Rob’s comments below are in italics.Derek’s comments below are in normal font.
It’s been about 10 days since we last spoke on the show. We thought we’d do a bit of a catch-up on what’s going on. We’ve had a ceasefire of dubious intent, some negotiations that were clearly theatre. What do we need to update people on?
Well, let’s start with that. A lot of people breathed a sigh of relief when Trump said Iran had agreed to a ceasefire, that it was going to last a fortnight, and that they were going to reopen negotiations. He said that the Iranian 10-point plan seemed like a good starting point for discussion, though that sounded almost surreal to me. The Iranians’ 10-point plan is nothing new — it’s more or less what they’ve been saying from the outset: essentially a flat rejection of everything the Americans have suggested.
It’s the same with Russia, isn’t it? If you look at the Russian demands, they’re just not compatible with the demands of the Empire.
Yeah. Every single one of those 10 points is something it’s inconceivable to imagine America agreeing to without looking ridiculous, apart from any other considerations. Anyway, there were even public suggestions — in the Wall Street Journal, I believe — that the Iranian negotiating team should be assassinated. Mohammed Marandi said they fully expected to be sent to paradise on their journey back home. I hope they weren’t too disappointed to arrive in Iran instead!
I’ve got the words of Hillary Clinton ringing in my ears, where she once said, “Can’t we just drone this guy?”
Who was that in connection with?
I’ve lost the specifics, but she was caught out saying something like that.
Well, it’s fairly consistently what they’ve been doing anyway. I’m pretty sure everybody outside the US and its vassal states can see quite clearly that - although Iran was almost certainly not expecting anything useful to come out of the discussions - they did go into them seriously. They had quite a large negotiating team with specialists in all kinds of areas. They turned up fully briefed and fully authorised by the Supreme Leader to reach agreements.
The first thing that happened, of course, was that Israel continued its absolutely brutal attacks on Lebanon, destroying whole blocks of apartment buildings in a dense city-centre area of Beirut. The BBC had the gall to describe these as Israeli strikes on Hezbollah command centres. That’s highly unlikely.
Israel then said Hezbollah wasn’t part of the agreement. Trump said it wasn’t. The Pakistani mediators said it was. That immediately drew a question mark over whether the Iranian negotiators were going to leave the hotel in Islamabad and go to the actual negotiations.
But, they got there. It turned out there were no face-to-face discussions at all. They sat in separate rooms while mediators carried messages back and forth. It went on for 21 hours. The US team consisted of JD Vance, who clearly had not been given the authority to decide anything or any clear briefing, because he had to keep ringing Donald Trump — and, according to some accounts, Benjamin Netanyahu too. He was accompanied by Witkoff and Kushner, both Zionists with no training as diplomats and not part of the US government.
It’s not exactly the diplomatic dream team, is it?
No. They’d already destroyed whatever credibility they might have had — not only in connection with Iran, but also in connection with Ukraine. So it was really doomed from the start. It was no great surprise when Vance came out and said they’d made progress on several points, but Iran had not agreed to their proposals, so it had gone nowhere. Which was entirely predictable.
Then, as soon as they got back, Trump announced a blockade. He was not allowing any ships to pass through the Straits that had docked at Iranian ports. Quite apart from the fact that there’s no basis in international law to unilaterally make such a distinction, the Straits of Hormuz are of course territorial waters — either Iran’s or Oman’s. Territorial waters extend 12 miles from the coast. 12 plus 12 is 24, and they’re 21 miles wide. Every part of the Straits falls within the territorial waters of one or the other. Any stretch large enough for a ship to navigate is quite likely to be within 12 miles of the Iranian coast.
So they’re entirely within their rights. There are many places in the world where a narrow waterway exists, and the adjacent sovereign state exacts some form of payment for passage through it under various pretexts. It’s not a particularly unusual situation.
The Americans can’t bring warships close to the actual Straits because they’d almost certainly be attacked by Iran. The closest they could get is somewhere out in the mouth of the Gulf of Oman, which is far too large a stretch of water to supervise, even with the largest navy in the world. It’s completely impractical. We’re just about to start feeling the impact throughout the world of the shipping constraints that have been in place for the last six weeks.
Yeah. It feels like the summer of 1940, doesn’t it?
Exactly. I was just refreshing my memory of the Phoney War. The Second World War started when Germany invaded Poland on 1st September. Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939, in view of their treaty with Poland. It wasn’t until the following May that there was any actual fighting between the Allies and Germany. We were technically at war, but there wasn’t a war happening.
The situation here — I’m amazed there haven’t yet been far more severe price rises than we’ve seen. The last time I looked, diesel was back to the two pounds per litre range. Petrol is considerably more expensive than it was six weeks ago. There’s been virtually nothing in the way of shortages, and people don’t seem to be taking it seriously.
The reason there haven’t been any effects so far is that all current supplies were already en route when hostilities broke out. There’s been almost no passage through the Straits since then, and most of what has passed has been bound for China. China has issued some pretty robust warnings — couched in the usual general terms — against interference with its shipping on the high seas. A considerable amount of the ships allowed by Iran to transit have been bound for China, so it’s quite clear what they’re referring to.
Incidentally, France actually joined China and Russia in vetoing the Bahrain proposal at the UN Security Council. The proposal was to censure Iran without providing any context whatsoever.
I take at face value their position that they didn’t want this war in the first place. They didn’t start it. They’ve responded in a measured fashion, and the escalations have come entirely from the United States and from Israel.
It’s how it gets framed in the media, isn’t it? All of these places “just happen to be under attack”.
Yeah. So we’re about to start feeling the effects of that. The most immediate one is petrol shortages. Most of the world’s nitrogen fertiliser is either shipped from that region or dependent on natural gas shipped from there. There are going to be enormous price hikes in fertiliser, which are already occurring. We’re in the planting season in the Northern Hemisphere. This will feed through to food shortages and price rises in six to 12 months. That’s already baked in, regardless of what happens in the next few weeks.
Regardless of the effectiveness of any naval action the United States takes, the major restriction on traffic in that area will be driven by insurance implications. London, European, and American-based insurers will either refuse to insure ships making those passages or vastly inflate the premiums for doing so. That alone will throttle the traffic, regardless of any naval action. Countries outside Western control won’t face the same restrictions — China, I’m sure, has its own insurance arrangements.
The difficulty is that Trump’s ego won’t let him come out of this looking like a loser. He’s now put himself in a position where it’s very difficult to see how he can arrange anything else. He seems past the point of being able to provide any kind of window dressing. After all, the Vietnam War started with a contingent of 3,000 to 4,000 Marines landing. They were stuck with it for 10 years, suffered a catastrophic defeat, and lost over 50,000 American servicemen.
This feels like Vietnam 2.0.
It does indeed. That’s enough to be going on with, I think.
The main message is: there’s a lot of chatter across various groups about prepping and being mindful of what’s likely coming, including potential price hikes and food and fuel shortages. So now’s a good time.
Yeah. Stock up.
Make sure you’ve got a few tins of beans as well. All right, thanks Derek.
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