Larry Johnson

Reads the US strike on a ship near Hangam Island as barely registering in Tehran, with Trump effectively standing down rather than escalating. Iran's terms have not moved: lift the blockade, lift the sanctions, American forces out, Iranian control of Hormuz. "Trump's not going to agree to that, but that's the Iranian demands and Iran's not backing off of that." Sees Saudi Arabia as the party with no way out: "There's no help for Saudi Arabia. They're toast." Now says Ansar Allah captured roughly 4,000 square kilometres in about two days and has taken the Bab el-Mandeb, that Yemen is falling apart as far as the Saudis are concerned, and that Trump has not made good on his vow to strike Iranian tankers for fear of further Iranian retaliation against US forces. Now says Iran's six-month missile campaign has wiped out the US presence in the region, forced a US retreat, and exposed the hollowness of the US defensive shield, with Patriot and THAAD systems failing. Now says Iran and the Houthis have gutted the US position in the Gulf, with roughly 4,000 square kilometres seized, a Saudi F-15 shot down and a 30 billion dollar American infrastructure buildout destroyed for about 1 million, and that the Houthis act on their own rather than as Iranian proxies. Now says the Pentagon and the White House are undercounting US combat deaths from the Iran war, reclassifying some so they are not counted as combat deaths, and that the asymmetry in Yemen favours the Houthis rather than the United States or Saudi Arabia.

Reads the Kushner prosperity plan and BlackRock's push to stay invested in Ukraine as chasing resources that sit east of the Dnieper under Russian control, which makes the whole investment thesis worthless: any investment in the western part is "just going to be big zeros." Now reads Russia's strike on a train engine at the Ukraine-Poland border as a deliberate signal, and says Moscow effectively considers itself at war with the NATO states arming Kiev. Now says the war is winding down dramatically as Russia keeps capturing territory and Ukraine crumbles. Now says Russia holds firm on the four oblasts plus Crimea, denazification, new Ukrainian elections and NATO withdrawal from Eastern Europe as non-negotiable, and that Russian military leadership fully expects war with Europe given European rearmament rhetoric, though Russia will not strike first.

Israeli press claims that Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis are preparing to attack Israel are so far unproven; Israel is exposed if it keeps antagonising Turkey. Argues that if Hezbollah re-engages with full Iranian backing, Israel will be hard-pressed to defend itself effectively.

China’s control of rare-earth minerals gives it structural leverage over US precision-weapons production and insulates it from the oil shock the war has caused. Says China is offering the US an economic escape valve on trade that Washington will not take, and that a Trump-Xi meeting is unlikely to produce anything major. Now says China holds the cards in the rare-earths standoff and that Trump’s belief Washington has leverage over Beijing is delusional. Now says China's control of the supply chain behind Patriot components means the United States physically cannot produce more of them, whatever licences Europe lobbies for.

Saudi Arabia has no outside power able or willing to help it against the Houthis and is being pushed toward capitulation, and the regional states increasingly cannot count on Washington to stand behind them. Expects no American move to reduce either the Iran conflict or the Ukraine war before the November midterms, though he notes Trump is already pulling back from retaliatory strikes on Iran. Now reports that Mohammed bin Salman asked Trump directly for military help against Ansar Allah twice and was refused both times, Trump treating the Yemen war as a pre-existing condition, and reads the alliance as headed toward a separation if not a divorce. Now says flatly that the Saudis don't have six months before Houthi pressure overwhelms their position. Now says Gulf states are voting with their feet, distancing themselves from Washington after watching US air defenses fail against Iran's missiles. Now says Washington lacks both the stockpiles, naming Patriot, THAAD, Tomahawk and JASSM, and the diplomatic credibility to reassert itself in the Gulf, which is accelerating the Gulf states shift toward China and the absorption of the Middle East into a greater Eurasian space.

Dollar sanctions are missing the target, because Iran's trade with Russia and China settles in local currencies: "The US dollar sanctions don't have much effect on that at all." The closed strait, by contrast, feeds straight into American gasoline, diesel and food prices. Reads Riyadh's problem as cash flow rather than politics, and expects the kingdom to have to deal because it cannot go weeks without export revenue. Now attributes the diesel and crude spike to the loss of Gulf sour crude and the shut Yanbu route rather than to Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries, calling that explanation simply not true and sheer nonsense, with Brent near 10 and diesel as high as $9.99 a gallon in San Diego. Now says Saudi Arabia will not resume Red Sea oil exports for another two months, that the price of oil stays elevated for at least that long, and that Riyadh will be forced to start selling US Treasuries to cover the shortfall. Now says Saudi Arabia and Japan are both already selling treasury bonds to raise cash they no longer have, adding further pressure on the dollar even as Trump pushes the Fed toward 1 percent rates, and is skeptical the East-West pipeline gets back to full capacity on the six-week timeline officials are citing. Now says this is a physical shortage rather than a price story, with demand for diesel, jet fuel and kerosene outrunning deliverable supply and US gas stations already running dry, and that Gulf states losing oil revenue will be forced to divest US Treasuries and push yields higher still. Now says the Gulf shortage is structural, a matter of damaged terminals and wells rather than blocked shipping, so reopening Hormuz would not by itself restore supply, and that the diesel and aviation fuel shortage is a supply-chain collapse taking months to years to repair.