Sal Mercogliano

Reads the strike footage against the official account and finds the claims overstated: of five IRGC-linked tankers CENTCOM said it destroyed, he counts four disabled and one, the Risco, sunk, though the damage still ends those ships' ability to trade. Now adds a second chokepoint to the picture: the Houthi capture of the port of Mokha and Perim Island gives Iran the Bab el-Mandeb alongside Hormuz. Counts more than 125 ships attacked, four sunk and nine merchant mariners killed in the Red Sea region between November 2023 and September 2025.

Ukraine's maritime drone campaign against Russian shipping has widened out of the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean, tracking the Ursa Major, Quendel, Arctic Metagas and now the Lady Maria, which he reads as sustained reach rather than one-off raids and as evidence the oceans themselves are becoming a battlefield.

Frames the standoff as a question of who breaks first, Iran, the global economy or the US Navy, and pointedly declines to name a winner. US and EU escorts, including Operation Aspides, keep some traffic moving through Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb, but transit volumes stay far below pre-war levels and roughly 10 percent of shipping is routing around Africa. Treats open-ended escort and blockade duty as a real drain on American naval power rather than a demonstration of it.

Tanker economics have reached levels he calls insane. Reading Lloyd's List, Clarksons and gCaptain rather than forecasting himself, he puts the Baltic Exchange Middle East Gulf VLCC index just under $983,000 a day, doubled in a month and 10 to 20 times the pre-war $50,000 to -100,000, with Clarksons above -1 million on the route and a 20-day voyage netting $20 million. The Oman to China ship-to-ship rate is $571,387 a day, up 113 percent on the week and 300 percent on the month, and bunker fuel has gone from about $550 a ton to over -1,000. The premium is drawing in commercial operators, Greek owners especially, alongside the state-linked fleets.