Abbas Araghchi was expected in Islamabad on Friday evening for weekend negotiations brokered by Pakistani strongman Asim Munir.
If he shows up without Bagher Ghalibaf, we’ll know the rumors were true: Ghalibaf was unable, despite his IRGC bona fides, to claim for himself sufficient authority to override the obstructionist tendencies of Guards chief Ahmad Vahidi.
Araghchi, one assumes, is likewise hamstrung in his capacity to negotiate beyond Vahidi’s red lines. According to CNN, the Pentagon’s developing options for Donald Trump to consider in the event the Guards persist in blocking a deal. One of those options, sources said, is assassinating Vahidi.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the US would dispatch its own delegation to meet Araghchi who, after leaving Islamabad, will travel to Russia and Oman, not necessarily in that order, for what Iranian state media called “bilateral consultations.”
Presumably, the first order of business for Araghchi in Pakistan will be to establish terms for ending the stalemate that’s snarled traffic in the Strait of Hormuz during a ceasefire marred by reciprocal piracy. Pete Hegseth — who’s now giving press access to TMZ — said Friday that the blockade of Iranian ports will continue “for as long as it takes.”
Reports, as well as official rhetoric, indicate the IDF’s more than ready to assist in the event the Pentagon decides Vahidi has to go, or that the US Navy needs to begin targeting the IRGC’s “fleet” of small gunboats and mine-laying vessels.
In the interim, Israel agreed to extend its own quasi-ceasefire with Hezbollah, which a spokesman for the group called “meaningless” given ongoing IDF strikes against the pitiful remnants of what, less than two years ago, was still the most powerful non-state military actor on the planet.
As one Lebanese local put it, in remarks to The New York Times, “Ceasefire? What ceasefire while drones are still hovering above us and we are still losing our men? We don’t want a ceasefire. We want this war to be over, and we want our land back.”
Meanwhile, market participants, macro watchers, energy traders and everyone with any claim to expertise on the medium-term ramifications of what’s now a two-month closure of the world’s most important maritime energy chokepoint, continue to fret about a coming physical crunch.
“Molecules are still not flowing freely through the Strait of Hormuz,” SocGen’s Wei Yao wrote. “With each passing day, inventory buffers are being depleted, and the question shifts further away from price and towards physical constraint: What happens if oil supply becomes a hard limit rather than simply a more expensive input?”
In response to one of TMZ’s questions on Friday, Hegseth said the US military “should win the Nobel Peace Prize every single year.” In an effort to square that with Trump’s decision to rename the institution Hegseth leads, he said, “You go from ‘Defense’ to ‘War’ because you want to be proactive about peace through strength.”
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
– 1984, George Orwell
To your point, everything this government says becomes hyperbolic at some point. If you can’t laugh then what else can you do?
Hegseth is flailing. I don’t think he’s next on the cabinet cleaning list but he acts like he knows he’s on it.
I guess the question now is whether the blockade will “work” on Iran and how long it will take.
The US has a long history of being surprised when economic pressure fails to break an adversary. In Iran’s case, forty years of history.
I looked back to see what level of oil revenue the regime has endured. In 2020, Iran exported 400K bbl/day and Brent was $40/bbl, call it $16MM/day. At $100 Brent, Iran needs about 160K bbl/day to get $16MM/day, or one VLCC tanker every 12 days. And oil will go higher, physical higher yet.
Iran can surely get a tanker’s worth through every 10-ish days? The blockade is leaky. Iran can flood the zone, do ship-to-ship, move oil overland, use its Casipan oil terminal. Iran also has est 176MM bbl in tankers that have already left the Gulf, 176MM / 160K = 1,100 days. Plus, Iran still controls the SoH, $1/bbl is $2MM per VLCC, tolling 12 ships/day is $16MM/day, no Iranian oil needed. And Iran is not “just oil”, exports are ~25% of GDP, forty years as an international pariah have built a pretty self-sufficient economy.
How much pain can the regime tolerate? Maybe more than the rich businessmen negotiating against them can imagine. If you told Jared Kushner that you were going to kill his whole family, wipe out his fortune, and destroy all his properties, he’d cave in – but he’s not negotiating with himself.
How long until the US figures this and moves on to the next idea?
I don’t know how this can happen, but the Iranian people need to rise up.
Lay claim to at least some of the Iranian oil proceeds and rebuild their Persian culture and society, that were squashed and squandered by “The Regime”.
Nice idea, but I don’t think they have enough automatic weapons and those bloodthirsty guards sort of like killing civilians.
I see Jared and the real estate guy are supposedly traveling to Islamabad for peace talks with the Iranian delegation, but no indication there is an Iranian delegation going there . . . just the powerless FM. Oh, of course – its a Friday.
The WH insists that Jared/Steve are meeting with the Iranian delegation on Sunday, Trump says Iran gave him a new proposal, Iran’s FM says he is not meeting with the US this weekend, WH says the people they are negotiating with are the people in charge . . . seriously, what is going on. It’s like “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with all the characters falling asleep and waking up not knowing where they’ve been while the fairies play tricks on everyone. Or, as T-Dog said, some Lewis Carroll story.
No w
JL – Isn’t this a 7D chess strategy?
It’s like reducing drug prices by 600%!
“You go from ‘Defense’ to ‘War’ because you want to be proactive about peace through strength.”
I think the Mad Hatter said that at the tea party in “Alice in Wonderland,” no? It made my head spin. My wife cackled like a hen when I read it to her.
And I thought war and peace were mutually exclusive conditions of state, silly me.