Daniel Macar

🇺🇸🇮🇷 The talks in Islamabad failed. Vance flew home. And within hours, CENTCOM announced the U.S. will blockade all exports from Iranian ports starting this morning. All vessels. All nations. Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. No exceptions. Let's talk about what this actually means for your wallet, and everyone else's. The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since March 4. Iran shut it down when the war started. That already removed 27% of the world's seaborne crude oil trade from the market overnight. Brent crude is sitting at $95 a barrel. Up 31% since February 28. US crude up 44%. And that was before today. Now you're adding a U.S. counter-blockade on top. There are an estimated 230 fully loaded oil tankers sitting inside the Gulf right now going nowhere. One energy analyst at Columbia put the shortage at 7 million barrels of crude and 4 million barrels of refined product per day not reaching markets. Every single day. The knock-on effects are already visible. QatarEnergy declared force majeure on all LNG exports. Qatar supplies a massive share of Europe and Asia's gas. Restarting LNG liquefaction once it shuts down takes weeks, not days. China, India, Japan and South Korea get 75% of their regional oil imports and 59% of their LNG through this corridor. Those are the four largest manufacturing economies on Earth. If you're wondering why your energy bill, your groceries, your shipping costs are about to move, this is why. And the threat doesn't stop at Hormuz. Iran's allies are openly floating shutting Bab al-Mandeb too, the other end of the Arabian Sea. If that closes alongside Hormuz, a full quarter of the world's energy supply is blocked simultaneously. One Columbia analyst said it plainly this weekend: oil prices will stay elevated "into the end of 2026" regardless of when the war ends, because even after a deal the infrastructure damage alone will take months to repair. This is a global supply shock in slow motion, and it just got a second act.