THINK TWICE, STAN

You’d better hold me back The Strait of F - ng Panic They joked that the American president would rename the Strait of Hormuz the Trump Strait. Not quite. Now it is called the “Fuckin' strait.” Dear fellow Americans, have no worries. It appears the White House negotiations with the Iranians are going well. The “good and peace deals” are clearly on the way, and the head of the White House, as always, wasn’t lying. Well, it also appears that Donald Trump is publicly losing his temper. By Tuesday he has to show something substantial, otherwise he risks looking like a paper tiger again. The real fear, I suspect, is not in Iran but in the Arab Gulf states. The Iranians have made it clear that if their energy infrastructure is hit, they will shut things down completely - including depriving the Gulf countries of desalination capacity. Israel would not come out untouched either. The Gulf states will now have to perform a familiar scene with Trump - “hold me back, seven of you.” And one m...

  The Price of a Post Washington Meets Wall Street Rules: Governance at Market Speed  The oil market today reflects not only the conflict in the Middle East, but also a deeper question: what power actually means in America now. Where exactly is the line between a political action and a trading signal? On March 23, fifteen minutes before Donald Trump pressed “Post” on his personal platform Truth Social, the oil market flinched. Someone - either with impeccable analytical instinct or access to a text the world had not yet seen - dumped more than half a billion dollars’ worth of oil contracts. In his post, Trump announced “productive negotiations” with Iran. Oil prices dropped sharply. U.S. stock markets gained $2–3 trillion in capitalization. Shortly after, prices reversed. Tehran denied that any negotiations had taken place. Global markets followed downward. Oil markets today run on expectations and rumors. One can always argue that someone simply guessed right. By glob...

Napoleon’s Lesson, Washington’s Practice Sanctioning the Enemy While Funding Him: A Familiar Strategy The United States’ decision to partially lift sanctions on Iranian oil while engaged in open conflict with Tehran recreates a situation that Napoleon Bonaparte encountered more than two centuries ago in his attempts to economically strangle Britain. Even against the backdrop of the broader disarray into which Washington has managed to plunge its own campaign against Iran in just a few weeks, this move stands out as particularly curious. Some observers rushed to describe it as an unprecedented case: enabling an adversary to earn freely while military operations against it are ongoing. In reality, this is less innovation than repetition. The difference is scale. Today’s global market is far more expansive and interconnected, and it has become a decisive constraint on the conduct of war. It forces states to adjust their strategies in ways that would have been unthinkable in earlier er...

The Burden of Being Believed Hormuz and the Price of Expectations The third week of the ongoing US and Israeli aggression against Iran has already turned into one of the most consequential events in international politics of this decade. The broader political consequences of this tragedy - the serious discrediting of international law by a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a new split between the United States and Europe, and the destabilization of the entire Middle East - remain of interest mostly to professional observers. What affects everyone, and already produces the strongest global impact, is the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This is one of the most critical arteries for global oil trade. Prices for this key commodity had already begun moving upward due to the war in the region. The risk that any tanker may be struck by an Iranian drone is now pushing hydrocarbon prices even higher. Leading international o...

Natural Causes A Timely and Convenient Little War The United States wants to fight China no more than it wanted to fight Russia. Even less, in fact. With Russia it was possible to wage a proxy war while shielding itself behind Ukrainian proxies. Supporting allies in the Pacific in the event of a military clash with China would be a different matter entirely. Even supplying weapons, military equipment, and ammunition without direct confrontation between the American and Chinese fleets would be nearly impossible. For that reason, Washington places its bet on economic pressure. The key condition for success in such a strategy is the isolation of China from sources of raw materials and from markets for its exports. In other words, the interception of trade routes. Naturally, Chinese commercial arteries must be cut in such a way that Beijing cannot directly accuse the United States. To repeat: the United States does not want to fight China. Trade routes therefore must be interrupted f...

  The Luxury of Geography Iran’s Vulnerability - America’s Indifference Iran’s geopolitical position has always been profoundly vulnerable. That fact has shaped its political culture - a culture of flexibility in tactics and remarkable endurance over centuries. International politics is the arena where geography and culture intersect. Geography defines the broad contours of strategy. It determines what a state must fear, what it can ignore, and what it must control. From this premise emerges geopolitics as a school of thought. Second only to geography in shaping foreign policy is culture in its broadest sense - the system of beliefs and practices through which societies define the limits of the possible and create the symbols through which they communicate with others. In the war launched on February 28, 2026 by the United States and Israel against Iran, we observe a clear illustration of this interaction. Each of the principal actors behaves in accordance with its own un...