Gregg Carlstrom

RT @alexbward: The focus is on the Pearl Harbor quote, of course, but Trump here acknowledges the U.S. told no allies others about the atta…

"Each week the world's largest liquefied natural gas plant remains shut, the world loses the equivalent of enough energy to power Sydney's homes for an entire year." bloomberg.com/news/features/…

"The cost of replacing the first four days' worth of munitions would be $20bn-26bn. The problem, however, is more to do with scarcity than cost. America is thought to have used more than 300 Tomahawk cruise missiles in the opening days of the war, but the Pentagon had planned to buy just 57 new ones in the current fiscal year. There have been no deliveries of THAAD interceptors since 2023 and the Pentagon has not placed any new orders this year. A puny 39 interceptors are slated for delivery in 2027—six years after they were ordered." economist.com/briefing/2026/…

Our cover this week @TheEconomist

😮 Reuters: Iranian attacks have knocked out 17% of Qatar's liquefied natural gas (LNG) export ​capacity, causing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue and threatening supplies ‌to Europe and Asia, QatarEnergy's CEO told Reuters Saad al-Kaabi said two of Qatar's 14 LNG trains and one of its two gas-to-liquids (GTL) facilities were damaged in the unprecedented strikes. ​The repairs will sideline 12.8 million tons per year of LNG for ​three to five years, he said. reuters.com/business/energ…

Definitely not a sign that the White House failed to anticipate an oil-price shock and is scrambling to come up with ideas, trust the plan guys

Excellent introduction to our piece this week on how the war with Iran might quickly turn into a political albatross for Donald Trump economist.com/united-states/…

"As they wrestle with the prospect of shortages, the Gulf countries face an irony: They may not grow much of their own food, but they play an important role in helping other nations do so... 'We're up for a food disaster and all we talk about is gas prices.'" theatlantic.com/national-secur…

March 19 (Reuters) - The Saudi port of Yanbu, one of two major remaining export routes for Gulf Arab oil after Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, has stopped oil loadings, two sources told Reuters on Thursday, after the Saudi defence ministry said it intercepted a ballistic missile over the city. The ministry said earlier that a drone crashed at the SAMREF refinery, with damage assessment underway.

“The Stunning Failure of Iranian Deterrence” by me and @nktpnd in @ForeignAffairs

🇰🇼 Kuwait's KPC reports fires at 2 of the country's 3 refineries - the 346k b/d Mina al-Ahmadi and 454k b/d Mina Abdullah facilities - after drone strikes in the early hours of Thursday. Mina al-Ahmadi first, followed by Mina Abdullah. Unclear still whether ops halted. #oott

SAMREF is in Yanbu on the kingdom's Red Sea coast, where Saudi is piping oil to bypass the Strait of Hormuz

One other half-formed thought about Larijani: There's a seeming dissonance where some people are arguing both "the system is bigger than one man" and "he could have been the Delcy figure". Larijani couldn't steer the system to make a deal with America before the war, nor to find a diplomatic off-ramp once it started, and the whole system is specifically set up to prevent the emergence of a Delcy figure reuters.com/world/middle-e…

You have US officers sitting in IDF combat cells (and vice versa). Air campaign is tightly coordinated bw the 2 militaries. US military was - before yday - responsible for Iran's southern flank & waters. And as others have pointed out: no chance Bibi does this without Trump greenlight But we're supposed to believe US didn't know about South Pars strike ahead of time.

The Iranian theory of the war boils down to "everyone else has a lot more to lose than we do". A question that should follow: what if that's true, but it doesn't end up mattering on a timetable that's helpful to the regime? There's a scenario in which the world staggers out of this with a prolonged energy crisis that does enormous damage to the global economy *and* things end very, very badly for the regime and Iran as a whole.

There's not really a plausible scenario in which you can secure Hormuz by seizing the Iranian coastline (just look at a map) But an attempt to seize either Kharg island or perhaps the three islands disputed with the UAE is looking increasingly likely reuters.com/world/middle-e…

@mkorhonen12345 @JoshBlockDC They did, on literally the third day of the war

@JoshBlockDC @glcarlstrom Did they hit worlds largest LNG-plant before? Why not?

The "escalate to deescalate" thing is not going to work when Iran sees attacks on shipping/energy as central to its entire strategy If that really was the thinking, it's another case of the Trump administration failing to grasp something quite obvious

Because it's often getting lost in the discussion here, this is a partial list of Iran's attacks on energy *before* the Israeli strike on South Pars: - Ras Laffan LNG complex in Qatar - Ras Tanura oil refinery in Saudi - hundreds of drone attacks on Saudi oil fields - Ruwais refinery in Abu Dhabi - Shah gas field in Abu Dhabi - port of Fujairah - Bapco oil refinery in Bahrain The list goes on. Point is that, yes, South Pars was an escalation in American/Israeli targeting, but it comes after weeks of Iranian attacks on GCC energy infrastructure.

@glcarlstrom Don't think it's clear it was the LNG facility. Ras Laffan Industrial City also home to the Ras Laffan refinery that Iran said it would target.