

bippidee
19.9K posts

@bippidee
Boxer mum, much prefer dogs to people. battling long covid and bpd, in otherwords homicidal but too knackered to bother





























While military commentators focus on flight paths and interception systems, historians will likely define the current campaign against Iran in entirely different terms: the first global energy war. This is not a war over territory, but over the ability of the West—and especially the Far East—to continue functioning. At the center of the arena are oil prices. The spike in commodity market charts quickly translates into drama at gas stations in the United States and Europe. Those who thought natural gas would act as a brake to prevent economic escalation have discovered the opposite: gas is not moderating prices—it is becoming fuel that intensifies international pressure. This follows Qatar’s decision to halt liquefied natural gas production on the very first day of the war, a dramatic move for a country that holds a third of the world’s natural gas reserves. The most significant pressure on the Trump administration is not coming from campus protesters, but from Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. These three technological powers have made it clear to the Americans: if the energy market does not stabilize, the global semiconductor industry will suffer a severe blow. When chips are hit, everything is hit—from the smartphone in your pocket to the most advanced weapons systems. This is a supply chain that begins in the Persian Gulf and ends in factories in Taipei, and any disruption in Hormuz echoes all the way to Silicon Valley—especially as Trump has made clear that the chip war with China is the most important global issue of his presidency, and everything is judged in relation to it. Here Egypt enters the picture, having become a key strategic player. Even before the war, Cairo secured massive quantities of gas for itself, and with declining domestic demand, a golden opportunity has emerged. The formula is simple: if Israel can continue supplying gas from the Leviathan field to Egypt without disruption, Egypt will be able to release around 25 LNG tankers to the global market, mainly to Asia. Egypt will profit from the price gap, Asia will receive the energy needed for chip production, and pressure on the United States will ease. The West is looking for insurance. Of the 12 million tons of oil produced by Saudi Arabia and effectively “stuck,” 5 million already have a solution in the form of an old pipeline from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. It was built during the Iran-Iraq War and stood largely unused for decades, but it is now serving as a partial yet important solution. The tactical solution is to forcibly reopen the Strait of Hormuz: the U.S. military has already struck the bunkers from which Iran controls the strait, and is simultaneously working to counter the mines deployed there by the Revolutionary Guards. But the long-term strategic solution—the one that has already caused oil prices to drop sharply in contracts for two years and beyond—is the plan to double that pipeline and connect it to the ports of Haifa or Ashdod. This would be a historic shift: Saudi oil reaching the Mediterranean through an Israeli port, bypassing Iranian threats and creating a global energy security corridor. In short: the market anticipates short-term disruption, but a long-term solution that bypasses the Hormuz bottleneck and strips Iran of its most important strategic asset. At the end of the day, international pressure to reopen the Strait of Hormuz for oil is significantly higher than pressure regarding gas. The world can “hold out” for about a week—perhaps ten days—of a closed strait; that is the maximum tolerance of the global economy. This is why Israel, in coordination with Trump, raised the stakes yesterday and has begun targeting Iran’s economy, signaling that blocking the strait will lead to the complete collapse of the ayatollah regime’s economic model. It is a high but calculated gamble. If Trump reaches the end of March with oil prices stable—or even declining—a radical shift will occur across the entire region. If not, the Iranians can breathe easy. Who will run out of oil first? For more commentary like this, check out tomorrow's newsletter. amitsegal.net/newsletter/








