Nathan C. Perry

I used to have real issues with the Catholic Church. Now the Catholic Church is meeting the moment and *my* government isn’t just failing to meet the moment, *my* government is the very reason there is a moment that needs to be met.

Time to silence the ₿ears. $BTC

Yeah, this is the last president and admin I’d want in charge of a war. And let’s be clear, Trump gives exactly zero shits about the Iranian people or their plight. I guarantee it did not bother him in the least that we accidentally blew up a school. If freedom for the Iranians is one’s aims, they should have hoped for a different president and admin because this one doesn’t care about that.

It’s worse than nothing! We’re way worse off than we were before.

So the deal is we’re giving Iran ‘pallets of cash’ now perpetually for every shipment of oil through the Strait? Thought we were strictly outraged by pallets of cash going to Iran.

BIG: “We really wanted to show our commitment by having that lower fee,” Allyson Wallace, global head of ETFs at Morgan Stanley. “The demand, especially from the high-net-worth investors, has been quite high. Viewed at the firm level, this is an asset class that is not going away.” -- Nice intv w/ Ally (ex BlackRock btw) and article on $MSBT today from @isabelletanlee

@HeathMayo x.com/NathanCPerry/s…

This ‘deal’ was not at all worth the costs if Iran charges a Hormuz toll, gets to enrich uranium, and can simply restock its missiles and drones during the respite.

I guess I'll have to blog about this tomorrow, but "LOL, Trump TACO'ed out" is decidedly not the right reaction as compared to "that kind of brinkmanship is really fucking dangerous".

We don't know the real terms of the ceasefire. We don't know if it will last. We do know that American forces were not ordered to commit a crime against humanity tonight -- an event that could break the military and trigger a constitutional crisis. I'm relieved, but I'm also furious that he put the innocent people of Iran, our nation, and the world through one of the most senseless, anxious, and dangerous days in recent history. And he might do it again.

@LindseyGrahamSC @jmart The people of Iran aren’t free. Iran can now charge tolls. The nuclear material sits EXACTLY where it did, in the same amount, since June. The regime is still in place with a younger ayatollah. Iran still was launching missiles, now with more money to rebuild. Period

@brhodes x.com/NathanCPerry/s…

In the best case scenario, Trump struck a deal to reopen a Strait that was open before the pointless war he started, with the IRGC demonstrating its control over the Strait and potentially extracting fees plus sanctions relief. Thousands of innocents - including hundreds of children - dead in Lebanon and Iran for no reason. U.S. troops killed and wounded. U.S. embassies and bases in the Middle East badly damaged. U.S. standing in the world obliterated. U.S. munitions badly depleted. Hundreds of billions spent. Prices up everywhere. More global economic fallout to come. Putin strengthened and enriched. Just a catastrophic situation even in the best of circumstances. A profoundly shameful episode in American history no matter what happens next.

@_Adrian x.com/NathanCPerry/s…

Iran War: If Iran actually gets this, and it was brokered by China no less? Wow... x.com/kobeissiletter…

@AdamKinzinger x.com/NathanCPerry/s…

From a friend: “Am I keeping score correctly? Before the war Iran had 1000 pounds of uranium and the strait of Hormuz was open. And now Iran has 1000 pounds of uranium and the strait of Hormuz might open but with Iran charging a huge toll.”

@shanaka86 x.com/NathanCPerry/s…

Iran did not submit a peace proposal. It submitted a post-war constitution for the Strait of Hormuz, and nobody in financial markets has read the fine print. Point six establishes a permanent protocol for safe, regulated passage through the strait under Iranian military coordination. Point seven imposes a $2 million fee per ship. At pre-war transit volumes of roughly 120 vessels per day, that fee structure generates over $87 billion per year in toll revenue paid to a regime whose entire pre-war oil export revenue was approximately $50 billion annually. Iran is proposing to earn more from controlling the passage of other nations’ oil than it earned from selling its own. Point four demands the complete lifting of all US sanctions. Point five demands reconstruction aid and compensation for damages. Point ten demands recognition of Iran’s sovereign rights, which multiple Tier-2 outlets, including IRNA and Reuters, interpret as acceptance of uranium enrichment under the NPT. The nuclear threshold demand is embedded inside a peace framework, presented alongside a Hormuz toll that would make Tehran the wealthiest chokepoint operator in maritime history. Trump called the proposal a workable basis for negotiation but explicitly said it is not good enough. The White House framed the Iranian acceptance as confirmation that decades of terrorism will not continue under this president. Vance said the United States has tools in its toolkit it has not yet decided to use. The administration is not bending. It is reading the document and identifying where the leverage lies. And the leverage lies entirely with the accomplished facts. Over 130+ Iranian air defence systems have been dismantled. Eighty-five percent of Iran’s weapons-chemistry export capacity has been rendered inoperable. The IRGC’s intelligence chief is dead. Kharg Island has been struck. The transport network is severed. Iran’s bargaining position rests on one asset: the ability to close Hormuz again after the two-week pause expires. Every other card has been played. The military infrastructure that would support renewed escalation has been degraded to a level the IDF described as approaching the last remaining facilities. The 10-point proposal is maximalist precisely because the regime knows its kinetic options are diminishing and its only remaining leverage is the chokepoint itself. The gap between the American position and the Iranian position is not a negotiating gap. It is a structural incompatibility. The United States will not accept a permanent Iranian toll on global commerce. It will not lift all sanctions without verifiable dismantlement. It will not guarantee the safety of Hezbollah or the Houthis. It will not fund reconstruction of facilities that produced the nitric acid used in the ballistic missiles fired at Haifa apartment buildings. These are not positions that split the difference. They are positions that require one side to abandon its core framework entirely. Phase-2 begins Friday in Islamabad. The two-week window expires around April 21st. The US waiver on 140 million barrels of Iranian crude at sea expires April 19th. Three deadlines converge in the same week. If Islamabad produces a deal, the molecule crisis begins its multi-year recovery. If Islamabad fails, the strait closes again, the actuarial blockade reactivates, the oil spike returns, and the ghost fleet resumes yuan settlements through the same chokepoint that Iran just proposed to monetise at $87 billion per year. The ceasefire bought time. The 10-point proposal revealed what Iran intends to do with it. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@gtconway3d @realDonaldTrump Not to mention this: x.com/NathanCPerry/s…

In other words, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now better off than it was before @realDonaldTrump started his idiotic war, and it already was better off before that war than it was before Trump abrogated the JCPOA in 2018.

We started an unnecessary war and conceded the best toll booth in the world.

This outcome is better than a ground war or any of the other options that Trump was thinking of to soothe his ego. This, as @CedricLeighton just said, is a strategic victory for Iran, but it's better than just pouring more effort into a bad bet. /2x

I'm not crowing TACO because we should all be glad that Trump's backing down after painting himself into a corner. If he needs to make up stories about "double-sided" ceasefires, fine, let him. (By definition, all ceasefires are "double-sided" or they're not a ceasefire). /1