Hungary’s Election Is Europe’s Energy Vote

Hungary goes to the polls on April 12, and the result may decide more than who runs Budapest. Orbán has spent sixteen years turning a veto into a foreign policy, and now the whole EU is stuck waiting to see whether that system survives.

The veto economy
Budapest is still blocking a €90 billion EU loan for Ukraine, with Orbán demanding the return of Russian oil flows through Druzhba as the price of moving. That is not a technical dispute. It is energy blackmail in a suit.

If Orbán loses, Brussels gets a lot more room to move on Ukraine, sanctions, and energy policy. If he wins, the same old routine continues: one small country with one big veto keeping half the continent in a holding pattern.

The larger game
This is why Moscow, Kyiv, Washington, and Brussels are all watching. Hungary has become the place where Europe’s sanctions regime, Ukraine’s money pipeline, and Russia’s oil leverage all meet at the same choke point.

Orbán likes to present himself as the defender of Hungarian sovereignty. In practice, he has turned sovereignty into a service business — paid for in oil, vetoes, and delays.

#Hungary #Orbán #Ukraine #EU #Russia #elections

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Trump Is angling For a More Tamed Iran. Did He Win or Fail?

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According to most reports, diplomatic efforts to end the Iran War have fizzled out. Iran appears to have ended indirect negotiations, following Trump’s ominous and demented threats to destroy “a whole civilization” if Iran fails to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by his 8 p.m.

Eastern Time deadline on Tuesday, April 7. This was piled on earlier threats to destroy Iran’s power plants, bridges, and critical infrastructure.

The various proposals to end the conflict are too maximalist to ensure success. The US demands for ending the war have featured some combination of Iran scrapping its enriched uranium stockpile, cutting ties with its proxy militias, ending the Hormuz blockade, and gutting its missile program.

Tehran’s conditions include security guarantees, an end to economic sanctions, and reparations for wartime damages. Since neither side will accept those terms, the result is diplomatic theater, the illusion of progress while the actual war continues and intensifies.

At this stage, instead of chasing an impossible grand bargain, the smarter question is simple: What does each side actually need before it can walk away?

For the United States and Israel, the non-negotiable bottom line is clear—Iran’s nuclear breakout capability must be verifiably and permanently destroyed. The proxies and missiles are secondary.

Even if that goal is reached, nothing is truly fixed. Iran’s nuclear program would be slowed but not stopped. Its proxy network is bloodied but will survive. And Israel, unlike the United States, has no easy exit. It would be left facing a wounded but still dangerous enemy with no American shield.

That’s the massive hole every current proposal ignores. Any deal that actually worked would need ironclad, multilaterally enforced security guarantees—the kind the Budapest Memorandum never delivered for Ukraine. The only powers Tehran might trust more than Washington are China and Russia.

#trump #iran #victory #ceasefire

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Beijing has every reason to step in. China is Iran’s largest oil customer and has invested billions in the country through the Belt and Road Initiative. A nuclear Iran or a never-ending Middle East war would threaten its energy lifelines and trade routes.

Acting as a guarantor would also hand Beijing real leverage over Tehran, Washington, and the entire post-war setup—exactly the kind of great-power play it’s been looking for.

Russia’s motives are narrower but still significant. Iranian drones are helping sustain its Ukraine conflict, but a nuclear-armed Iran creates its own problems in Central Asia and unsettles its partners.

Negotiating a deal would also give Putin something he rarely finds: a convenient way to regain international respect.

A realistic agreement could require Iran to verifiably dismantle its nuclear weapons program, transfer its enriched uranium to a third country, and accept strict international inspections for a limited civilian nuclear program. In return, it would get security assurances and sanctions relief. Proxy militias would be handled separately.

It is not perfect for anyone. Israel would have to drop hopes of regime change. Washington would have to accept commitments that go beyond what Trump likely wants. Tehran would face tougher inspections than under the 2015 deal.

And China and Russia would have to act as honest guarantors, a role neither has ever fully played. But both have practical reasons to make it work rather than watch the region slide into full nuclear chaos.

Still, there is a far simpler path that none of the formal frameworks even considers because it requires no negotiations at all: Trump declares victory and walks away.

Trump has to declare victory at this point. The ingredients are already in place. He can still credibly claim he set Iran’s nuclear program back, destroyed much of its navy and air force, hammered its missile sites, and eliminated key regime figures.

His April 1 speech already laid the groundwork by signaling that the main objectives were nearly met.

Continuing the war is becoming a political liability. Oil prices could push the economy into recession. A missile strike that kills American troops or a hostage situation that drags on could shift public opinion overnight. With negotiations going nowhere, staying in the fight offers only downsides.

Most current diplomatic conversations completely ignore this very real possibility. Instead of facing it head-on, mediators keep chasing an impossible solution. They are missing the most likely outcome:

this war will not be ended by any agreement. It will end when a president decides the story is over.

That is not how wars usually end. But it may be exactly how this one does.

#trump #iran #victory #ceasefire

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France Takes the Hostages. Then Takes the Hint

Paris got its two detainees out of Iran, with Oman playing quiet middleman and Macron calling it a relief for their families. That part is real diplomacy — the kind that works only when everyone pretends the room is less radioactive than it is.

At the same time, Macron did not take on Trump’s threat to erase Iranian civilization in any serious public way. France’s foreign minister said the language was “excessive,” which in diplomatic English is not nothing — but it is also not a line in the sand.

That is the logic here: Paris wanted the French back, and it did not want to pick a fight with Washington while the deal was still alive. Call that prudence if you want. It still looks a lot like fear with better tailoring.

Macron likes to talk about strategic autonomy when the microphones are friendly. But on the hard stuff — Trump’s threats, Iran’s response, the risk of closing doors on future deals — France stays careful, which is just another word for not wanting to pay the price of principle.

So yes, the hostages came home. And yes, Paris kept its head down. That is the bargain. France got the rescue, skipped the confrontation, and called the whole thing diplomacy.

#France #Iran #Macron #Trump #Oman #diplomacy

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A Truce, A Shrug, A New War

The cease-fire is holding just long enough for everyone to declare victory and keep moving the furniture around the room. Trump says he will “work closely with Iran,” Tehran says it won, and the Strait of Hormuz is supposed to reopen while nobody trusts the whole thing for a second.

That is the modern peace deal: a pause with a deadline. Oil is cheaper, stocks are up, and more than 400 ships are still stuck in the Gulf like the war never quite left the dock.

Israel is treating the truce as a permission slip, not a reset. It says the deal does not cover Lebanon, then keeps hammering Hezbollah anyway. So much for the elegant theory that one cease-fire can tidy up three wars and a shipping lane at once.

Both sides claim victory because both sides need the headline more than the settlement. Trump gets his “deal,” Iran gets to say it stood up to Washington, and everyone else gets to live with the usual fine print: fragile, temporary, and one bad hour away from collapse.

A cease-fire that depends on everybody’s self-respect is not much of a cease-fire. It is a timeout with better branding.

#Iran #Trump #ceasefire #Hormuz #MiddleEast

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Brussels as the Villain, Washington as the Guest Star

JD Vance flew to Budapest and did not bother hiding the script. He said the EU was meddling in Hungary’s election while also saying he was there to help Orbán win it. That is not a contradiction in his world. It is the business model.

Vance called Brussels one of the worst examples of foreign election interference he has seen. Fine. But when the vice president of the United States shows up to boost a candidate days before the vote, the “sovereignty” sermon starts sounding like a campaign prop with an American accent.

Washington loves to talk about democracy when someone else is doing the counting. Then it walks into Europe, picks a favorite, and tells everyone else to respect the process. Brussels does its own version of the same thing, which is exactly why the whole lecture is so thin.

Orbán is not just running against Tisza. He is running with two backers in the background — one in Brussels to blame, one in Washington to borrow from. That is the modern nationalist trick: denounce outside interference while cashing in on it.

So yes, the EU interferes. Washington interferes too. The only difference is that one side calls it values, the other calls it sovereignty, and Hungary is the stage where both pretend not to notice the wires.

#Hungary #Orbán #Vance #EU #elections #Washington

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The Negotiations With Iran Went Belly Up. Will the War Re-Start?

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Trump has said the US will begin blockading the strait of Hormuz in an attempt to take control of the strategic waterway from Iran in the aftermath of failed peace negotiations between the countries in Pakistan.

The US president also threatened to bomb Iran’s water treatment facilities, power plants and bridges, repeating an earlier threat, if Tehran does not agree to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, the key sticking point between the two sides.

Trump’s surprise announcement of a blockade came after face-to-face peace negotiations between the US and Iran in Islamabad that lasted 21 hours collapsed on Sunday morning.

Vance said Iran had refused to give up the possibility of developing nuclear weapons, while the Iranian delegates said Washington needed to do more to win their trust.

Risking another increase in oil prices, Trump said he had instructed the US navy to begin “blockading any and all ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” and he accused Iran of extortion with its own scheme of charging tolls to tankers.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards responded by declaring that if any warships approached the strait to enforce a blockade – usually considered an act of war – it would be considered a breach of the current ceasefire and would be dealt with strongly. They insisted the strait remained under Iranian control.

Two US destroyers crossed and recrossed the strait without incident on Saturday, although Iranian media said they were threatened as they left. The US military said it was the start of a mine-clearance mission.

Trump said US warships would “seek and interdict every vessel” that had paid Iran since the start of the conflict and begin de-mining the central section of the strait, previously declared a “hazardous area” by Tehran, although it is unclear how many mines have been laid.

About 100 tankers have transited the strait since the US and Israel started bombing Iran, paying up to $2m each time for passage.

Many were bound for China and India, carrying Iranian oil products, and chasing them down could complicate relations between the US and the importing nations.

#trump #iran #strait #hormuz #vance #blockading

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The US and Iranian delegations left Pakistan soon after the talks ended. Vance said he spoke with Trump at least half a dozen times during the talks, held during a 14-day ceasefire announced by the US, Israel and Iran overnight on 7 and 8 April.

“We need to see an affirmative commitment that [Iran] will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance said.

“That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations.”

Mohammad Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, who led Tehran’s negotiators, said he and his colleagues had offered “constructive initiatives” while the US had been “unable to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations”.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said “excessive” US demands had hindered reaching an agreement, and the foreign ministry said more time was needed.

“Naturally, from the beginning we should not have expected to reach an agreement in a single session,” the ministry’s spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said, according to the state broadcaster IRIB.

Pakistani mediators called on the US and Iran to refrain from renewing hostilities and said they would try to arrange a fresh round of talks.

“It is imperative that the parties continue to uphold their commitment to the ceasefire,” said Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar.

Vance was accompanied by the US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Kushner.

They met Ghalibaf and the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, for several negotiating sessions at the Serena hotel in Islamabad, with Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, also present.

Iran’s delegation arrived on Friday dressed in black in mourning for the late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others killed in the war.

They carried shoes and bags of children killed during the bombing of a school next to a military compound, the Iranian government said.

A Pakistani source said the discussions, the highest-level direct contact between the US and Iran since 1979, were unpredictable in tone.

“There were mood swings from the two sides, and the temperature went up and down during the meeting,” a Pakistani source said after the first round.

Trump said: “The only thing left, really, is their water, which would be very devastating to hit. I would hate to do it, but it’s their water, their desalinisation plans, their electric generating plants, which are very easy to hit.”

The president was asked if gas and oil prices might be lower by the US midterms in November, an indication that attacking Iran was not an economic mistake. Prices “could be the same or maybe a little bit higher,” a non-committal Trump replied.

At the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV called for a ceasefire after his Sunday prayers and said he felt “closer than ever” to Lebanon’s people.

#trump #iran #strait #hormuz #vance #blockading

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Ray Dalio:
The Great Investor On the War in Iran and the Contemporary World

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As a global macro investor for over 50 years who has needed to study all things that affected markets over the last 500 years to know how to deal what’s coming at me, it appears to me that most people tend to focus on and react to the attention-grabbing things that are going on at the time—like what is going on with Iran now—and miss the much bigger, more important, and longer-term-evolving things that are driving what is going on and what is likely to happen. 

For instance, this week, headlines have focused on the recently announced two-week ceasefire of the U.S.-Israel-Iran war. But I believe the conflict in Iran is just one part of a larger potential world war, with countries like China, Russia, and Iran on one side and the United States and countries with U.S. military bases on the other. 

I wish it were not true, but I fear we are entering a world war.

I wish it were not true, but I fear we are entering a world war.

Certainly, what will happen with the Strait of Hormuz (most significantly, whether control of passage through it will be taken away from Iran, and which countries are willing to spend how much blood and treasure to make that happen) will have many enormous repercussions all around the world.

There are also the issues of whether Iran will still have a capacity to inflict harm on its neighbors through missiles and nuclear weapons, of how many troops the U.S. will send to the region, of the cost of gasoline, and of the upcoming U.S. midterm elections.

All these near-term issues are important, but they lead people to miss the really big, even more important things. More specifically, because most people tend to have this short-term perspective, they now expect, and the markets are pricing in, that this war won’t last long, and when it ends, that we will get back to “normal.”

Virtually nobody is talking about the fact that we are in the early stages of a world war that isn’t going to end any time soon. 

Interconnected conflicts
It may sound like hyperbole to say we are in a world war, but it is indisputable that we are now in an interconnected world that has a number of shooting wars going on (e.g., the Ukraine-Russia- Europe-U.S. war; the Israel-Gaza-Lebanon-Syria war; the Yemen-Sudan-Saudi Arabia-UAE war that also involves Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, and other related countries; and the U.S-Israel-GCC-Iran war).

#dalio #iran #trump #nuclear #weapons #military #bases

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Most of these wars involve major nuclear powers, and there are also significant non-shooting wars (i.e., trade, economic, capital, technology, and geopolitical influence wars) that most countries are in. Together, these conflicts make up a very classic world war that is analogous to past “world wars.” 

For example, past “world wars” consisted of interrelated wars that were generally slipped into without any clear start dates or declarations of war. Those examples of both past and current wars combine in a classic world war dynamic that affects them all.

Understanding how the sides are lining up and what their relationships are is very important. 

It is quite easy to see objectively how the sides are lining up via indicators such as their treaties and formal alliances, their votes at the U.N., their leaders’ statements, and their actions. For example, one can see how China is aligned with Russia and Russia is aligned with Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela, and how that group is largely opposed to the United States, Ukraine, most European countries, Israel, the GCC states, Japan, and Australia. 

These alliances matter a lot in imagining how things will go for the relevant players, so they need to be considered when observing what’s going on and what’s likely to happen.

For example, we see that reflected in China’s and Russia’s votes at the U.N. on Iran needing to open the Strait of Hormuz.

Similarly, while it’s said that China is particularly harmed by the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, that is wrong because China’s mutually supportive relationship with Iran will probably allow oil going to China to get through. Plus, China’s relationship with Russia will ensure China gets oil from Russia.

China also has a lot of other energy (coal and solar), and it has a huge inventory of oil. Also noteworthy is that China consumes between 80% and 90% of Iran’s oil output, which adds to the power of its relationship with Iran.

All things considered, it appears that China and Russia are the relative economic and geopolitical winners from this war. Though to be sure, the United States is relatively advantaged in terms of global energy economics, because it is in the enviable position of being an energy exporter.

Studying history is immensely valuable to me and helps me contextualize current events.

For example, both an examination of several analogous cases in history and logic make it obvious that how the United States (the dominant power of the post-1945 world order) performs in the war with Iran (a middle power), how much money and military equipment it expends and depletes itself of, and how well it defends (or doesn’t defend) its allies will be watched by other nations and will enormously influence how the world order changes.

Most importantly, we know that what happens in the war with Iran will have huge implications for what other countries (most importantly, those in Asia and Europe) will do, which will have big implications for how the world order will change. 

#dalio #iran #trump #nuclear #weapons #military #bases

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These changes will come in ways that have repeatedly happened before. For example, from studying history, it’s easy to identify over-extended empires, develop indicators for how overextended they are, and see how overextended empires have suffered from being overextended.

In looking at what is happening now, it is natural to examine what is happening with the U.S., which now has 750–800 foreign military bases in 70–80 countries (site note: China only has 1) and has commitments that create expensive vulnerabilities all over the world.

To be sure, there is nothing precise about these indicators, the picture they paint, or the exact timing. For example, history has taught us that wars don’t always have definitive start dates with big military events followed by clear declarations of war.

The Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the German invasion of Poland, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor are actually the exceptions. Economic, financial, and military conflicts typically arise before there are clearly declared wars. 

Historically, major wars were typically preceded by developments and indicators like military stockpiles and monies being drawn down; budgets, debts, money printing, and capital controls being built up; rival countries observing the countries fighting and learning what their strengths and weaknesses are; and the overextended leading world power facing the challenge of trying to fight wars on different fronts that are very far apart.

These factors all matter, and my measures of them indicate that we should be concerned. 
The classic dynamic at this stage is for conflicts to intensify rather than subside, so what happens next will be influenced by how the U.S.-Iran war goes.

For example, there is already less confidence among some countries that the U.S. will defend them, which, when combined with the recognition that nuclear weapons are a great defensive as well as offensive power, is leading to more talk among countries’ senior policy makers about obtaining nuclear weapons and building up their stockpiles of them and other weapons, particularly missiles and missile defense systems.  

#dalio #iran #trump #nuclear #weapons #military #bases

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Hormuz First, Russian Oil Still Flows

Washington is turning the Gulf into a checkpoint and calling it enforcement. After the talks in Islamabad failed, Trump announced a U.S. naval blockade targeting ships entering or leaving Iranian ports, while saying traffic to other Gulf ports can still pass through Hormuz. So this is not a full closure of the strait. It is selective pressure backed by U.S. firepower.

Trump, in typical fashion, said any vessel that pays Iran an “illegal toll” should not expect safe passage. Oil markets reacted immediately. U.S. crude rose about 8% to $104.24, and Brent climbed 7% to $102.29. The message was simple: shipping through the Gulf now carries a war premium.

Then the contradiction appears. On March 12, the Treasury issued a 30-day waiver allowing some Russian oil to keep flowing through April 11, partly to limit market disruption during the Iran war. Reuters then reported that the White House was likely to extend the waiver because rising oil prices were becoming a domestic political problem.

So the same administration threatening to intercept ships over payments to Iran is still keeping Russian barrels on the market. Tehran gets threats. Moscow gets waivers. Principle holds until gas prices rise.

That is the real hierarchy. Washington is not applying one rule. It is managing exceptions. And who gets squeezed depends less on the offense than on whether the White House can absorb higher oil prices this cycle.

#Hormuz #Iran #Trump #Russia #oil #sanctions #geopolitics

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#robert #pipe #unitedstates #iran #war

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#mirsheimer #trump #desperate #unitedstates

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#kallas #us #middle #east

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Hormuz for Show, Russian Oil for Real

Washington says it is policing the Gulf. In practice, it is policing Iran and cushioning Russia.

After the Pakistan talks failed, Trump announced a U.S. naval blockade targeting ships entering or leaving Iranian ports, while allowing traffic to other Gulf ports to keep moving through Hormuz. So this is not a full shutdown of the strait. It is a selective squeeze.

Trump said any ship that pays Iran an “illegal toll” should not expect safe passage. Oil markets heard the point immediately. U.S. crude jumped about 8% to $104.24, while Brent rose about 7% to $102.29. Shipping through the Gulf now comes with a war premium.

Now the useful hypocrisy. The U.S. waiver allowing purchases of some Russian oil loaded by March 12 ran through midnight Washington time on April 11. Reuters reported on April 10 that the administration was likely to extend it, because higher fuel prices were becoming a political problem at home.

Kyiv Independent went further and said Russia’s daily oil export revenues had doubled after the war with Iran began. Whether that exact figure holds or not, the direction is obvious enough: the Hormuz shock lifted prices, and Washington had little appetite for pulling Russian barrels off the market at the same time.

So Tehran gets threats. Moscow gets flexibility. The White House talks like a navy and prices like a gas station. Sanctions expire on paper, then survive in practice when the pump starts mattering more than the doctrine.

#Hormuz #Iran #Russia #Trump #oil #sanctions #geopolitics

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Lufthansa’s Labor Budget Airline

Lufthansa pilots are striking again on April 13 and 14, with the walkout covering Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cargo, and Lufthansa CityLine. Eurowings pilots are also set to strike on April 13. Flights to several Middle Eastern destinations are exempt.

The dispute is over pensions, not some grand civilizational question. The union says management has dragged out talks and offered nothing serious, even after pilots held off over Easter. Lufthansa says the demands are unrealistic and amount to doubling an already generous pension plan.

That leaves the usual European corporate script. Management pleads poverty. Labor calls the bluff. Passengers get drafted into the negotiation as unpaid extras. Lufthansa says the strike is a new escalation. The union says escalation is what happens when talks become theater.

This is already the airline’s latest labor hit in a string of disruptions this year, as Lufthansa tries to cut costs and protect margins while unions keep pushing back on pensions, staffing terms, and restructuring. Europe’s flagship carriers still know how to fund strategy decks and corporate redesigns. Keeping their own workforce onside is where the math suddenly gets tight.

#Lufthansa #Germany #strike #aviation #labor #Europe

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Sanctions Didn’t Break Iran. They Taught It Accounting.

For years, Washington sold sanctions as economic suffocation. What they actually built was a parallel trade machine. Iran has traded with more than 170 countries since 2019, shifted harder toward China, its neighbors, and Asian markets, and exported more than $120 billion in non-oil goods over that stretch, according to the New York Times’s analysis of Harvard trade data.

China is the main shock absorber. In 2024, it bought about 90% of Iran’s oil exports, paid in renminbi, and helped keep trade moving outside the dollar system and outside U.S. banking pressure. That is not sanction evasion as a side effect. That is a business model with state backing.

The more interesting part is not oil. It is everything sanctions were supposed to stop and instead reorganized. Iran diversified into chemicals, metals, construction materials, food products, pharmaceuticals, electronics, and a large non-oil export mix running through Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, Central Asia, and beyond. Shell companies, frontmen, barter, non-Iranian banks, rerouted shipments — the sanctioned state did what sanctioned states do: it professionalized opacity.

Then came the war, and the fairy tale collapsed again. The same Iran that was supposed to be isolated still had enough economic weight to help push oil above $100, threaten China’s supply chain, and remind everyone that a country can be half-bombed, half-blockaded, and still remain expensive to destroy.

That is the real scandal. Sanctions did damage Iran. Inflation, unemployment, shortages, and unrest were real. But sanctions also taught Tehran how to live without Western approval, how to route around the financial system, and how to make globalization serve the blacklist. The West called it pressure. Iran treated it as a forced MBA.

#Iran #sanctions #China #oil #trade #geopolitics

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Jeffrey Sachs: “Trump Will Attack Iran Within Two Weeks”

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The US blockade of ships using Iranian ports in the Gulf has come into force, turning the six-week-old conflict between the US-Israeli coalition and Iran into a test of economic endurance.

The US Central Command (Centcom) has not made any official announcement of the start of the blockade, but had said that it would begin on Monday at 17:30 Iranian time and would apply to all ships entering or leaving Iranian ports or coastal areas, while ships using non-Iranian ports would not be hindered.

Trump claimed that 34 ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Gulf, on Sunday, but there was no evidence to support this claim. Speaking to reporters at the White House, the president also affirmed “We have been called by the other party”, which, according to him“ "would very badly like to conclude an agreement".

Throughout the conflict, which began with a US-Israeli attack on February 28, Trump has frequently claimed that Tehran has been in direct contact, desperately seeking an agreement, but these claims have never been substantiated.

Iran warned that ordinary Americans would pay the cost of Trump's latest decision in the form of higher gasoline prices, and also vowed that if the United States started bombing again, the Tehran regime was ready to retaliate.

For his part, Trump said that any Iranian attack boat approaching the American flotilla in the region would be "immediately eliminated". The American political analyst Jeff Sachs says that “Trump will attack Iran within two weeks.”

It appeared on Monday that the US naval forces would try to enforce the blockade east of the Strait of Hormuz, in the Gulf of Oman, beyond the easy range of Iranian missiles and drones. It was still unclear how Centcom intended to stop any oil tanker trying to break the blockade.

A missile attack could cause an environmental catastrophe, leaving open the possibility that American forces would seek to board and take control of any ship that did not obey American instructions.

Trump said that all Iranian "fast attack ships“ would be eliminated if they approached American ships enforcing the blockade with ”the same killing system" that the United States used to sink almost 50 small boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific.

They killed at that time at least 168 people who, according to him, without evidence, were involved in drug trafficking.

#trump #blockade #iran #hormuz #detroit

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Trump ordered the blockade following the US-Iran talks in Islamabad that ended after 21 hours without an agreement.

The tactic is aimed at strangling Iran's heavily oil-dependent economy and forcing Tehran to respond to US demands to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ships from the ports of the Gulf allies and accept a complete ban on uranium enrichment.

Miad Maleki, a former US Treasury official now at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said on Twitter that the US naval blockade would cost Iran about $276 million per day in lost exports and disrupt $159 million per day in imports – representing a combined economic damage of $13 billion per month.

Mohammad Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament who also headed his country's delegation in Islamabad, told the Americans on Sunday in an article on X to “take advantage of the current figures at the pump", taunting Washington with a historical political sensitivity of the United States on gasoline prices.

“With the so-called 'blockade', you will soon have nostalgia for gasoline at 4 or 5 dollars,” Ghalibaf added.

The current average price of gasoline in the United States is $4.13 per gallon, compared to $2.98 before the United States and Israel launched the war against Iran on February 28.

He conceded Sunday that gasoline prices could be the same as today or higher when the nation votes in the congressional elections, telling Fox News that they could go “a little higher.”

Trump had reacted angrily to the criticism of the American-born pope over the administration's use of religious language to justify its war in Iran.

He called him “weak on crime“ and ”terrible for foreign policy," and published an AI-generated image of himself as a Christ figure caring for the sick, an image widely condemned as blasphemous.

On Monday, Trump claimed that the image (dressed in loose red and white dresses and the light emanating from his hands) was intended to present him as “a doctor".

Iranian President Pezeshkian spoke out on Monday against what he called the "desecration of Jesus".

“I condemn the insult to Your Excellency in the name of the great Iranian nation and declare that the desecration of Jesus, the prophet of peace and brotherhood, is not acceptable to any free person.”

The Pope told reporters on Monday that he had “no intention of debating” with Trump on Iran and added that he would “continue to speak out loudly against war, seeking to promote peace, to promote dialogue and multilateral relations between states to seek just solutions to problems”.

The US-Israeli bombing of Iran has ceased under a two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan, which began on Wednesday. Trump said that US forces remain "locked and loaded" and ready to ”finish off what little is left of Iran".

Trump's claims that other countries would help enforce the US blockade, none came forward.

Starmer was adamant that his country did not support the blockade and that “we will not allow ourselves to be dragged into the war”.

Macron, meanwhile, said Paris would hold a conference with the UK and other countries to create a multinational mission to restore navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, but made it clear that this would come after the conflict.

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