Image is an illustration that I have made to show what each side means when they say that Hormuz is "open" or "closed", as various officials and analysts have created a lot of confusion with their statements, both intentionally and unintentionally.
I'm tentatively going back to the weekly thread format in the hopes that even if/when the conflict resumes, daily comment counts will keep us at or below ~3000 per week. If not, we'll just go back to the 3000 comment threshold being what triggers a new thread being created.
The events of the last two weeks have been the most unintelligible of at least the last four years, and on some days I took one look at the situation and decided to just not even bother and do something else until the next day.
To attempt to summarize:
long summary
Against many people's expectations, including my own, the ceasefire was not immediately scuttled upon its inception despite violations (predominantly against Lebanon), which indicates to me that both the US and Iran wanted a ceasefire more than they wanted to continue firing, at least for two weeks. For both sides, it represented an opportunity to reorganize, rebuild, and restrategize going forward.
The US has continued its rapid flurry of airlifting to and from the Middle East, and while what exactly they have brought and intend to do next is a mystery, airlifting is a very inefficient method of transferring resources en masse, meaning that any kind of massive ground invasion is still many months away (though I still strongly doubt it'll ever happen). Attempting to do more raids like the failed Istafan raid seems like the most likely option, as well as perhaps some disastrous attempts to hold Gulf islands.
Meanwhile, Iran has been excavating the entrances to their missile cities and has rapidly rebuilt bridges and railway lines. While the rate of reconstruction has shocked some observers, people like us who have paid abnormally high attention to the Ukraine War will not be surprised - infrastructure is very difficult to take out for any meaningful length of time even when it's not purposefully decentralized. It also seems extremely likely that Iran has continued to receive shipments of resources and weapons from Russia and China, though what exactly is being supplied is not concretely known.
Iran sent a highly qualified team to Pakistan to negotiate, and the US sent, among others, Vice President Vance too. After a marathon ~20 hour session, no deal was struck, and both sides left Pakistan (the Iranian team taking many precautions to not get shot down). While the nuclear issue seemed to be the major sticking point, it is very difficult to see the US - and Trump in particular - formally agreeing to a tollbooth in Hormuz or the retreat from their Middle Eastern bases even if they have already effectively retreated from most of them.
These negotiations took place in an environment of constant violations of the ceasefire on the Lebanon front. Iran initially tied their attendance of talks to a total cessation of conflict in Lebanon, though ultimately decided to go to Islamabad without a de facto ceasefire but with some sort of guarantee that we'll go tell Netanyahu to stop firing for a while. A few days after the negotiations failed, a more comprehensive ceasefire was actually achieved in Lebanon. It's still a Zionist Ceasefire ("you cease fire, we keep attacking"), and the Zionists committed several massive civilian atrocities just before the ceasefire began. After the ceasefire began, violations have, to my knowledge, been remarkably few up to the time of me writing this.
Shortly after the failure of negotiations, the US began their own blockade of Iran's ports. As the US Navy cannot get within a few hundred miles of even the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz, the blockade is taking place at some line in the Sea of Oman, where Iranian ships will be intercepted. The confusion caused by this situation has been incredible, with a few days of people tracking Iranian tankers closely, concluding that if they had crossed the Strait of Hormuz, they had successfully ran the blockade (they had not). After about a week of this de jure blockade, it was indeed confirmed to be real when the US captured its first Iranian oil tanker. This prompted Iran to fully close the Strait of Hormuz (see the megathread image), and there are reports of, as always, at best questionable veracity that in response to the US's blockade of their blockade, Iran possibly intends to 1) totally blockade Gulf State ports in the Persian Gulf of any kind, not just oil, and/or 2) talk to their ally Ansarallah and have them blockade the Red Sea (and they seem keen to do so in support of the Resistance).
Additionally, Iran has made the end of the US blockade the precondition to enter into new negotiations. The short term and even medium term effect of the US blockade will be minimal - China has a colossal strategic petroleum reserve which will last them several months even with their economy at full steam even assuming all Middle Eastern imports are cut off overnight, and Iran itself is not wholly reliant on oil exports for basic survival like other oil states (though it'll certainly hurt the economy if prolonged). There are also certain ways that the blockade can be subverted, like potentially some advanced shadow fleet tactics with the cooperation of allied countries, or, in the long term, the construction of overland oil transportation routes (a significant railway route was constructed in the last few years between Iran and China).
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
From yesterday (20th): although Larry Johnson has not watched Medhurst's video yet, he has apparently heard of it. Johnson says he disagrees with the idea that this war will strengthen the petrodollar. (More bluntly, he says "Dude, what are you smoking.")
It's not exactly a rebuttal (just a flippant aside), but it's at least interesting that, at some point, when he heard "A journalist has argued that this war could actually strengthen the petrodollar," apparently no scenario popped into his head that he thought was credible.
Timestamp is 33:58 https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=aUIRaWUtgTA
I think Johnson is not impressed with US threats to blockade shipping at a distance, at least at this stage. Last week on Diesen's show he said the US needs to use helicopters to interdict ships, because the US lacks the political ability to threaten to sink cargo ships at sea (*or more accurately is not ready to escalate that far yet), and therefore the ships would call their bluff. If that premise holds, it raises the issue that a carrier with helicopters can only cover so much area at sea, and then there are issues on top of that like maintenance strain on the aircraft, etc.
Timestamp is 3:08 https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=78osgairBb4
I guess, by that reasoning, the central question becomes, would the US open fire on cargo ships belonging to third parties? And if so, what would happen?
Russia and China can always threaten to sink ships headed for US ports with their subs. And in a race between US subs sinking tankers and Russian/Chinese subs sinking tankers, the US will lose because Russia and China have more subs, are able to build subs faster, and are able to replace tankers faster as well.
Medhurst's video and tweets imply this (he's under heavy surveillance by the British state who thinks he's a member of Hamas despite being a Syrian-British Christian so he understandably can't just say "Russia and China should start sinking ships lol"). The counterplay is for the AoR to go after US-owned oil and gas refineries and for Russia and China to go after ships headed for US ports. His video and subsequent tweets stress that the way out is a military solution, not a diplomatic or economic one.
https://xcancel.com/richimedhurst/status/2043525832950346213
https://xcancel.com/richimedhurst/status/2044339723527725331
For me it's a question of timing -- Medhurst's thesis is that US piracy could cause durable capital flight to the US. That requires a sufficiently long period of time in which the US has the energy market cornered. But a symmetrical blockade by both sides would not corner the market for anyone. So there would have to be an initial period of asymmetry, and that initial period would have to be long enough to trigger capital flight -- presumably, long enough for industries to collapse or atrophy (is that wrong?). Sincere non-rhetorical question, is this plausible?
I do not think so. The period of asymmetry probably won't even last a year before Russia and China threaten or begin sinking tankers as well.
Have you known China to act in a quick and decisive manner on foreign policy?
Not in this century, but they are visibly building up their military as fast as they can. If someone tells them "You can't have oil anymore unless you stop the BRI and submit to vassalage," maybe that would be their red line.
That guy is CIA. I don't care what he thinks on a matter like this where his and the agencies interest are to downplay any intelligent plans for imperialism now and into the future. And not the deep part of the CIA either. Lots of libs and centrists in the CIA who only see the above board parts not the permanent state part which would be responsible for this kind of planning. Heck a lot of that might be outsourced to private companies and think tanks these days.
As to lacking the ability. I really doubt civilians sailors are going to defy the US. I just don't see it happening given who those crews are. Maybe China could pull an emergency lever and get some amount of sailors (remember you can't just create experienced sailors out of party cadres, it takes training, education, etc to be crew on these ships) who are disciplined but I'm not sure that's a short time viable thing.
Anyways we're talking the hospital bombing US, the in cahoots with child murdering zionazis USA. No one serious doubts their ability to commit civilian murders when needed to advance their interests and sometimes even when not.
Absurd statement tbh. US has to only make it impossible for ships to be insured and act against the US blockade. They have a lot of levers they can lean on to ensure all western insurance carriers drop the entire shipping company if a single one of their ships defies the US and that's game over for any legit company. Yeah you have Russian "shadow fleet" types but how many really are there available to operate down there considering they're mostly busy ferrying Russian oil already.
This already happened with the Bella 1 tanker around Venezuela. Now, how many sailors would be willing to do that is a different question. But at a certain point, thing could well get economically desperate enough that more and more ships start going for it - plenty of migrants to the US die en-route in the Central American jungle or get captured and brutalized by ICE once in the US, but migration continues, because people are desperate. Brutality can be an effective tool to deter people sometimes, but not as often as the ghouls implementing it would like to think, as history has shown on numerous occasions.
The problem isn't with the morality of murdering sailors, but with the economic effect of openly attacking international shipping. The global markets are amoral and don't give a shit about children being murdered - but they do give a shit about profits, and the entire industry functions on the principle of sailing international waters being safe - if companies have to start pricing in "we might get shot at by the US Navy", that's obviously going to have pretty chilling effects.
The Trump administration has clearly shown itself to be a very business-conscious one, to the point of timing announcements around the market. But then again, they did have a destroyer disable a ship by shooting its engine compartment (which gets around the helicopter boarding troubles), so I guess maybe they just don't give a shit. But collapsing international shipping is hardly a win for the US empire.
The Russian shadow fleet's size is difficult to estimate, on account of the shadow part, but it seems to be pretty big and growing. And it's not exactly even "Russian" at this point - it's just an entire parallel shipping industry, involving ships from a variety of countries. Extending sanctions further and further is just going to drive more and more ships into this parallel system - and this is also an industry known for getting up to lots of shady shit, which is what all the "shadow fleet" drama is all about in the first place.
Dark fleet update: a “Parallel Fleet” is developing, and there is no way to reverse it.
Shipping splits into ‘parallel universes’ as global trade continues to decouple
The US behaving like this is only going to encourage more and more growth of this parallel shipping system. The US doesn't have to resources to run a blockade on the entire ocean - they've got all 3 currently active carrier groups dedicated to just this effort (although the Bush is still on the way), and one of those (the Ford) really shouldn't be active right now given how far extended its deployment has been. There's 11 destroyers in the region, with more presumably on the way with the Bush - well, the US has 78 total destroyers, but a bunch of those are in maintenance at any given point, so let's say around there's 55-ish active ones - that's a fifth of the active destroyer fleet, with more to come, just in this one location.
And again, forcing the development of an entire parallel shipping system outside of your control is difficult to interpret as a win for the empire.
This pattern of American-5D-chessism is really starting to get pretty weird. Certainly, we shouldn't underestimate the empire and dismiss them as washed - clearly they can still wield some degree of military might and coercive power - but the repeated insistence that their obviously idiotic behavior must totally be part of some kayfabe scheme to pretend to be a decaying flailing empire, while the real intelligent deep state is totally still running long-term plans underneath, I do not see as being backed up by any evidence, and I feel is also severely ignorant of how large organizations actually work, assigning a level of coherence to them that simply doesn't exist. There are multitudes of different factions working plans of their own, and the Trump admin's gutting of the DoD and increasing staffing with private equity ghouls is hardly helping the competent ones.
Didn't a ship already defy the US on its way to Venezuela, albeit unsuccessfully? I kinda missed that story.
I agree that the US is infinitely willing to sink infinitely many civilian cargo ships. What I'm wondering is, if they started sinking 3rd party cargo ships, e.g., Chinese ships, what retaliation would they face, how high up the escalation ladder would that be and how long could they remain at that level of the ladder.
As for Larry Johnson, I know the adage is that there are no ex-CIA, but he seems to be ex-CIA. From what I've seen, his takes tend to align with other commentators in the anti-US geopolitics circuit. Unless he's nefariously steering them, I think he's just an analyst who saw enough to become bitter. Or I'm too credulous.
It really depends if you think China will stick their neck out for Iran. I tend to doubt it. They'd basically have to go to war with the US to stop them and right now the US has an absolute advantage and would inflict punishing losses on Chinese ships that far away from home. To say nothing of the economic ramifications for China given how export heavy they still are and how huge the US is as a customer. And beyond being a customer the pains they can inflict on China's abilities to trade if things get to a breaking point and they no longer care about Chinese retaliation.
It's certainly possible China does something like armed escorts and the US refuses to go to war over it and lets Chinese ships pass but they'd then hunt everyone else's still which would still more or less achieve their aims in this regard. So it doesn't really matter what China does short of declaring war on the US to open the strait for everyone. China will take getting its own oil and grumble about not being able to send cargo to Iran and that'll be the end of it.
Meaningless. Limited hang-out or simply following the dollar signs to parrot things. The US has multiple times reorganized the world and its financial systems for its own benefit in the past 100 years. If he is just a parrot singing doom and gloom because it sells of course he'd dismiss this because he's selling doom for the US. It may also be he's myopic in this regard, his prejudices built up over grudges over what he considers bad strategies and refuses to concede anything to his opponents.
Just to play devil's advocate, possibly foolishly -- If the US breaks the taboo on sinking or damaging cargo ships, can't anyone with a fleet of nuclear subs do the same? As Boise_Idaho mentioned, Russia and China combined have quite a few more subs than the US, and greater industrial capacity to replace cargo ships and build more subs as needed. Russia has demonstrated willingness to take military initiative when cornered, and China is building up its military at breakneck speed in apparent anticipation of war. Also, China may depend on US consumers but doesn't the US likewise depend on Chinese producers?
Maybe I'm just logical enough to be annoying but I don't really grasp the situation, if so I apologize lol
What taboo? The US and NATO have been regularly seizing "shadow fleet" tankers. America imposes embargoes and blockades on multiple different countries and seizes any and all cargo ships that approach. They just blew a hole through the engine room of an Iranian civilian ship and pirated it. There's no such taboo.
That's true, but I'm not talking about seizing ships, or attacking just Iranian ships, I specifically mean damaging or sinking ships belonging to nations the US is not openly at war with. If the US wants a global blockade, munitions scale better than boarding ships with helicopters. Currently, afaik, most shadow shipments do not get seized. It would need to be a robust blockade, affecting more than just Iran. China is already 85% energy self-sufficient, and 20% of their oil imports are from Russia, a nation willing to operate a shadow fleet and potentially fire back if fired upon by the US.
Russian "shadow" fleet tankers have regularly faced drone strikes across the world, allegedly from "Ukrainians" (it's CIA)
Any idea what the scale of disruption from that is? Finding reliable information related to Ukraine is a nightmare
it's NATOpedia, so take it with a grain of salt, but here is what Ukraine is openly claiming:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_attacks_on_the_Russian_shadow_fleet
Here are some of the primary sources:
https://news.liga.net/en/politics/news/the-atlantic-trump-doesnt-mind-ukraines-attacks-on-russias-shadow-fleet-approves-aid
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/three-tankers-damaged-by-blasts-mediterranean-last-month-causes-unknown-sources-2025-02-19/
https://maritime-executive.com/article/italians-investigating-after-explosion-damages-greek-tanker-at-savona
https://www.twz.com/news-features/ukraine-strikes-russia-linked-tanker-in-the-mediterranean-with-bomber-drone
https://www.reuters.com/world/russian-bound-tanker-hit-by-drone-black-sea-maritime-sources-say-2026-01-08/
The seal has long been broken for those paying attention, there's no "red line". America will keep pushing the boundaries on what it is allowed to attack via "proxy forces". They are launching attacks in the Mediterranean from Italy, Greece, Libya, Crete and probably other nations as well.
Larry Johncharlie Kirkiakou has a long and storied career of misdirection that thankfully for him no Amerikkkan could ever remember
Is this a bit or is there some lore on Larry Johnson
Yeah I’m curious as well. I’ve seen references to this multiple times, but I generally find his analysis to be more or less aligned with the general circle of nat sec and pol analysts of that ilk on YouTube.
I'm not sure it's a matter of calling bluffs when there are insurance companies involved.
Any analysis that involves ‘political capital’ as a concept is usually idealist bunk, the US will not hesitate to sink ships. They are committing invasions and genocides, why would the line be some ships?
The US was willing to start this war that would obviously result in economic global collapse. Why would knocking out some more Iranian and Russian “shadow” ships be beyond the pale?
I just mean "politics" as shorthand for "everything that might happen." Politics is a negotiating layer to mediate all the other leverage nations and constituencies have, or think they have. If the US started targeting the shipping of 3rd parties, stuff would happen, threats would be made, some relationships may shift, it's a question of how it all balances out in the eyes of the US. Nations that might not stick their necks out for Gaza or Iran may do so for themselves. Or they might not -- that's why I posted this thread, to hear everyone's takes.
The BRIC nations refuse to form a military alliance or bloc, and nobody else on Earth can oppose the US on the global stage in a strategic manner, only defend their own regional interests in short-term battles without any view to the larger global strategy of the USA. Nobody is unified or organized enough to stop America, and everyone will have to deal with them when they are the energy monopolists of the whole Earth. At least that's what they're relying on. You can burn as many bridges as you want, everyone will come crawling back to the USA for energy when they are the only game in town as they have no other option. After all, the US just did a genocide in front of the whole Earth and it just resulted in a bunch of victories for the imperialists (Take over of Syria, Gulf States all normalized and went full pro-zionist instead of their previous fence-sitting). From the US perspective they are never punished for their actions and only rewarded, why would they stop?
Until the BRIC nations get off their ass and start mobilizing militarily and forming alliances, I have a very pessimistic view. The only solution is military, and the only alliance that could defeat the imperialists seems to not want to fight at all and keeps giving up any strategic advantages or initiative it has for fake short-term ceasefires and treaties. The US strategy they used to genocide their continent is being repeated, divide and conquer and use start-stop wars and "treaties" to slowly push forward their grand strategy. The only possible solution is for the rest of the non-fascist world to unite into world war against the imperialists. That's it, and they don't seem to want to do it so the real question is if the US is going to be so incompetent and impatient that it drives its enemies into action too quickly and forces them to react how they need to.
Russia and Iran have been forced to fight, but they are doing their part. China needs to step in officially, militarily, to protect its energy interest and core strategic interests and they would have the global mandate if they did so. China, Russia and Iran need to formally declare alliance and joint defense and nuclear MAD umbrella. I fear the US will keep stringing them along and keep the wars separated if this doesn't happen soon, picking off fronts one at a time. Iran may get nuked by Israel/USA while Russia gets its energy infrastructure and tankers degraded and facing attrition, and China gets its energy imports blocked off. There aren't enough pipelines between China-Russia currently and they take a while to build, most of the energy trade is in tanker fleets that are getting attacked.