On Saturday U.S. president Donald Trump threatened to attack Iran’s electricity network and other infrastructure within 48 hours should it not reopen the Strait of Hormuz for all shipping:
“If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!” Trump posted on social media around 7:45 p.m. EDT (2345 GMT) on Saturday.
Iran responded by threatening retaliation against the infrastructure of U.S. client states in the Gulf. Any such attack would have devastating consequences:
“If Iran’s fuel and energy infrastructure is attacked by the enemy, all energy infrastructure, as well as information technology…and water desalination facilities, belonging to the US and the regime in the region will be targeted pursuant to previous warnings,” Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari said, according to state media.
On early Monday morning the markets reacted nervously. Treasuries, stocks and gold were all down.
As the markets threatened to tank, and shortly before the deadline Trump had given to Iran, he chickened out:
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In five days, after the markets have closed for the week, Trump may well renew his threat.
Even the best-case scenario for energy markets is disastrous (archived)
Even if Donald Trump and Iran reached a deal to stop fighting tomorrow, it would thus be another four months before markets regained some semblance of normality. Producers elsewhere cannot crank up output fast enough to recover past losses. The result is to shave off some 3% of planned global oil production this year. Every month Ras Laffan stays shut, the world loses around 7m tonnes of lng—nearly 2% of projected annual supply. And full capacity will, owing to the latest strikes, be lower than before. The upshot is that production will fall 4% short of demand this year even if Qatar started pumping what it can today.
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Oil and gas traders are still banking on a spring miracle. The world is praying for one. But even if Mr Trump and Iran’s ayatollahs grant this wish, the logistics of oil and gas will not be easily appeased. Energy markets will be living with the war’s fallout well into northern winter.
My hunch is that these estimates are on the optimistic side of things.
The Iranian Prisons Where Bombs Are Threatening Dissidents and Americans (archived) – WSJ
Airstrikes have damaged complexes used to hold political detainees, according to a Wall Street Journal visual investigation—putting their lives in danger
Israel Thought It Could Spur Rebellion Inside Iran. That Hasn’t Happened. (archived) – NY Times
President Trump’s hopes that an Israeli plan to ignite an internal uprising against Iran’s theocratic government could bring the war to a swift end have so far been dashed.
Within days of the war’s beginning, said David Barnea, the Mossad chief, his service would likely be able to galvanize the Iranian opposition — igniting riots and other acts of rebellion that could even lead to the collapse of Iran’s government. Mr. Barnea also presented the proposal to senior Trump administration officials during a visit to Washington in mid-January.
Mr. Netanyahu adopted the plan. Despite doubts about its viability among senior American officials and some officials in other Israeli intelligence agencies, both he and President Trump seemed to embrace an optimistic outlook. Killing Iran’s leaders at the outset of the conflict, followed by a series of intelligence operations intended to encourage regime change, they thought, could lead to a mass uprising that might bring about a swift end to the war.
“Take over your government: It will be yours to take,” Mr. Trump told Iranians in his initial address at the war’s start, after saying they should first seek shelter from the bombing.
Three weeks into the war, an Iranian uprising has not yet materialized.
Trump’s Iran War Drive Exposes Limits of ‘Yes Sir’ Cabinet (archived) – Bloomberg
Those privately pressing Trump to strike Iran included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and some conservative commentators, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. The News Corp. founder communicated with Trump several times as he urged the president to take on Tehran, according to one person briefed on their interactions.
Meanwhile, some of Trump’s closest advisers were more muted about the prospect of an armed conflict, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, the people said.
Few, if any, told him directly it was an ill-conceived idea. Wiles tried to ensure the president understood his options, the people said, while Vance urged top officials to speak candidly to the president and about the possibility of war. In private meetings before the attacks, Vance asked questions about how any war would work.
The above ‘blame Netanyahoo’ pieces are missing the big picture view. This war fits a long term U.S. strategy and thus had to happen:
America is Achieving Full-Spectrum Energy Dominance — And Nobody is Paying Attention
I have said it many times, and I will say it again: the United States does not lose wars. If it did, it would stop waging them. Whether Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, or Libya — failed states are not failures of Empire. They are the victories of Empire. And Empire is on a roll.
Now the same chorus rises over Iran. Left and right, the refrain is identical: this will be a disaster, America is overreaching, Iran will be its graveyard. The same voices. The same blindness. The same century-old script.
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Medhurst argues that the United States, far from stumbling into another disastrous West Asian quagmire, is executing a calculated seizure of the planet’s energy supply — and that the wars on Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine, and now Iran are not separate blunders but sequential steps toward a single goal: total energy dominance.
While energy dominance may be the over-arching aim Washington has there are doubts that it is achievable:
How the Iran war is turning America’s energy dominance into a mirage – The National
There are non-fossil energy alternatives coming up and penetrating the markets. Any attempt to monopolize fossil fuels and to ramp up its prices will increase the adoption of non-fossil alternatives and thereby defeat itself.