“The deadliest poisons don’t kill you fast. They keep you alive just long enough to call the sickness normal.” -- Mark Twain
Iran and some Gulf states are formally meeting in order to push and finalize an Iran+Oman-backed deal and framework for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, coming at the end of a week where multiple tankers have been attacked, including unprecedented US strikes on an Iranian civilian vessel.
Supertanker rates on the Baltic Exchange's benchmark Middle East-to-China shipping route have surged to a staggering $800,000 a day. With US forces having destroyed five Iranian-linked tankers and Tehran threatening further escalation in recent days, prospects for near-term stabilization remain limited.
The freight surge signals that crude oil and refined products continue to flow but are becoming increasingly costly to transport out of the Gulf region to global markets.
responsiblestatescraft.org
While it is somewhat cliche to say that the “whole world changed” after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, it does not detract from the reality of the statement. In numerous tangible ways, the culture, security, and politics of the nation were never the same after al-Qaida hijackers in passenger planes left nearly 3,000 people dead in smoldering ruins across lower Manhattan, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Update(1815ET): While unconfirmed, this would mark a huge escalation of the Houthi entry into what's been creeping all summer into a regional war:
Yemen's armed forces targeted Saudi Arabia's East-West oil pipeline; satellite data shows fires at six points along the route that transports crude oil from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. (IRIB News)
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., breakingdefense.com
by John H. & Nisha Whitehead
Days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11, President Trump flooded his Truth Social account with AI-generated fantasies of himself commanding armies of giant, red-eyed robots.
Dave DeCamp, antiwar.com
More than 100 US military advisers are in Saudi Arabia assisting Riyadh with intelligence and targeting support for its renewed war in Yemen, CNN reported on Thursday.
One of CNN’s sources, an unnamed US official, put the number of US troops assisting in the effort at 200 and said they were part of a new joint task force that was formed in recent weeks as the war in Yemen began to escalate.
by Norman Solomon, antiwar.com
Brent crude futures traded above $102 a barrel Thursday morning after Iran threatened to intensify attacks, renewing concerns over tanker flows through the Hormuz maritime chokepoint. The supply risk extends well beyond crude to mounting shortages of refined products, particularly diesel, as the US diesel crack spread trades around $102 a barrel.
by Tyler Durden
Readers are familiar by now with the broad-based commodity rally, with energy, agricultural products and metals moving sharply higher as former Goldman Sachs commodities head Jeff Currie warned this summer of growing scarcity in the physical economy.
The Bloomberg Commodity Index has climbed to levels last seen in 2012...