Transcription
What exactly is happening with the US war against Iran? Is it really over, or is it continuing in a different, more indirect way? A lot of people are asking questions. They're understandably confused. So today, I'm going to explain what exactly the US government's strategy is because in mid-June, the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding announcing that they would carry out negotiations and come to a final deal to officially end the war.
However, those negotiations have stalled multiple times, and the US and Iran have traded blows, hitting each other repeatedly. And it looks like the talks sometimes are going well and sometimes are not going well at all. This is why many media outlets have reported that the talks are stalled and they're currently in limbo with several major disagreements.
In fact, the Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump has been holding meetings with top US military officials discussing the possibility of launching the war against Iran once again. I'm reading here from the Wall Street Journal. Quote, "President Trump has weighed a return to all-out war with Iran, holding multiple conversations in recent days with Defense Secretary Pete Hgse and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Kaine on more strikes. The conversations have centered on whether the US should abandon negotiations and resume full-scale attacks on Iran, a move some of them describe as finishing the job." End quote. The article noted that Trump has not yet made a final decision, but for now, he is reportedly continuing with the negotiations.
Now, one of the biggest points of difference between the US and Iran in these talks has been over the Strait of Hormuz. This is the most important oil transit choke point on Earth. It's right off the coast of Iran. And before the US launched this war of aggression in late February, about 20% of the globally traded oil supply was passing through this narrow strait on a daily basis. And the Iranian government has made it clear that it is going to control the Strait of Hormuz from now on.
Now, the US is very angry about this because the US wants to control this very important geostrategic choke point, and the US is opposed to the Iranian government's policy of giving preferential treatment to allies. So, Iran has told friendly countries like China that it's allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz and to ship oil without paying any fees. But Iran has said that countries that are waging war against it and are allied with the US must pay transit fees in order to use the Strait of Hormuz.
So, the Strait of Hormuz is now open. It's not closed like it was during most of the war. However, there are not as many oil tankers passing through today as there were before the war started. And the route being used in the Strait of Hormuz has changed. In fact, Bloomberg reported that several tankers that were passing through the strait previously were passing through the southern end of the strait off of the coast of Oman, but they actually did a U-turn. They turned around and clearly they were communicating with Iranian mediators because now they're passing through a different route right off the coast of Iran. So, Tehran has made it clear that it continues controlling this very important strait.
But that's not the only major disagreement between the US and Iran in these talks. Another major dispute has been over Lebanon. Iran has repeatedly accused the US of violating the deal because Israel has continued attacking Lebanon. And Iran has said that according to the agreement signed between Washington and Tehran, both sides agreed that Israel would have to stop attacking Lebanon, that Lebanon would be included in the broader ceasefire. However, the Israeli regime has made it very clear that it does not want to end its war against Lebanon. Israel occupies the southern part of Lebanon. And Israel's defense minister has claimed that Israeli troops are not leaving. They will continue occupying Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza until further notice.
So, Iran is saying that the US is clearly violating its side of the agreement, and Washington could force Israel to withdraw. The US has so much leverage, especially weapons and military assistance and ammunition that the US gives Israel billions and billions of dollars of military assistance. If the Trump administration told Israel that it's cutting all of that off, Israel would be forced to withdraw immediately because Israel cannot wage any of these wars without US military support.
So, all of this context raises the most important question that everyone is asking. Is the US seriously committed to these negotiations, or is the US government trying to plan something else? What are its ulterior motives? And Vice President JD Vance said the quiet part loud and revealed what the Trump administration strategy actually is. He said this in an interview with the conservative talk show host Michael Noles in late June. And basically, the US vice president said that what the Trump administration is trying to do is to buy time. The US knows that the negotiations might not work out because the US doesn't want to actually meet Iran's demands. It wants to impose all of its demands on Iran and not make any concessions. Obviously, Tehran is not going to agree to that.
So instead, what JD Vance acknowledged is that the Trump administration is trying to stabilize the global oil market and give countries a chance to stockpile oil to refill their petroleum reserves in case the US relaunches this war or in case the war really never ends and there's never actually a deal to end the conflict. Here is the clip of US Vice President JD Vance saying the quiet part loud, if you will.
"And on the Strait of Hormuz, I mean, I think you actually said it well, which is that the the strait is open in the sense that to oil traffic, we're seeing more oil come out of the Strait of Hormuz. And some some days actually more oil coming out of the strait than came out before the war even started. So there's this element of the, um, you know, where where the world oil economy is kind of getting back into gear. That's going to take a little bit of time, but you've already seen the prices come way down. Now, what the cynics will say as well, if you look at the number of ships that are trafficking, that's actually down from the pre-war start, but they're mostly talking about cargo ships and other vessels. At least so far, what we've seen is the oil traffic has reached its its pre-war its pre-war height. So, I think what the president has told us to do is use this to sort of refill the world's oil economy. To refill some stocks and then to see where the hand is. And what the president is saying, I'm I'm willing to drop bombs. And he's clearly shown that he's willing to drop bombs, but only if it serves an objective. And so what he's doing right now is taking a lot of pressure off of the world economy, the world energy economy in particular, while not giving up a single one of his gains and while preserving a lot of optionality."
So, what is really happening here is that the US war against Iran has become all about the global oil market. Of course, everyone already knew that oil was a major reason for this US war of aggression against Iran. Many of the world's top oil and natural gas producers are located in the Persian Gulf region in West Asia. Iran has some of the world's largest reserves of oil and natural gas. And Trump has made it clear he wants to get access to Iran's oil. But this is actually even bigger than that. This is about the global oil market.
And the reality is that the US government is in a pretty desperate situation because the US maintains what is known as a strategic petroleum reserve, the SPR, and the oil stocks in the SPR have fallen to the lowest levels since 1983. Now, if you look at the data that is published by the US government's Energy Information Administration, the EIA, you can see that the data only goes back to 1982. So, basically for the entire history that we have data on the US strategic petroleum reserves, the current level is almost at the lowest level in that recorded history of data.
Now, this is not just because of Trump. Part of this is because of the pandemic. So, coming out of the pandemic in 2021 and then into 2022 with the proxy war in Ukraine, you had a massive global energy crisis and you had an inflation crisis. So, the US government released a lot of oil from the SPR in 2021, 2022, going into 2023 in order to increase the supply of oil to bring down the price of gasoline and other petroleum-based products.
Now, when Trump came into office in 2025, he pledged that he was going to refill the SPR. He barely did. He basically left it at the same levels. And then as soon as the US launched this war which caused another massive oil crisis, the US started releasing oil from the SPR. And currently, the US only has around 326 million barrels of oil in the SPR, and the number is falling more and more every week.
In fact, Trump acknowledged that he's very concerned about this issue in a speech that he gave at the G7 summit that was held in France in June. And once again, you can hear how the Trump administration so often says the quiet part loud. These top US officials are not good at hiding what they're actually thinking. Listen to these remarks here from the US president who's concerned that in just four weeks, the world can run out of oil in its reserves, which could cause a massive economic crisis.
"But what this does is it allows the ships to go. If we if we keep bombing those ships won't be going. And you're talking about 500, 600, 700 million a day. It's a lot of money. A lot of money. That's why the world is okay. It's liquid. It's fine. Also, we run out of reserves in about four weeks. You know, there are reserves all over the world and we would really run out and there'll be a time when you wouldn't be able to get it and you want to see bedlam."
Now, when you listen to those remarks from Trump back-to-back with the comments that were made by JD Vance, the US strategy starts to become clearer. The US is engaging in these talks with Iran, but Washington refuses to make concessions, and Washington refuses to abide by its commitments that it already agreed to. Like, for instance, the US agreed that Lebanon is supposed to be part of this agreement. There's supposed to be a ceasefire. Israel is supposed to stop attacking Lebanon. But the US is not actually pressuring Israel to stop attacking Lebanon. The US continues to give billions of dollars of weapons and military assistance and ammunition to Israel to help it attack Lebanon.
So, it looks like the US may not actually be committed to these talks. Or maybe it is. But regardless, the US strategy is to use these talks in the short term to buy time, to try to stabilize the global oil market, to try to refill the petroleum reserves not only of the US but of other countries to prepare for a potential new phase of the war against Iran.
However, one of the big problems with this strategy is that it assumes that Tehran is just going to sit around on its hands and do nothing. In reality, the Iranian government knows what's happening. They're very clearly following the news and listening to what Trump and Vance are saying. And if you read Iranian state media outlets, even in English, they've been reporting on this. So, the Iranian media outlet published an article titled "Trump Admits World Has Just Four Weeks of Oil Left Without Iran Deal."
So, Iran understands that this is a major point of leverage that Iran has over the US and has over the global economy. This is why the Iranian government has been so insistent on saying that it is going to remain in control of the Strait of Hormuz. This is non-negotiable. Multiple Iranian officials have told media outlets that in the future, Iran is going to control the Strait of Hormuz, and that is going to be part of the agreement with the US. And if the US will not allow Iran to control the Strait of Hormuz, well, the talks will end, and the war will continue. But this is a point that Iran will not concede because Tehran knows that Washington and Tel Aviv cannot be trusted.
There have been so many occasions in which Iran has participated in these kinds of negotiations with the US, and then the US and Israel violate all the agreements they made, and they carry out surprise attacks and launch more wars of aggression against Iran. This has happened again and again and again. So, for instance, back in June 2025, several months into the second Trump administration, the US and Iran had participated in several rounds of peace talks, and then out of nowhere, the US and Israel launched a surprise war of aggression against Iran. Now, it was only for two weeks. It was not a long war, but it was a war. And the Iranian government learned once again that it has to have significant leverage. It has to have some cards that it can play to put significant pressure on the US to make sure that the US is forced to actually seriously engage in negotiations.
This is why some world leaders have referred to the Strait of Hormuz as Iran's equivalent of a nuclear weapon. That was the language used by a top Russian official, Dimitri Medvedev, who is previously the president and the prime minister of Russia. And Medvedev traveled to Tehran in order to attend the funeral, the official state funeral being held for the previous Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And after traveling to Iran and holding these meetings, Medvedev said very clearly that Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz is its equivalent of a nuclear weapon. It's a kind of economic nuclear weapon, if you will, or a geopolitical nuclear weapon because Iran understands, as Trump admitted, that if the US violates its side of the agreement, if it abandons the negotiations with Iran, then Tehran can respond by once again closing the Strait of Hormuz. And as Trump himself said, the world would only have a few weeks of oil left, which would cause a massive economic crisis.
Now, at the moment, the global oil market is relatively stable. There was a lot of volatility after the US launched this war of aggression in late February. The price of oil skyrocketed to more than $110 per barrel. Now, it has fallen significantly to around $72. That's not exactly the level that it was before the US launched this war, but it's close to that same level. And what this implies is that investors around the world, market participants, assume that the negotiations will continue, that the war will not resume. Because if many investors and market participants assumed that the war was going to resume and the talks would fall through, then the price of oil would shoot up.
So, it's certainly possible that these talks will hold. However, despite that relative note of optimism, some geopolitical analysts have warned that the US government may be repeating the strategy that it used in Ukraine, which set off the Ukraine proxy war. So, in 2014, the US backed a coup that overthrew Ukraine's democratically elected leader and put in power a pro-Western regime led by a billionaire oligarch, Petro Poroshenko, who vowed to join NATO. And then you saw a conflict in the Donbas between pro-Russian separatist forces and pro-NATO forces backed by the West in Ukraine. That was the beginning of this proxy war.
And in 2014 and 2015, there were two major rounds of talks that were held in Minsk, which is the capital of Belarus. This brought together not only Putin and the Ukrainian leader, but also the leaders of Germany and France. At that time, the German chancellor was Angela Merkel, and the French president was François Hollande. Now, two agreements were ultimately made in those meetings that are known as Minsk 1, which was agreed to in 2014, and Minsk 2, which was agreed to in 2015.
As part of the Minsk agreements, the Ukrainian government, backed by the West, was supposed to allow the Donbas autonomy, to allow the pro-Russian forces, you know, Russian-speaking, ethnically Russian Ukrainians in the east of the country, to give them autonomy and control over their own local policies. However, the Western-backed regime in Kyiv refused to allow that, and it violated its commitments under Minsk 1 and Minsk 2, which only made the proxy war with Russia even worse. And eventually, of course, Russia invaded in 2022, and you have the conflict that still drags on to this day. A horrible proxy war between NATO on one side and Russia on the other in Ukrainian soil.
However, the reason I'm mentioning all of this is that the West made these agreements, Minsk 1 in 2014 and Minsk 2 in 2015. And yet, the West, backing Ukraine, violated its commitments under these two agreements. And later, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, after the Russian invasion in 2022, when this proxy war entered a whole new horrific phase, Merkel was asked about this by the major German newspaper Die Zeit, and this is what she said. This is the former German leader. Quote, "The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to buy time for Ukraine. Ukraine used this time to become stronger. As you can see today, it was exactly what gave Ukraine the priceless time." End quote. She added that quote, "It was clear for everyone" end quote that the conflict was simply suspended, that the problem was not resolved, that the war would eventually continue, but these agreements quote "were exactly what gave Ukraine the priceless time" end quote.
So, the West was not actually committed to peace with Russia. It was using the negotiations to buy time to prepare for a new phase of the war. And by the way, it was not just Merkel who admitted that. It was also the French president at the time, François Hollande, who participated in the Minsk negotiations alongside Merkel and Putin and the Ukrainian billionaire oligarch leader, the pro-NATO leader, Poroshenko. He made this admission in a 2022 interview with the Ukrainian anti-Russian media outlet, The Kyiv Independent. The Kyiv Independent said this in the interview. Quote, "In an interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit, Angela Merkel said about the Minsk protocols that quote, 'It was obvious that the conflict was going to be frozen, that the problem was not solved, but it just gave Ukraine precious time.' End quote." And then Hollande responded saying, quote, "Yes, Angela Merkel is right on this point." End quote.
So again, these are bombshell admissions by the two top Western officials who were physically present at these negotiations, brokering these talks with Russia on behalf of Ukraine, which is basically a NATO protectorate. Both of these leaders from Germany and France acknowledged that the West was not actually committed to peace with Russia. They were simply buying time to prepare for a future war with Russia.
So, given all of that context, and then given the remarks from JD Vance, who said in this interview with this conservative talk show host that actually the Trump administration is using the negotiations to buy time to refill the strategic petroleum reserves and stabilize the global oil market. I mean, when you hear those comments and you know the context of the Minsk negotiations and all of this, it's understandable why many geopolitical analysts are quite skeptical about these US talks with Iran. I mean, the US has violated all of the agreements that it made with Iran, and before that, with so many other countries, and with Native American tribes that signed many agreements with the US government that that Washington later violated. I mean, the US has a long history of violating every deal that it makes. So, clearly, I am very skeptical about Washington's intentions.
But with all of that said, I want to wrap up today by emphasizing another point that we should always keep in mind that is extremely important, which is that the Iranian government has changed, and that the new Iranian government is very serious about using all of the leverage that it has to force the US to make a deal and to abide by that deal because Iran understands that it actually has significant leverage. Iran won this war, and Iran can once again close the Strait of Hormuz if it needs to. This is Iran's nuclear option.
And what's interesting is even Western media outlets that are viciously anti-Iran, that are constantly publishing anti-Iranian propaganda, like the British state media outlet, the BBC, even they are now acknowledging that the new Iranian government, the new officials are very confident and willing to use that leverage that they have against the US. The BBC interviewed the Iranian-American scholar Vali Nasr, who said, quote, "This war is much more consequential and larger than we have given it credit for thus far. All major wars of this magnitude ultimately reorder the chessboard. This will do it for the Middle East." End quote. He acknowledged that Tehran has some significant advantages. And he said, quote, "A whole new generation has taken over. They have a very clear agenda." He added that they are very pragmatic and shrewd and they are ruthlessly focused on preserving the state and willing to act more decisively than their predecessors.
Another analyst from the Western government-funded think tank Chatham House pointed out that the previous Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was very cautious, and his previous strategy was known as "no war, no peace," so to maintain this policy of strategic ambiguity. And he was afraid of retaliating too openly against US acts of aggression because he didn't want to move up the escalation ladder into an all-out war. But the US has already waged this all-out war, and the US lost that war. So, the new Iranian leadership is much more confident.
As the BBC noted, his successors have been bolder, launching attacks on US military bases across the region. So, as an example, in January 2020, Trump assassinated the top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, which was a major act of war against Iran. However, Ali Khamenei understood that the US wanted escalation, and Iran was very cautious. They practiced a doctrine that Khamenei referred to as "strategic patience." So, Iran did retaliate. However, it telegraphed its intentions to the Pentagon, and then it launched 12 ballistic missiles at US bases in Iraq. But Iran did not cause significant damage to the US military in this retaliatory attack.
The new Iranian leadership is more than willing to cause significant damage to the US military because they're confident, and they know that they have significant leverage in the form of the Strait of Hormuz and asymmetric warfare. This is why the BBC acknowledged that Iran's self-defense, its retaliation against Washington's aggression, took the White House by surprise. Not only did Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which it had been talking about doing for decades. This is the first time it actually did it. But it wasn't just that. Iran retaliated by hitting the Gulf regimes that are US allies, like the UAE and Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Iran destroyed and heavily damaged most of the US military bases in the region. Iran hit the US headquarters of the Fifth Fleet, the Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and the largest US military base in the region, the Al Udeid base, which is located in Qatar. And the BBC noted that quote, "The Gulf States are now questioning the credibility of the US security umbrella and their own deterrence strategy." End quote.
So, the final point that you should take away from this analysis today is that the US has opened Pandora's Box. The US eliminated much of Iran's leadership, which had been much more cautious. The new Iranian leadership is, yes, pragmatic. They don't want more war. They don't want to cause, you know, chaos in the global economy. But they are very confident in their ability to retaliate. They understand that they have significant leverage, and they are more than willing to use that leverage to defend their sovereignty and prevent the US and its allies from continuing to launch these wars of aggression.
So, the US Empire has really bit off more than it could chew this time. The US Empire acted so arrogantly out of hubris, assuming it could simply carry out regime change, eliminate all of the Iranian leadership, and put in power puppets who would govern Tehran on behalf of Washington. They utterly failed to do that. In fact, their war of aggression has backfired, and the Iranian government is stronger than ever.
And the US strategy may be to try to repeat what it did in Ukraine, to use negotiations that are actually half-baked, half-hearted, not serious, in order to buy time to stabilize the oil market, to stabilize the global economy, in order to prepare for another war, another round of surprise attacks against Iran. However, Tehran is very prepared, and if the US even tries to do that, it will face very severe consequences, not only the US but the entire world, the global economy.
So, this war really has changed the geopolitical balance not only for West Asia but really for the entire world. Even the New York Times, the most mainstream US newspaper, admitted that Trump lost the war. Iran won, and this is a geopolitical earthquake. We are just beginning to see the massive consequences that this is going to have for the entire world.
On that note, I'm going to conclude. I am Ben Norton. I am the editor-in-chief of Geopolitical Economy Report. I want to thank everyone for joining me today. Please like and subscribe. Please share this. I will see you all next time.