OIL SPIKES As Iran Claims US Ship STRUCK, CHAOS Unleashed

Good morning, everybody.Happy Monday.I have an amazing show for everybody today.What do we have, Crystal?

Indeed we do.Fast -moving developments this morning, claims and counterclaims from the Iranians and the Americans.We do know the U .S.is announcing new rules of engagement to target Iranian ships.We also have Trump saying we're going to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

That apparently just meant, like, giving them a map or something of that nature.Anyway, Trita Parsi is going to join us to let us know, as best we can tell, where we are this morning, where things are likely to be headed, what the Iranians' position is at this point.a look at the way the Gulf Arab countries are reacting.They are in crisis, increasingly divided.Spirit Airlines is dead, competing claims there about what exactly happened.Israel is applying the Gaza model to Lebanon.

There might be a secret Jeffrey Epstein suicide note that we're just learning about now and Economics professor Richard Wolff is going to join us to talk about the global economic impacts of the Iran war in Particular this move that China just made where they said effectively like no We're not going to comply with US sanctions, which is kind of a first.It's a significant step on their part So interested to hear from him the significance that he finds in their actions there.

That's right Thank you to everybody's subscribing to the show breaking points calm.We are They're doing our AMA live today from the studio.That's all I can tease for right now.I don't have any exclusive thoughts, let's say, on marijuana that you may be able to hear.Thank you to everybody who has been subscribing also to our YouTube channel.We deeply appreciate it.

If you're listening to this on a podcast, please share an episode with a friend.It really helps other people find the show.But let's go ahead and start very fast moving developments with Iran.We've already added multiple different ones.It's not even 8 a .

m.here.and the East Coast.They are claiming, and this is from state news, Persian media in Iran, two missiles hit a U .S.warship near Jask Island after ignoring Iranian warnings, again, according to state media there in Iran.

U .S.is already out denying this, CENTCOM putting out a statement we can put up on the screen.Project Freedom and enforcing the naval blockade on Iranian ports.So that's as much as we know about that at this point.And I'm sure eventually we will learn who is telling the truth in this particular scenario.

We can also put the next one up on the screen.This is from the UAE.They are claiming that one of their carriers, one of their oil tankers was targeted and struck while trying to transit the Strait of Hormuz.So we have that development as well.In addition, this part is solid in terms of the U .S.

position.We can put Barack Ravid's latest report here up on the screen.U .S.official saying that the rules of engagement for U .S.

forces in the region have been changed and they were authorized to strike immediate threats against ships that cross the strait, like IRGC fast boats or Iranian missile positions.So all of these things point in the same direction of increasing escalatory situation, very fraught.very dangerous, where the Iranians are claiming they struck a U .S.warship.The U .

S.is saying, we will hit your ships if you try to impede any ships that are transiting the Strait of Hormuz.And, Sagar, this comes on the heels of this Trump truth.This is A1, guys, we can put this up on the screen, where he is claiming that the U .S.is going to guide, this is his language, going to guide, help free up ships which are locked in the Strait of Hormuz and guide them through the ship.

For the good of Iran, the Middle East, and the United States, we have told these countries we will guide their ships safely out of these restricted waterways so they can freely and ably get on with their business.He goes on to say a lot of other things as well, but that's sort of the primary piece that he's putting out here.And, you know, immediately Sagar Kaur says, well, what do you mean by that?When you hear that language, you're going to guide them through.You assume US naval and perhaps air assets are going to be utilized to ensure their safety.But pretty quickly after that, we got word that no, no, no.

We're not going to use any U .S.military assets.We're going to just tell ships they can go through and give them some indication of what we think would be a safe path.

Exactly right.Let's put A0D guys on the screen.Also, what we added this morning, they are now saying that the rules of engagement for U .S.forces in the region have now been changed and they were authorized to strike immediate threats against ships that cross the strait, like IRGC fast boats or Iranian missile positions.However, these officials are clarifying that ships will not be actually escorting these tankers through the Straits of Hormuz.

Remember, Trump's truth makes clear that this is about neutral countries who have been not affected and or involved in the war, and that they would basically be given like a map of where they think that there are mines being able to go through.Again, this is all very, very fast moving as of this morning, but that's where things currently stand.The oil markets are going wild all just in the last two hours.Initially late last night, Sunday, They opened 2 % down.At one point, they were 5 % up on the claim that a warship hit, and then it went down a little bit.Still remains very, very high.

I think before we bring entry to Parsi, we just want to emphasize all of this chaos is exactly why the price of oil remains where it's at.It's why today, as of this morning, gas price national is around $4 .50.per gallon, a 30 % increase in a single week.And in fact, one of the largest single week gains in modern American history.Trump is trying his best.That's why that announcement, that truth was put out right before the Brent crude market was to open and it did initially work.

However, showing that it basically fell apart within hours after things started going, you know, kinetic in the Straits of Hormuz, which just highlights the absolute insanity of all of this.So this is a, you know, kind of a little news briefing that we've been able to do, but we do have Trita Parsi standing by.

Yeah.And one last piece before I do bring in Trita, we can put A1B up on the screen, just the Iranian response here.They're saying they reject any attempt, they told Jeremy Scahill this, to alter, quote, current conditions in the Strait of Hormuz.will respond forcefully to President Trump's so -called Project Freedom.And they go on to say any commercial vessel attempting to transit through designated restricted routes without prior coordination will be promptly intercepted by Iranian forces.Sounds like this morning they may be making good on that if the information coming from the UAE is in fact correct.

So with all of that being said, to analyze where we are, we're going to go ahead and bring in Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute.Yes.Dr. Parsi, great to see you.

Good to see you, sir.Good to see you guys.

So I just laid out a whole bunch of things.We've got these competing claims this morning with the UAE saying that one of their tankers was struck.We have the U .S.saying they're changing the rules of engagement.This, of course, all comes on the heels of Trump posting that we're going to guide ships from the Strait of Hormuz.

But it turns out that just means like give them a map.What do you make of all of these fast breaking developments?

Let me first start off by saying that according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Iranian economy should have collapsed about 10 days ago thanks to the blockade that Trump imposed.We're now 10 days past that deadline, and instead we're seeing this.That tells you quite a lot about what this blockade really was, another illusionary silver bullet that Trump, in his desperation, accepted, and frankly, worsened his own situation.And now we're in a situation in which he is saying that he's going to be guiding, and as you guys pointed out in your opening, completely unclear exactly what that means, but what I think we can say is this.Throughout the war, the U .S.

Navy kept itself about 3 ,000 kilometers away from the Iranian shorelines precisely because of the concern that the Iranians would have missiles that could strike these ships and potentially even sink a major American warship.And in order to avoid any American casualties, the Navy kept itself at that length.That also complicated the flight sorties in the sense that a lot of refueling was needed to be done midair because of the fact that the aircraft carriers were so far away from Iranian shorelines.Now, Trump apparently is telling us that he doesn't care.but American casualties because he's now suddenly going to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and then immediately afterwards he starts backing down.I think what we're seeing here is the desperation that yet another silver bullet did not proved to be a silver bullet.

It was just another regular bullet sold by the Israelis and their allies in Washington that have just deepened the crisis for Trump, and he is increasingly desperate.There is a diplomatic way out, but it will not work unless Trump drops his maximalist Israeli positions in these negotiations.

Let's go to A4, Dr. Parsi, to get your react.This was the initial truth social post over the weekend.Trump says, I will be soon reviewing the plan Iran has just sent to us, but we can't imagine it would be acceptable and that they have not yet paid a big enough price for what they have done.humanity and the world over the last 47 years.agreed to some sort of a 15 -year enrichment delay.So your reaction here to their combination of demands and willing to move on nuclear enrichment, which ultimately, like you said, if this is to end, it will end this way.

What do you make of Iran's positions here?Are they loosening up a bit?Are they showing some signs of openness?Or are we still in a total stalemate?

So almost all of the different variations of the proposal that has been circulating in the media have been denied one way or another by the Iranians.Some of it I do think are true, some of it probably is not.The 15 -year moratorium, as it was phrased in the Al Jazeera readout of it, I found very unlikely.In Geneva, what the Iranians had agreed to through the Omanis was that there would be enrichment only on a needs basis, meaning that if there was a need for fuel pads for a reactor, that's when they would enrich.They would only uh enriched for two specific reactors the trr in tehran and a new reactor that doesn't even go online for another seven years the trr already has fuel pads for five to seven years which would in essence mean the iranians would not be enriching any uranium for the next five to seven years which would be the duration of the trump administration some more and that was the face saving exit for trump he would be able to say that there will be zero enrichment during his presidencybecause of this formula.

Now, could that formula be extended to 15 years?There's pathways to that.You could either have Russia, France provide these fuel pads up front and have a guaranteed supply for the Iranians for the next 15 years.And as a result, the formula would still stand.It would just extend to 15 years.You could take the 60 % enriched uranium and down blend it to 19 .75 % and turn that into fuel pads.

So there are pathways in which you could actually extend the timeline to 15 years.But whether they have agreed to that or not, it's unclear.But more than anything else, it will not be called a moratorium, because it will essentially be something that is on that needs basis.But nevertheless, the bigger point that I think is coming through, despite which variation of the deal you're looking at, is that the Iranians are no longer looking for a ceasefire or even an end to this conflict.They're essentially putting forward a grand bargain.something that ends 47 years of US -Iran enmity, that encompasses the entire region.

It includes Israel, it includes America's proxy Israel, as well as Iran's proxies, if you want to use that language.None of them can engage in any more warfare.That means an end to attacks in Gaza, an end to attacks in Lebanon.And in return, They're offering some of these nuclear things, but they will also ask for a tremendous amount of sanctions relief.Now, a lot of this, of course, the Iranians know are negotiation bids that will not be accepted by the U .S.

I cannot see any scenario in which the United States will agree to pay reparations to Iran, or that it even will leave the region militarily as a request of an Iranian demand.I think it should leave the region because of U .S.interests, but that's different from doing so because the Iranians are requesting it.What worries me more than anything else is that we need at least take a look at these public versions of these negotiations.There doesn't seem to have been much movement.

And as long as there's not much movement, that's when we see the higher likelihood of some sort of a confrontation, Trump getting frustrated and starting to talk about you know, the kind of things that he wants to do in the Strait of Hormuz, etc.And the risk for military confrontation renewing significantly goes up.And time is running out.At the end of the day, this current situation cannot last forever.We just found out yesterday, Kuwait has not exported a single barrel of oil for 30 days now, has not happened in 30 years.Asian countries are suffering tremendously.

This is something that we're paying very little attention to in the United States, that other countries are paying a much, much higher economic cost than the U .S.

is.Dr. Parsi, I'm curious for your view on what do you think Trump was up to with this tweet about we're going to guide the ships through the Strait of Hormuz?Is this just market manipulation?Do you think he's trying to provoke a confrontation?That was something that Professor Robert Pape had floated, that they could be trying to set up some sort of Gulf of Tonkin situation because they want to go back to the war, but they want the Iranians to be perceived as the aggressor.When I was discussing this in our group chat, Ryan said, well, when have we ever needed an excuse to go back to war seems like they'd just restart the war if they wanted to.

In any case, what do you think is the gambit here from Trump?

To me, this reminds me very much of what happened when he started saying that he's going to attack the oil facilities at Harg Island.And it was all of this buzz about how dangerous that would be for the Iranians, what a significant setback that would be for the oil industry.All of that true.And then what did he end up doing?He struck the island, but he made sure that none of the missiles got anywhere near the oil facilities.Instead, he struck some military facilities on that island.

So what happened in that situation?that it became very clear to Trump, he doesn't have these escalatory options at his disposal, because the Iranians have escalation dominance.If he had struck those oil facilities, the Iranians would have struck all of the oil facilities in the GCC countries, including the ones that can be used to sidestep the straight of Hormuz.And that would dramatically increase oil prices, not just immediately, but in the long run, because it would take years to rebuild that infrastructure for oil.And as a result, he backed off.seems to me that again, he issued some threat or he had some plan in which he wanted to go all out.

And then once it came to the implementation, he backs down.Once it comes to what happens after that tweet, he backs down even further.It's a sign of his desperation because as I said earlier on, once again, another one of his silver bullets, this blockade ended up backfiring on him rather than being this type of a quick fix that would have turned the tables and forced the Iranians to capitulate.

Right.You made an earlier point about FDD, and I do feel like it's important to say, can we put A8 up there on the screen?The Trump administration is now openly using FDD graphics about enriched uranium stockpiles.And look, you know, to not get too inside baseball, but FDD is probably the most pro -war think tank here in Washington.I would say I don't even think they would necessarily disagree with me on that.In addition to being a very allied I guess you could say, with the Israeli government's interests.

So it is pretty clear here, especially also with the more recent news that Steve Witkoff has just had somebody join him, who previously also worked at FDD, where, look, personnel is policy in many ways, and the people who are being empowered in this current moment all seem to be of the much more hawkish

Absolutely, and I think, first of all, I think you made FDD's day by calling them the most pro -war think tank in Washington, D .C.That is a compliment in their world.

Yeah, I don't think they would disagree.

And it is absolutely correct.And one of the things that is quite fascinating is that in the beginning of Trump II's administration, we did not have anyone from FDD in the administration.It was a sign that some of the efforts to keep the neocons out of the administration had been successful.There had been some, of course, but not any FDD staffers, because during Trump won, there were FDD staffers that were in the White House, in the NSC, while still being on FDD's payroll.Whether that was ethical or even legal is unclear to me, but nevertheless, it's a rather unusual situation that you have someone working at the NSC and still being on the payroll of its previous advocacy organization.So the fact that Trump is increasingly going in this direction is also a reason as to why he's stuck.

Because the entire objective of the Israelis and its pro -Israel allies in Washington, D .C., has not to be to resolve the situation.It is to make sure that this war gets prolonged and that at a minimum, the U .S.never lifts any sanctions, never lifts any of the pressure on Iran, regardless of what that pressure costs the U .

S.or the global economy.Let's talk a little bit more about what that pressure is costing the U .S.and new realities that have been established.You just had a fantastic piece.

This is A2, guys, that we can put up on the screen.Your headline here is Trump's war has destroyed the illusion of U .S.military supremacy for countries that depend on U .S.military protection, this should be a wake -up call.

And while we're very much in a, you know, it's hard to see exactly how this conflict is going to end and what the terms of the deal are going to be, etc., you're pointing to somerealities that have been established here, some sort of genies that are out of the bottle that are not going to be put back in in terms of the perception of the U .S.S.military and its ability to assert its dominance wherever and whatever it wants to.Break down a little bit of the thesis of your piece and what the implications are.

What I write is I think that this war and the manner in which it has evolved, and in many ways at this point it is a strategic defeat for the United States, is a wake -up call in terms of whether the U .S.'s grand strategy of liberal hegemony and primacy on a global scale any longer is actually feasible.Because much of the conversation so far has been that the US's domination in the region is going to come to an end, that many of the GCC countries are no longer going to rely on an America's secure umbrella that really proved to be not only unreliable, but ineffective in this war.But I think it actually goes beyond that.First of all, if we compare the depth of this disaster to that of the Iraq War, I think this one goes further.Because at least in the Iraq War, the United States won the war, in three weeks.

The US's military dominance was never in question.Moreover, the United States also achieved its political objective of getting rid of Saddam Hussein.That too has not been achieved in the Iran case.The Iranian regime is still there in many ways.It seems to be much stronger than what it was before.And on top of that, the Iranians have at a minimum denied the U .

S.a victory and at a maximum scored a strategic victory against the United States.So this goes much beyond the type of a debacle that Iraq was.But moreover, the global consequences are far beyond that as well.You never saw the Iraq war cause famine or fuel shortages or gas prices going up in an uncontrollable way in the manner that this war has now already caused on a global scale.And the U .

S.is, as we have discussed already now,incapable of even coming up with some ideas of how to be able to fix this using its coercive power. SoSo the utility of American coercive power has really been denied here.It's a combination of the Iranians using new technology, drones, missiles, as well as geography, of course.But even if you don't have something as strategically viable as the Strait of Hormuz or vital as Strait of Hormuz, you can still use the terrain as a way of denying victory for a much stronger military power.

That's what the Ukrainians have done.So I think going forward, this is going to really raise questions as to whether the United States can pursue global primacy any longer, because that was based on the idea that the United States can fight two major wars on two continents at the same time.We've not been able to fight this war on one continent successfully.And this is, I think, going to end up becoming an inflection point, one in which we are going to move much faster towards multipolarity than we were on.We were already on that trajectory.This sped it up even further.

And one sign of it is something I think you all just mentioned earlier on in the show, which is the Chinese now coming out and saying they're no longer going to be respecting U .S.sanctions, and that if the United States actually goes after any Chinese ships that have been carrying Iranian oil or any oil from the Persian Gulf, the Chinese are not going to accept that.Whereas reality is, up until now, the Chinese more or less have.They have been abiding by U .S.

sanctions.And now, 10 days or so before Trump is supposed to show up in Beijing, the Chinese changed the rules of the game.It's a direct consequence of how badly this war has gone.And I think that's just the beginning of the global repercussions we're going to see.

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