Kashif Pirzada, MD

"The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it" - Paul Muad'Dib

@teortaxesTex Americans should never have let the Israelis use it so much, allowing the Iranians (and Russians and Chinese) to radar profile it. $2 trillion down the toilet.

I don't think Iranian fire would allow it to land anywhere except as a pile of scrap, AD missiles are massive and if the AD system gets a lock on an F-35, the window for "light hit" is pretty small friendly fire again, maybe Israeli this time? But if it *is* Iran… this is big.

Cash Dubai crude (balance of the month) just broke above $170 per barrel. To my knowledge, no crude has ever commanded more than $170/bbl before.

@sonofnariman And exactly what security are they getting from the US at the moment?

The GCC is in a major, existential bind: - Enter the war against Iran and risk devastating consequences; - Close its airspace to the US but dismantle its foundational security architecture; - No leverage to compel the US to end the war; - Do nothing and lose anyway.

Tonight the #CNTower will be lit green and white for Eid al –Fitr / Ce soir, la #TourCN sera illuminée en vert et blanc pour l'Aïd al-Fitr.

Nations are going to fight for Chinese solar panels and EVs like they did for toilet paper and PPE in the early days of Covid.

Spain's renewables build-out has structurally decoupled its electricity prices from gas markets. Gas now sets the price in only 15% of hours, compared to 90% in Italy. Countries that invested early in clean power are far less exposed to fossil fuel price shocks.

This is probably the most important article of the month: an op-ed by Oman's Foreign Minister, who mediated the talks between the U.S. and Iran, in which he writes that the U.S. "has lost control of its foreign policy" to Israel. He repeats that a deal was possible as an outcome of the talks (something confirmed by the UK's National Security Advisor, who also attended: x.com/i/status/20341…) and that the military strike by the U.S. and Israel was "a shock." Interestingly, given he is one of Iran's neighbors and given that Oman has been struck multiple times by Iran since the war began (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran…), he writes that "Iran’s retaliation against what it claims are American targets on the territory of its neighbours was an inevitable result" of the U.S.-Israeli attack. He describes it as "probably the only rational option available to the Iranian leadership." He says the war "endangers" the region's entire "economic model in which global sport, tourism, aviation and technology were to play an important role." He adds that "if this had not been anticipated by the architects of this war, that was surely a grave miscalculation." But, he adds, the "greatest miscalculation" of all for the U.S. "was allowing itself to be drawn into this war in the first place." In his view this was the doing of "Israel’s leadership" who "persuaded America that Iran had been so weakened by sanctions, internal divisions and the American-Israeli bombings of its nuclear sites last June, that an unconditional surrender would swiftly follow the initial assault and the assassination of the supreme leader." Obviously, this proved completely wrong, and the U.S. is now in a quagmire. He says that, given this, "America’s friends have a responsibility to tell the truth," which is that "there are two parties to this war who have nothing to gain from it," namely "Iran and America." He says that all of the U.S. interests in the region (end to nuclear proliferation, secure energy supply chains, investment opportunities) are "best achieved with Iran at peace." As he writes, "this is an uncomfortable truth to tell, because it involves indicating the extent to which America has lost control of its own foreign policy. But it must be told." He then proposes a couple of paths to get back to the negotiating table, although he recognizes how difficult it would be for Iran "to return to dialogue with an administration that twice switched abruptly from talks to bombing and assassination." That's perhaps the most profound damage Trump did during this entire episode: the complete discrediting of diplomacy. If Iran was taught anything, it is: don't negotiate with the U.S., it's a trap that will literally kill you. The great irony of the man who sold himself as a dealmaker is that he taught the world one thing: don't make deals with my country. Link to the article: economist.com/by-invitation/…

@Hertsnik Soviet Union had similar goals towards the West, but we outlasted them. Iran would have gone defunct on its own with the energy transition in 10-15 years anyway.

@KashPrime You may not be wrong that people will blame Israel and the US. But that doesn't mean the war was wrong.

"Ultimately, this war is going to result in tremendous blame for anyone associated with it. It's a no-win scenario to blow up this much infrastructure for so many people. Simply not worth it for whatever objective they thought they were going to attain. But unless you're actually in a position to stop the madness, the pragmatic thing to do is: scramble to mitigate the fallout to yourself, your business, and your people."

Britain is 6% Muslim. Germany 5%. France 10%. Sweden 9%. Belgium 7%. At this rate of Islamic conquest, Europe will be majority Muslim sometime around the year 2847. I’d pencil in some mild concern for around 2600 and see how things look then. Now. The refugees. Since someone asked who’s paying for all this. Let’s follow the money back a bit further. America invaded Afghanistan, spent 20 years there achieving absolutely nothing, then left in such breathtaking chaos that people were literally hanging off aircraft. It then invaded Iraq over weapons that turned out not to exist, killed somewhere between 150,000 and a million people, and converted a functioning country into a sectarian hellscape. This is before we even get to the drones over Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. The people washing up on European shores are, in very large part, the direct human wreckage of American foreign policy. America created the disaster. Europe is housing the survivors. And America is on the internet asking why Europe keeps letting people in. Remarkable cheek, really. As for eliminating indigenous culture: the United States actually eliminated its indigenous people. Deliberately. With rifles and government paperwork. Europe took in Syrian doctors. These are not comparable situations, and pretending they are requires a truly heroic indifference to history. The culture is fine. France still has the cheese. The Louvre is still there. Bach is still there. Nothing has been eliminated except, apparently, the ability to read a percentage.

I grew up in the residential area in the top left corner of this picture. Could see the gas flares from my house. My dad and countless other engineers from the west helped build the oil infrastructure of the Gulf. And now it's all burning down.

Trump is doing more to destroy the fossil fuel industry and smash the sources of wealth that fuel inequality than the wildest socialist eco-terrorist could ever dream of

@policytensor You called it, before anyone else did!

The clearest case of escalate-to-deescalate working as intended. And the clearest real-time proof yet that Iran enjoys escalation dominance. “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field.”

How long until Trump takes Canada's oil output for himself?

Trump has lost control of his own military and foreign policy, simple as that.

The imminent energy and food crisis is going to be ruinously bad for billions of people. No one will be spared. I propose that we heavily, punitively tax the billionaire class that helped place Trump in power. The put a president so feeble and compromised that he caved to Netanyahu and allowed this disaster to happen. No reason the billionaires should be safe as millions starve. There's a great template in this book. Everyone was brought down to a max $50m net worth, and the funds earmarked for rebuilding sustainable infrastructure. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minis…

Because Israel hit Iran's LNG facility at South Fars, Iran promised today to destroy the four largest gas and oil complexes in the Gulf. They have successfully hit them. Their economic war has just started. This will hurt us all.

We're in uncharted territory with this global economic disaster that Trump and Netanyahu created. But the only silver lining is that it'll speed up the energy transition. Many of the worst people in the world got rich with oil, finally we might be free of them forever.

With tit-for-tat strikes on energy production, we are witnessing a slow moving disaster, much akin to the Jan 2020 moment with Covid. Transport and food production in huge parts of the world are going to devastated.