This week’s summary of the situation is in spoiler tags below:
preamble
Diplomacy between Iran and the US has begun in… perhaps not earnest, but it’s certainly started. Iran’s very reasonable requirement that the Zionist occupation stop ethnically cleansing Lebanon and withdraw has caused a great deal of consternation throughout their population, and several analysts have suggested that Netanyahu being forced to accept Trump’s (and therefore Iran’s) demands spells the end of his leadership in the coming elections; then, the occupation is expected to “mellow out” and the conflicts and genocides slow and stop. This view is only really impactful if you believe that, rather than the US and Zionists being in a strongly mutually beneficial relationship based on geopolitical, financial, and clandestine goals, that instead Netanyahu is a devious mastermind bending any and all in the US to his whims. I don’t believe this; and, if anything, the events of at least the last three years prove that he’s really quite stupid, with “Israel” being in its worst position in decades under his rule.
Nonetheless, Iran has made the issue of Lebanon a not-quite-red-line (an orange line?). It hasn’t stopped them from going to Switzerland and beginning negotiations, but they still want to strongly express their discontent by harnessing the newfound superweapon that is Hormuz. Similarly, threats by Trump and others to restart the war if Iran doesn’t bend to their whims have been met with formal stoppages of negotiations, but it appears technical teams are still talking to each other and working things out. Trump’s threats are fairly idle at this point because most in the US military must know that there’s essentially zero effective military actions left to them with their current munition stockpiles.
Trump let slip that the US has about 3-4 weeks of oil reserves left, which aligns moderately well with the projections of analysts like Yves at Naked Capitalism (it’s now expected in late July rather than early July as was originally forecasted months ago). This means that even if the negotiation process goes off without a hitch, that there’s going to be a period of at least a few weeks where the US is out of reserves but is waiting for new shipments of oil to physically traverse the distance between Hormuz and the US continent. And many analysts have pointed out that it’s going to be a long time - at least a few months, and perhaps more like 9 to 12 - before Hormuz flows pick up to pre-war levels, due to logistics companies and insurance companies wanting to be sure that their property isn’t going to be blown up mid-transit. Regardless, the fact that the timetable is now so tight could indicate that the Trump admin has finally realized that it cannot outbluff and outwait Iran, and will give them a good deal out of necessity, even if this means forcing their unsinkable aircraft carrier to stop bombing children for five consecutive minutes.
However, there is a palpable anxiety throughout Iran right now, especially due to controversy over the degree to which Khamenei actually agreed with the current course of events. This does seem to be confirmed by his wording (to paraphrase): “In principle, I took a different view, but allowed the President to proceed.” Many inside Iran now have more fear that their politicians will not push hard enough for a good deal than that they’ll return to war, with all that may imply. This isn’t an unfounded fear, especially given how suddenly the 12 Day War ended despite Iran’s strengths being medium-and-long-term attrition (now confirmed by this latest war). This is one of those events that reveals how the Supreme Leader in fact doesn’t have complete dictatorial power unlike how he’s conceived of in much of the West, and that even during existential wars, major concessions have to be made to democratically elected leaders. Though, this could also be a clever move to shift blame explicitly onto the Reformist elements if the deal collapses.
Last week’s thread is here.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists’ destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Sonar21 - Larry Johnson - Even If the Strait of Hormuz is Open, it Ain’t Open
The US is running out of jet fuel needed for military operations.
Article:
It is open. Nope, it is closed. Wait… It is open. What? Closed again? If you are following the media reports on the Strait of Hormuz you are probably dizzy from hearing about the changing status of the Strait of Hormuz. If you think that getting a firm agreement between Iran and the US to open the Strait of Hormuz will result in an instant solution to restoring global oil reserves, think again.
Even if Iran agrees to a 60-day moratorium on charging ships entering and leaving the Persian Gulf a “usage fee” (Trump calls it a “toll”), and the moratorium starts this week, the world still faces some serious economic shocks from the disruption of Crude Oil and LNG. Crude Oil and LNG production will take time to ramp back up to the pre-Ramadan War levels. We still do not have a full assessment of the damage to the Oil and LNG infrastructure in the Gulf nations. Even if all those systems are intact and functioning — they are not — there is still the problem of having the tankers that carry the Black Gold ready to take the shipments.
The tankers, aka ships, that have been sitting idle in the warm, salty waters of the Persian Gulf for four months face months of the maintenance recovery cycle before they will be ready to get back to the task of hauling oil and LNG. An expert in this field explained it to me this way:
Besides the delay in getting tankers back on the high seas, there is the problem of the Middle-Distillate Inflection Point. What the hell is that? As you can see in the image at the top of this article, a barrel of oil is not like a can of Coca Cola, i.e., a consistent liquid from the top to the bottom of the can. A barrel of Oil consists of segments, with the middle-distillate portion of the barrel providing the raw material from which both diesel and jet fuel are derived. That segment is the critical fuel for the real economy because diesel runs freight, rail, agriculture, construction, and distribution, while jet fuel supports both civil aviation and military air operations.
The structural constraint at the heart of the current energy crunch is the refinery barrel itself. Military jet fuel (JP-8) and civilian diesel are not refined from separate barrels — they compete for the same distillate cut from every barrel processed. So if Trump orders the Pentagon to start bombing Iran again, that will trigger draw downs on stocks — assuming the ops tempo in the Gulf is sustained — and refiners will face pressure to tilt output toward JP-8, which directly squeezes the supply of diesel and civil aviation fuel. In other words, there is no free barrel; every gallon of military fuel is a gallon not available to a trucking company, a farmer, or an airline.
Of all the downstream effects, diesel tightness is the most economically dangerous and the fastest-moving. Unlike gasoline, which is a consumer cost, diesel is an input cost — embedded in every freight shipment, every food delivery, every industrial process. When diesel tightens, the price increase doesn’t stop at the pump; it cascades through supply chains and lands simultaneously on freight rates, grocery prices, manufacturing margins, and retail costs. That kind of broad-based input inflation is one of the more reliable causes of recession, because it compresses margins economy-wide while simultaneously suppressing consumer purchasing power.
This helps explain why Donald Trump pivoted so quick to support the MoU with Iran. The real allocation question is not whether to release the SPR or whether to jawbone OPEC into producing more — it is how hard to run the war. Every incremental increase in operational intensity consumes distillate that the domestic economy cannot easily replace, tightening a transmission belt that runs directly from the Strait of Hormuz into Main Street prices. The tradeoff between war intensity and economic stability is not an abstract strategic concern; it is a daily refinery scheduling decision with macroeconomic consequences.
Here is the problem: currently, the US has approximately a 30-day supply of diesel. It is estimated that somewhere between 8% (VLCC class alone) and a figure approaching 15–20% of the broader crude and product tanker fleet is either stranded or effectively withdrawn from global circulation — a supply shock to shipping capacity that compounds the underlying oil supply disruption. This means there is no ready, quick solution to fill that gap in 30 days. In fact, the delay to restore the US supply of diesel could last as long as 60 days. In short, oil is not going to flow fast enough globally to meet existing demand, which probably accounts for Trump sudden decision last week to sign the MoU with Iran. A knowledgeable expert who provided me with this information believes that we will hit the wall of diesel shortage in July.
How’s that for cheery news?
One of my friends mentioned they’ve noticed lots of gas pumps in the area are out of service this week, while the diesel part of those pumps is still working. Curious if this is unrelated to the shortages or if they are starting to have local effects due to strains on logistics. Alternatively, it could just be something like some gas stations expecting prices to continue to go down and not wanting to buy more at higher prices than they have to. Or a total coincidence/humans noticing patterns when there isn’t one.