s own plan, since he made that possible for Iran when he switched from playing bad cop to good cop in order to get them to talk. We have ways of making you talk. One of them is money—lots and lots of money. It was really only three Iranian tankers that passed through so far, but that is the wartime high for a one-day period.
So, oil prices are plunging, even as Oilprice.com publishes an article today claiming that …
Global oil and fuel inventories are being drawn down rapidly, raising fears of a severe supply crunch if Hormuz disruptions persist.
Just enough fear to lower the price of oil, I guess, because disruptions certainly persisted all weekend long as well as today. According to Oilprice.com, there is very little probability that the world will avoid going over the oil cliff.
That cliff will be the result of fast-depleting commercial and strategic inventories of oil and oil products around the world.
“Fast depleting” must be good news because the article reported the strait was still closed as of the time of its writing, and oil prices were still plummeting. So were stocks. Trump had just boasted the stock market was up, when Space X crashed 9%, sucking the NASDAQ down into a deep hole with it. Ah well, as they used to say with Space X rockets, “What goes up, must come down quickly.”
As I explained in a previous piece, the world is fast approaching “tank bottoms,” that is, the depletion of usable oil and oil products inventory. When that inventory effectively runs out, there will be a bidding war for oil and oil products to replace the millions of barrels per day that will still be needed but unavailable from inventories as the drama in the Persian Gulf continues.
With one of the world’s largest oil producers (the Saudis) competing against the Russian people for their own oil for the sake of the Saudi people, it sounds like the bidding wars for refined fuels have begun in some parts of the world, even as crude prices tank.
Iran also enriched our knowledge of the deal by clarifying that uranium is off the table.
Iran’s president said Sunday that the Islamic Republic will not give up its right to enriched uranium as part of the peace deal with the US — while noting that a deal could save the country’s economy by unlocking sanctioned cash.
The deal has already achieved the latter part of that statement with Iranian oil freely transiting the strait now, while all other traffic remains shut out, and with $30-billion reportedly released from sanctioned Iranian funds as enticement because that is one of the ways of making them talk along with $6-billion in enticement funds on its way from Qatar.
“In just these few days, and until the day before yesterday, we exported nearly 16 million barrels of oil, whereas during the 50-day siege period, it was not possible to move even one barrel of oil,” the Iranian president claimed.
“In this short period, we were able to recover part of our credits and resources and carry out numerous actions,” he said of the immediate sanctions relief.
So, the deal is proceeding well for Iran. As for their goals outside of collecting the money, Iran said,
“Our primary option is jihad, whether on the battlefield or in the streets. We are not worried about the negotiations failing. We have not gone into negotiations out of desperation or helplessness,” Abdollah Haji Sadeghi told Al-Jazeera.
Iran did provide assurances that it will not seek a bomb, so there is another way the war and the Big Deal have gotten us partially back to Obama’s JCPOA. Just a fact that this is all we’ve recovered so far from the original deal that Trump shredded during 1.0; but it’s a start, and there are fifty-some days of fruitful talking yet to go.
As far as the fate of Iran’s nuclear material, President Masoud Pezeshkian said his nation was willing to provide assurances, yet again, that Iran would not develop nuclear weapons.
But, he said that enriched uranium is still needed to develop power plants in the country.
“What the United States demands is that Iran not build an atomic bomb. This is nothing new, and we can also state in writing that we have no intention of building a bomb,” Pezeshkian said in a statement.
Anything they say in writing is certain to be true, or they wouldn’t write it.
“However, we will not relinquish our right to enrichment, and the other side will have no choice but to accept this right,” he added.
Iran currently possesses nearly 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried underground following joint US-Israeli airstrikes last year.
Except that industry experts say uranium enriched to the present level is not necessary at all in order to run nuclear reactors for electricity production or for nuclear medicine production. Bombs are pretty much its only use.
Meanwhile, Israel, which has expressed being dismayed by Trump’s attacks on NetanYahoo as being something of a village idiot, has weighed in on the deal. With Trump having just literally stated that he’s the boss, Bibi clarified that, no, he is:
Netanyahu Continues Defying USA, Says IDF Troops To Occupy Southern Lebanon As Long As Necessary
“Necessary” for Israel has always meant many years.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that his nation’s military will continue its operations in Southern Lebanon for as long as he demands, blatantly spitting in the face of President Trump and the recent peace deal between America and Iran….
“Nothing will alter that commitment….”
Netanyahu’s remarks came just days after President Trump told Axios he’s had to try to keep the Israeli prime minister “sane” and that he thought “Bibi” would refrain from attacking Lebanon after the peace deal.
Questioned on his ability “to control Israel from attacking Lebanon,” President Trump said he believes they’ll refrain because, “They have a lot of respect for me, and they do as I say.”
I guess not:
However, within hours of the president’s Axios interview being released, the Israelis conducted intense airstrikes across southern Lebanon that resulted in nearly 50 deaths and about 100 injuries.
Ah well, I suppose no president wins every skirmish. Just a few more broken eggs.
Apparently, the visuals in the video, which you can find if you click on the X post above, were not enough, so Israel added clarification:
Top Israeli Official Openly Calls For Genocide As US Seeks Peace: ‘All Of Lebanon Must Burn’
That was Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, so probably close to being an authority on the Israeli military position. He, at least, holds a position that makes him think he is.
Ben-Gvir issued a scathing rebuke of the current Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) negotiated between Iran and the United States after Israel says four of its soldiers were killed in Southern Lebanon in an attack by Hezbollah — although some reports suggest Israel and Lebanon have subsequently agreed to a new ceasefire late Friday morning. In his statement, Ben-Gvir said the goal should be to indiscriminately “obliterate” Lebanon.
Well, at least, someone is speaking clearly. Not a lot of ambiguity in his statement of the Israeli position. And again …
“For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep,” Ben-Gvir said in the Friday post on X. “All of Lebanon must burn! With all due respect to the Americans, Israel must make it clear to the entire world that the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens are not forfeit. All of Lebanon must burn…. Enough with the ping-pong. In the Middle East, you don’t win with measured responses and restraint — you need to go berserk. To obliterate. To crush the terror.”
Clear enough, then.
Netanyahu is said to have bet his entire relationship with everyone in the US and the world on Trump, and the bet is not paying off really well right now. Maybe Israel’s chagrin over the deal an the tongue lashing is causing the president’s edginess that is resulting in him going back to telling the ayatollahs that he will probably have to disintegrate them very soon.
For a decade, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu placed all his chips on Donald Trump. He gambled that with Trump, he would be able to bring down the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran. Along the way, and especially ahead of the change of administration in January 2025, he clashed with the Democratic Party and lost the support of much of the Western world.
Yeah, the whole world thing is not going well for Israel right now. Trump and Vance have both made it repeatedly as clear as a kick in teeth that Israel doesn’t have a meaningful friend left outside the US, and that even that could be up for grabs soon if he doesn’t tuck in his tail.
… in recent weeks, Trump appears to have unexpectedly abandoned Netanyahu on the way to an agreement with Tehran. Then again, was it really unexpected?
The French Jewish philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy recently published an article in Le Point against Trump under the headline “Betrayal and humiliation: the real doctrine of Trumpism.” According to Lévy, the president’s foreign policy is defined not only by abandoning U.S. allies, but also by an element of deliberate public humiliation.
With any luck, Trump will win one more victory out of this war that he can post on an arch somewhere—that he got the strait back open that took a war to get closed.
Economania (national & global economic collapse plus market news)
Feds order grid overhaul to speed AI data center development
‘Running off the cliff’: An explosion of household debt has put the US economy in a tough spot
Polymarket Accused of Using Fake Winning Bets to Fuel Viral Growth
SPCX Stock Slides Overnight After MSCI Slaps SpaceX With Lowest ESG Rating
SpaceX stock falls 9%, pacing for third-straight day of losses after red-hot IPO start
Money Matters (monetary policy, metals, cryptos, currency wars & going cashless)
Treasury Yields Spike on Warsh’s “Regime Change” at the Fed
Inflation Factors (too much money chasing too few goods due to weather, sanctions, tariffs, quarantines, etc.)
Saudis Turn to Russian Fuel Oil as Iran War Saps Fossil Power Supplies
U.S. Airlines Set To Pocket $40 Billion As Jet Fuel Prices Crash
Heatwave, Hormuz Threats and Qatar Blast Push European Gas Prices Higher
Iran’s Oil Exports Through Hormuz Hit Wartime High.
The Oil Crisis Is Far From Over
More than 1 billion barrels of oil have gone missing
Mines, Logistics and Deep Uncertainty Threaten a Middle East Oil Rebound
Wars & Rumors of War (including cyberwar, civil unrest and revolts)
Iran says Strait of Hormuz is closed over ceasefire violations
US-Iran negotiations end, technical talks will continue after Trump shakes talks with threats
Senator Lindsay Graham Reveals What’s Coming: “Take the Strait of Hormuz By Force”
Intelligence Agencies Warn Trump Israel ‘Likely’ to Undermine Iran Deal
Israel stunned by Vance attack and implied US weapons warning
Back to Obama: Vance says Iran agrees to let nuclear inspectors back into country
Mark Levin Wallops Trump Administration Over Iran Deal in Fiery 17-Minute Fox News Monologue
Trump’s Fears About Economy Undercut US Leverage in Iran Talks
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Russian fuel crisis widens after Ukrainian attacks, sources say
Russia cuts fuel sales to public in Crimea
Story: Russia faces spreading fuel shortages after Ukrainian drones pummel refineries
Putin’s Advisor: Russia Considering Missile Strikes on Europe
RUSSIAN Medvedev Declares No More Rules in War with Ukraine, Dismisses Hague Conventions
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AI Fighter Jets Take To The Skies
Digital Dominance (AI threats, transhumanism, hacks & cyberattacks, etc.)
Americans Have Turned Against AI in Incredible Numbers
GM replaces more than 1,000 workers with 50 robots at flagship Detroit plant: ‘We’re disgusted’
AI models that can take down governments and business months away, rare Five Eyes statement warns
Oxford’s top maths professor: ‘The devil could use AI to destroy the world’
Political Pandemonium & Social Senescence (socio-political issues & events)
A growing number of foreign leaders have had it with Trump
Trump unveils the new Air Force One, a $400 million plane gifted by Qatar
3,600 stock trades in 3 months: Breaking down Trump’s flurry of investment moves
‘Not Good!’ Trump Ramps Up Feud With Italy’s Prime Minister in Scorching New Post
Why Meloni Parted Ways with Trump
What 25,000 secret documents reveal about Tulsi Gabbard and her ‘guru’
UK’s PM Keir Starmer Prepares to Step Down Monday
‘In Germany It is Open Season For Rape’, ‘This Country is Finished’ Say Police Officers
Creature From the Green Lagoon
The Reflecting Pool Appears to Be Rejecting Its Makeover
Staggering images show extent of Donald Trump’s destruction of Washington DC
How The Kids Learned To Love Richard Nixon
America’s intractable air traffic problem
Deep Domination (globalism, unelected government, unconstitutional government & censorship)
Major Backlash After X Suspends Accounts Criticizing JD Vance and US-Iran Deal
Calamity, Catastrophe & Climate Craziness
Heat wave grips Europe, triggering alerts and disruptions
Off-the-Beat News & Just Plain Offbeat News
Video: Takedown of CERN Insider Claims “Beings Are Coming In and Out of Portals”
Doomer Humor
“U.S. Treasury Has Issued a Temporary 60-Day License Authorizing Iranian Oil Sales.” Because no one is allowed to sell anything unless the ‘King of the World’ authorizes it, of course.
https://www.osint613.com/article/treasury-has-issued-a-temporary-60-day-license-authorizing-iranian-oil-sales-what-does-it-mean
“Vance says that instead of Israel responding with force (in Lebanon), they should respond with conversation.” — OSINT613
Obviously, Vance is not smart enough to be President, but here’s the response to his stupid idea: If Hezbollah attacks Israel with words, Israel should respond in kind. If Hezbollah attacks Israel with rockets and drones, Israel should respond in kind. Duh! Fortunately, Trump is starting to lay the blame where it belongs, even if Vance won’t:
https://www.investing.com/news/world-news/trump-says-us-will-resume-attacks-if-iran-does-not-restrain-hezbollah-allies-4751672
Reminder… If Lebanon would (or could) wipe out Hezbollah, Israel wouldn’t have to.