Maria Montgomery FollowBackFriday
78.7K posts
@MariaMo32975161
Psychotherapist Perapetitc Londoner Remain adopter Irish Heritage Photographer loves horses & cats Conservationist #politicaltraveller #Climatecrisis #RejoinSM
🚨🇮🇷 JUST IN: Iran signals its “striking force.” 800,000 fighters on max alert, backed by missiles and next-gen drones (Russia–China partnership). Targets include U.S. bases in Jordan, Diego Garcia, and deep inside Israel. IRGC boosts mobilization with 100,000 more troops.
BREAKING: France, Germany, the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, and Japan say they are ready to join efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump's official Bessent wants Iran's Kharg Island to become a 'US Asset'
Absolute psychopath. An American reporter asks Netanyahu about US soldiers dying for his war, and he literally brushes it off saying "freedom has its costs." He is sacrificing American lives without a single second of hesitation.
JUST IN: 🇺🇸🇮🇷 Treasury Secretary Bessent says "we'll see" if Kharg Island eventually becomes a US asset. Kharg Island handles 90% of Iran's oil export.
JUST IN: The Strait of Hormuz blocks the fertiliser from shipping. China just blocked it from being replaced. Beijing has instructed exporters to suspend overseas shipments of nitrogen and potassium fertiliser blends. Urea. NPK mixes. The molecules that American, Indian, Bangladeshi, and African farmers need to plant are now gated at two chokepoints simultaneously: a 21-mile waterway controlled by provincial commanders with sealed radio orders, and a government directive issued from Zhongnanhai that requires no radio at all. One third of global seaborne fertiliser trade transits Hormuz. China is the world’s largest fertiliser producer. When the strait closed and China suspended exports in the same month, the global food system lost its primary supply route and its primary alternative supplier at the same time. There is no third source at this scale. There is no backup to the backup. Urea has surged roughly 40 percent since the war began. CBOT March futures settled at 610.50. The peak at New Orleans touched $683. Those prices were set by the Hormuz blockade alone. China’s ban adds a second floor underneath them. Even if the strait reopened tomorrow, Chinese urea would not flow until Beijing lifts the directive. Even if Beijing lifted the directive, the strait would still need to reopen, insurance to normalise, and vessels to be available. The two gates operate independently. Both must open for the molecule to move. China’s logic is transparent. Hormuz disrupted global supply. Prices surged. Chinese domestic farmers face the same planting windows as everyone else. Beijing chose to protect its own agriculture by hoarding the molecule the rest of the world needs. This is the same country that is simultaneously drawing commercial crude reserves at a million barrels per day, running military exercises near Taiwan, receiving discounted Iranian oil through the permissioned strait, and restricting the phosphate exports it suspended months ago. Every decision serves one objective: China first. The rest of the world absorbs the shortage. The American farmer is now squeezed from two directions. The Gulf urea he used to buy cannot transit the strait. The Chinese urea that could have replaced it is embargoed by Beijing. Domestic US production covers roughly 75 percent of normal needs, but normal needs assumed Gulf and Chinese imports filling the gap. The gap is now unfillable on any timeline that matters for spring planting. USDA projects corn falling to 94 million acres. Soybeans rising to 85 million. The RFS mandate consumes 43 percent of a shrinking corn crop. The cattle herd sits at 86.2 million, a 75-year low. The protein cascade runs from corn to feed to meat to eggs to dairy to the grocery shelf. China’s ban did not create that cascade. The Hormuz blockade created it. China’s ban removed the last exit ramp. Oman crude at $154. Brent at $102. WTI at $93. Gold at $5,000. The Fed holding at 3.50 to 3.75 with PCE revised to 2.7. Trump telling Israel to stop hitting gas fields. Iran threatening to burn the Gulf to ashes. Four countries’ energy infrastructure offline. And now the world’s largest fertiliser producer has locked its warehouse and told every farmer on Earth that the key is in Beijing, not for sale, and not available until further notice. Two gates. One molecule. No alternative. The calendar closes in four weeks. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
BREAKING: The world thought Hormuz was an oil story. Then it became an LNG story. If the damage assessment holds, it becomes a civilisation-input story that lasts half a decade. There is a difference between a shipping shock and a capacity shock that the market has not yet priced. A shipping shock traps molecules. The oil exists, the gas exists, the tankers are anchored, and when the strait reopens the molecules flow again. A capacity shock destroys molecules. The liquefaction trains that convert gas into LNG are physically damaged. The molecules cannot be produced even if every ship in the world is available to carry them. QatarEnergy’s CEO Saad al-Kaabi told Reuters that damage to Ras Laffan is severe. Repairs to impaired liquefaction capacity could take three to five years. Force majeure was declared on March 4 and has since escalated as the damage assessment worsened through March 18 and 19. Long-term contract buyers including Italy, Belgium, South Korea, and China face multi-year delivery disruptions. Shell declared force majeure on cargoes it resells from QatarEnergy. The market must now confront a possibility it has refused to model: that roughly 17 percent of Qatar’s 77 million tonne per annum capacity is not delayed but structurally impaired. JERA’s CEO stated that the global LNG market does not have the spare capacity to bridge the gap if Hormuz-linked supply is meaningfully lost. That single sentence reprices everything. If the replacement molecules do not exist in sufficient volume, the adjustment mechanism is not alternative supply. It is fuel switching, demand destruction, and rationing by balance-sheet strength. Rich buyers can pay more. Poor buyers cannot. The poor buyers are already breaking. Vietnam’s diesel is up 40 to 59 percent. Australia’s petrol is up 70 cents per litre. Sri Lanka is rationing fuel with QR codes at 15 litres per car per week, a four-day workweek, and Wednesday school closures. India raised LPG prices while importing 85 percent of its crude through a strait that is 90 percent shut. Gulf air cargo collapsed 79 percent. Jet fuel surged 58 percent. IndiGo and Akasa imposed surcharges. Vietnam Airlines warned of shortages from April. Ninety-five countries have reported petrol price increases since February 28. Ras Laffan is not just LNG. It is helium, urea, methanol, polyethylene, and sulfur. The downstream cascade from a multi-year Qatari impairment runs through semiconductor fabrication, pharmaceutical synthesis, phosphate fertiliser production, food packaging, and desalination. The facility that is damaged produces the molecules that four billion people depend on for chips, medicine, fertiliser, plastic, and drinking water. Europe’s post-2022 gas security was built on Qatari LNG replacing Russian pipelines. A structural impairment does not merely make gas expensive. It makes gas unavailable to industry. That is how an LNG shock becomes a deindustrialisation shock. BASF and Yara are already cutting fertiliser output. Russian LNG fills the gap at 18 to 22 percent of European imports. The country Europe sanctioned is the country Europe now depends on because the country Europe trusted was struck in a war Europe refused to join. Anyone arguing this resolves quickly now carries the burden of proof. They must explain where the replacement molecules come from when the world’s largest LNG hub is physically impaired, the strait is commercially closed, and the CEO of Asia’s biggest power buyer says there is no bridge. The market priced a shipping delay. The evidence demands a capacity repricing. The difference between those two words is measured in years, in trillions of dollars, and in whether the lights stay on. Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
BREAKING AND UNUSUAL: Qatar urgently evacuates 147 horses to Europe. Due to Qatar’s airspace closure, the horses were transported by trucks to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and from there to Liège, Belgium, on two Qatar Airways Boeing 777F cargo flights.
For the first time in HISTORY, an American F-35 jet has been hit. Iranian air defenses are hitting our best jets. Trump said today all of Iran’s defenses are destroyed.
More "defensive" US B-52 bombers leaving the UK to bomb Iran.
🚨🚨🚨 TRUMP APPROVED ISRAEL'S ATTACK ON IRAN'S GAS FIELD, THEN LIED TO THE ENTIRE WORLD ON TRUTH SOCIAL. THE EVIDENCE IS DEVASTATING. 🚨🚨🚨 Here is what actually happened: Israel struck South Pars on March 18, 2026. This is the LARGEST natural gas field on Earth. Iran and Qatar SHARE it underground. Trump posted on Truth Social within hours: "The United States knew NOTHING about this particular attack." 💀 TWO senior US officials confirmed to Axios: The US APPROVED the strike. 💀 TWO senior Israeli officials confirmed: The strike was COORDINATED with Trump's team. 💀 Iran fired 5 ballistic missiles at Qatar in retaliation. 💀 One missile HIT Qatar's Ras Laffan Industrial City — "EXTENSIVE DAMAGE" confirmed by QatarEnergy. 💀 UAE shut down gas facilities. Saudi Arabia received evacuation warnings. 💀 Iran ordered ALL Gulf nations to evacuate their petrochemical facilities. 💀 Brent crude hit $112 a barrel — UP 80% since this war started. ⚠️ Trump approved the strike — THEN called it "out of anger" and "violent lashing out" by Israel. ⚠️ Trump said "NO MORE ATTACKS will be made by Israel" on South Pars. ⚠️ Iran attacked Qatar anyway — 3 times tonight. ⚠️ Now Trump is threatening to "massively blow up the ENTIRETY of South Pars" to protect Qatar. ⚠️ South Pars is QATAR'S FIELD TOO. Destroying it wipes out Qatar's entire economy. Here is the logic trap Trump created: Trump approved the strike → told the world he didn't → Iran retaliated against Qatar → Trump now threatens to blow up the field Qatar shares with Iran → Qatar would be destroyed in the process → Qatar hosts America's LARGEST military base in the region One man is threatening to blow up the field of the country that hosts his own air force. The Pentagon just asked Congress for $200 BILLION more for this war. Trump's own counterterrorism director resigned this week. His letter said: "Iran posed NO imminent threat to the United States." He accused the White House of going to war on Israel's behalf. That man ran America's counterterrorism operations. He had the clearances. He saw the intelligence. He quit in protest. And nobody in mainstream media is asking the obvious question: If the US truly knew nothing, why are the US's own officials contradicting the president on record? Prepare accordingly. 🚨🚨🚨
