Iran War?

[Syt]

This shitshow war continues. The Iranians have started mining the Hormuz Strait. This is now a covid-tier global economic shock.

And Brian Kilmeade on Fox said tanker captains shouldn't be such pussies and just go for it.

[Legbiter]

The spirit may be strong but the flesh (insurance) is weak. Almost nothing you do in-day-to-day life is uninsured.

[Valmy]

This shitshow war continues. The Iranians have started mining the Hormuz Strait. This is now a covid-tier global economic shock.

And Brian Kilmeade on Fox said tanker captains shouldn't be such pussies and just go for it.

Yeah well easy to say when it isn't your hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.

[Tonitrus]

This shitshow war continues. The Iranians have started mining the Hormuz Strait. This is now a covid-tier global economic shock.

And Brian Kilmeade on Fox said tanker captains shouldn't be such pussies and just go for it.

Should invite him to come out and captain some tankers. 

[Syt]

The actual quote:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-host-issues-bonkers-plea-to-help-trump-in-iran/

[...]

"The administration announced a $20 billion maritime reinsurance plan," Kilmeade said. "So he's saying, 'Hey, guys, even though we're not, we get the oil, the market's flush, this is fear. I'm still going to ensure your ships, so go through the strait.'

"And, you know, that's just part of it," Kilmeade continued. "If you want to diminish the Iranian threat, if you want to make sure that this ends up with complete Iran capitulation, show some guts and go through that strait and do it."

[...]

"So I asked him, how do you get that, how do you get the prices down?" he said. "I know how much you care about oil and gas. And he says, 'Tell these tankers to get themselves, get to it. We've wiped out most of their launchers.'

"Here's exactly what he said. 'These ships should go through the Strait of Hormuz and show some guts. There's nothing to be afraid of. They have no Navy. We sunk all their ships.'"

Despite the assurance, he then added that Iran still has around 150 operational launchers.

"He went on to say: 'Look, yeah, there's risk in the region. The region's volatile. There are launchers. There's just about 150 left. That's just about 20 percent of totals. They can't regenerate. They can't make any more. And we are in the region. We're ready to act quickly on all these types of attacks.

"Now, I think they're gonna get some additional naval assets in there to do some escorting, but there was a tanker that came through last night... successfully. No problem. And he's saying, come on guys, get to it."

[Syt]

Meanwhile ...

https://apnews.com/live/iran-war-israel-trump--03-11-2026#0000019c-db74-d471-a79e-dbf6a6880000

Cargo ship hit by projectile and set ablaze in the Strait of Hormuz
By JON GAMBRELL

A projectile hit a cargo ship Wednesday in the Strait of Hormuz, setting the vessel ablaze after the United States targeted Iranian minelaying vessels that could target the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center, run by the British military, said the vessel had been hit just north of Oman in the strait.

It said the crew was evacuating the ship.

Iran did not immediately claim the attack though it has been targeting ships in and around the strait, disrupting a waterway that sees a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded pass through it.

The UKMTO earlier reported on another attack targeting a vessel off Ras al-Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates.

[Syt]

Meanwhile, pt. 2:

https://apnews.com/live/iran-war-israel-trump--03-11-2026#0000019c-db8f-dd99-abfd-fb8f842f0000

Tankers believed linked to Iran getting through Strait of Hormuz
By JON GAMBRELL
Some tankers, believed linked to Iran, are continuing to get through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf.

Some of the ships getting through are so-called "dark" transits, meaning they aren't turning on their Automatic Identification System tracks, which show where vessels are.

Vessels carrying sanctioned Iranian crude often turn off their AIS trackers.

The security firm Neptune P2P Group said Wednesday that seven ships had passed through the strait since March 8. Of those, five were linked to Iranian-associated shipping, it said.

The commodity-tracking firm Kpler said Iran has restarted crude exports through its Jask oil terminal on the Gulf of Oman.

A tanker loaded roughly 2 million barrels at Jask on March 7, it said.

This is all such an unbelievable clown show.

[Jacob]

Why Escalation Favours Iran - article in Foreign Affairs

Nothing too controversial for folks here, I don't think, but a good summary of the strategic situation.

[jimmy olsen]

I assume there are no meaningful US naval assets in the Persian Gulf, right? Being stuck behind a minefield and all

Four minesweepers were just delivered from the Gulf to Philadelphia to be scrapped.

Anyways
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/us/politics/how-trump-miscalculated-iran-response.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SVA.yJMv.Gwegd7GPVPBa
They really didn't think the Iranians would attack American allies that aggressively, nor that they would shut the straight. Just straight up morons.
Some insane quotes in here.

Mr. Trump has displayed growing frustration over how the war is disrupting the oil supply, telling Fox News that oil tanker crews should "show some guts" and sail through the Strait of Hormuz.

[jimmy olsen]

Not just politicians.  All his supporters still adore him and would for him if he tried to run again, or would likely still vote Republican despite their anger toward the inflation coming.  At the very least, they would never vote for a Democrat.  Special elections don't mean a lot, polls still show a map solidly Republican, or very close to it:
https://www.270towin.com/2026-house-election/

Special elections are very indictive of midterm elections.

[Richard Hakluyt]

"Mr. Trump has displayed growing frustration over how the war is disrupting the oil supply, telling Fox News that oil tanker crews should "show some guts" and sail through the Strait of Hormuz."

I mean oil tanker crews are under orders not to pass through the straits. Trump displaying his usual awe-inspiring stupidity. He really is the Sagittarius A* of stupidity, sucking intelligence from his surroundings at phenomenal rates.

[OttoVonBismarck]

ISW showing the general decline of Iranian strikes on US/Israel and Gulf States since war began:

https://imgur.com/a/sdOYIXq

[OttoVonBismarck]

CNN Analyst talking about how even if Trump "TACOs" out, that's not any kind of guarantee of oil prices coming down anytime soon. A couple things I'd add to his analysis:

1. This assumes Iran won't just continue attacks on the Strait even if the U.S. declares the war over. The problem with blowing up all of Iran's highest value assets, is the "pain" you can inflict on the regime going forward is lower, right? Like we've already blown up their prized possessions, so just because you say you won't blow up more stuff is no guarantee they'll feel the need now to stop. In theory I guess you could start blowing up stuff beyond their military key facilities, like much more widespread strikes on their oil infrastructure (so far only a few limited Israeli strikes have hit their oil infra), but that is contrary to any attempt to lower prices--permanently destroying lots of Iranian oil infrastructure will cause long term price increases.

2. The idea that "the U.S. is developing plans" to easily secure the Strait of Hormuz is laughable. If they really thought they could do that, why not figure that out before the war? The reality is U.S. planners have worried about this issue since 1980, and to my knowledge no magic, fool proof plan has ever emerged because there isn't one because it isn't the way objective reality works.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/11/business/price-oil-trump-gas-war

Trump can't TACO out of the Iran war's oil price shock

Analysis by David Goldman

President Donald Trump has a sales pitch for Americans worried about high oil and gas prices: Rising fuel prices are a temporary but necessary sacrifice, and they will fall quickly back to earth once the war with Iran is done.

Trump on Thursday said gas prices will "drop very rapidly when this is over." US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Friday that relief at the gas pump would come in "weeks, not months." And White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday called the recent surge in oil and gas prices "temporary."

"Once the national security objectives of Operation Epic Fury are fully achieved, Americans will see oil and gas prices drop rapidly, potentially even lower than they were prior to the start of the operation, and we will live in a world where Iran can no longer threaten the United States or our allies with a nuclear bomb," Leavitt said.

But it won't be that easy – even if Trump is in the midst of another TACO, the Wall Street acronym for "Trump Always Chickens Out."

To get oil prices back to where they were before the war started, the US military will first need to secure the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow body of water through which 20% of the world's oil travels. Iran said it would set fire to oil tankers passing through the strait, effectively locking much of the world's oil in place during the war. And Iran has begun to lay mines in the waterway, sources told CNN's Natasha Bertrand.

Even if America's military could achieve that on Trump's timetable of one more week, oil industry analysts remain skeptical that the strait could fully reopen and production in the region come back online for at least a month, if not much longer.

That means high oil prices could be here for a while – and gas prices, which follow oil prices with a lag, could stay elevated for even longer.

Securing the strait
The US military is developing plans to eliminate Iran's ability to attack oil tankers.

"I will not broadcast what those options look like, but just know the president is not afraid to use them," Leavitt said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the administration has said the Navy would at some point start escorting oil ships through the waterway. So far, that hasn't happened, Leavitt confirmed Tuesday. If Iran increases its mining of the strait, that could complicate matters.

The number of oil tankers traversing the strait has been in the single digits or zero each day for the past week, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, compared to about 50 per day prior to the war.

"Words aren't going to talk oil prices back to normal; the strait are the key to the return to normalcy," said Dan Pickering, founder and chief investment officer at Pickering Energy Partners. "You can't get back to normal with 15 million barrels per day being bottlenecked and off the market."

Months, not weeks
Oil prices have tumbled on the prospect that Trump may be in the midst of another TACO. Hopeful that the prospect of rising inflation will force the president's hand, oil fell to around $90 a barrel Wednesday after surging past $100 a barrel Monday.

But oil and gas still have a long way to go before returning to normal: Oil was trading at around $60 a barrel before the war. And US gas prices, which are averaging more than $3.50 a gallon, were below $3 just before the United States and Israel attacked Iran.

"For prices to return to normal levels sustainably, this will probably require a credible neutralization of Iran's ability to disrupt maritime transit," said Luisa Palacios, the former Citgo chairwoman and current managing director of Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy.

Returning the Strait of Hormuz to typical traffic could take 1 to 3 months, according to Homayoun Falakshahi, lead crude research analyst at Kpler. Only then will oil fall to $60 a barrel again.

That's in part a function of the complexity of war. After the United States and Israel took out its supreme leader, Iran may hesitate to quickly lay down its arms. And taking out every drone and every mine that threatens ships in the strait probably isn't possible, meaning vessels may require naval escorts for a while.

Even if strait traffic reopens soon, the dangerous and complex process of protecting those tankers could maintain a bottleneck for a month or longer, noted Jay Hatfield, CEO & founder of Infrastructure Capital.

Turning production back online
Another factor: A significant portion – about 7 million barrels – of Middle Eastern oil production came offline in the past week, because there was no place to put the crude they were pumping.

Turning those spigots on isn't like flipping a switch. Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said during an earnings call this week the company could start to ramp up in a matter of days once the strait reopens. But it can take a week or two to fully restore production, according to Bob Yawger, commodity specialist at Mizuho.

And production can't fully come back online until there are tankers sailing through the strait to collect and deliver the oil. Storage space is at capacity right now.

'A little glitch'
That's why a number of oil analysts expect prices to remain high until the industry gets clarity – not just rhetoric – about when and how ships could start to navigate the strait again.

Even then, the market may continue to assign oil a "risk premium" that will keep it priced well above regular levels – at least until investors feel Iran no longer poses a threat to vessels in the region.

That could be a while: The US Energy Information Administration on Tuesday forecast that Brent crude, the international benchmark, will trade above $95 a barrel over the next two months, before falling to $80 a barrel in the summer and $70 a barrel in the fall. It said its forecast is based on assumptions about the duration of the Middle East conflict and oil production outages.

If oil stays that high, gas prices could near $4 a gallon and hover there until oil prices come down meaningfully – and stay lower. In the summer of 2022, when oil fell by $20 to below $100 in a matter of weeks, gas stayed well above $4 for several months before falling.

In other words, this could be more than Trump's "little glitch."

[crazy canuck]

More evidence Iran is winning this war, they have already achieved their strategic goal while Americans think they are fighting a conventional war, and are measuring it as such.

[jimmy olsen]

3 ships hit today in the straights

https://splash247.com/multiple-ships-hit-on-day-12-of-iran-war/

The most severe attack today was against the Precious Shipping-controlled, Thai-flagged Mayuree Naree, which was struck by a projectile north of Oman in the strait, resulting in a fire and crew evacuation procedures. The fire was extinguished after a number of hours.

The Japan-flagged 6,724 teu ONE Majesty also sustained damage in a separate attack with the ship's master reporting that the vessel suffered a 10 cm hole. The boxship has since made towards a safe anchorage. All crew members are safe and accounted for.

Star Bulk's Marshall Islands-flagged kamsarmax bulk carrier Star Gwyneth was also hit, northwest of Dubai, causing damage to the hull, with all crew reported safe on what is turning out to be one of the most dangerous days for commercial shipping since Tehran was attacked.