THE CONTINUED CASE FOR STRATEGIC PATIENCE.

After thirteen days of air strikes on and from Iran, both major combatants have paused, again, perhaps to talk.  "Airstrikes have paused and talks are pressing forward. But can the US and Iran take the off-ramp?"

RADIO TEHERAN ATTENDS THE SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL.

"A Military Flyover Country Turns 250."  It's what we'd expect.

Every dollar spent on one of these performative fighter jet overpasses is a dollar stolen from our communities. The budget is a clear reflection of what the country values, and right now, our budget says we value genocide, destruction, and the theater of war over the substance of peace and the actual betterment of our communities, our country.

The America and Freedom 250 celebrations ask us to reflect on what our nation stands for, a nation started by genocide, carried out by slavery, fueled by exploitation, and exposing how militarism, racism, and fascism are on full display. Why do we spend trillions to destroy and destabilize the world, while spending pennies on investments to make our own communities actually safe?

The author (one of two, the proofreading is as bad as the logic) writes "as an Iranian immigrant."  If the cities of the "military flyover country" aren't actually safe, couldn't that author, oh, enjoy the safety and clean water in Teheran?  So much self-inflicted joylessness.

SELF-INFLICTED JOYLESSNESS.

"The easiest way to be miserable" and "absolutely unnecessary," notes Derek Hunter.

RIP THE BANDAR OFF.

You'd expect to find Iran hawks such as Kevin McCullough writing for Town Hall.

The easiest decision any president can make is the one he never has to make.

Hold another meeting. Send another envoy. Extend another deadline. Issue another carefully worded statement expressing “grave concern.” Washington has turned delay into a governing philosophy, and nowhere has that habit been more dangerous than with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Forty-seven years after the ayatollahs seized power, we’re still hearing the same promise: Just give diplomacy a little more time.

President Donald Trump appears to have answered that question. Reports indicate he has approved plans to strike Iran’s deeply buried Pickaxe Mountain nuclear facility should Tehran continue refusing to abandon its march toward a nuclear weapon.

Process, nuance, failure.  Now that the World Cup has wrapped up and the teams and spectators are heading home, perhaps it is time to open up a can on the mullahs.

THE ILLOGIC OF MERCANTILISM.

Yesterday, Our President floated the idea of collecting payment for escort services.  I'm referring to the Arabian Gulf, get your mind out of the gutter.  National Review's Andrew McCarthy promptly and correctly flagged that proposal as illegal.

The strait was open when Trump decided to start the war. This was to the great advantage of the United States, a trading colossus with the world’s most formidable economy. If Trump were to impose tolls, fees, taxes, or whatever he deigns to call them — i.e., if he were to do exactly what Iran has been trying to do — that would induce other nations to extort payments for transit through international waters and straits of importance to international trade where they are in a position to intimidate shippers. Free trade would break down, which would be a catastrophe for nations heavily engaged in international trade, such as our own.

Congress should authorize the use of military force to keep the strait open. Still, regardless of whether one thinks the president has authority to use force to remedy a problem he created (because, however we got to this point, it is in America’s vital interest to keep the strait open), he has no authority to toll the strait, as he proposes to do.

It is entirely possible that Congress should enact legislation and/or that a binding international treaty should be forged that would reimburse the U.S. for security costs. I doubt that; I’d estimate that the benefits that the U.S. receives from free transit across the world far outweigh the costs of discouraging Iran from tolling the Hormuz Strait. But wherever you come out on that equation, a president has no authority to dictate transit taxes, and trying to do so is a provocation both constitutionally and in international relations.

I'll leave it to people who pay more attention to international affairs to evaluate whether that strait was open out of parties mutually looking the other way, the mullahs at infidels buying their oil, and the customers at the mullahs developing nuclear weapons.

WILL THE THING FINALLY BE PRESSED?

The useful idiots at Common Dreams are doing what useful idiots do.  "Iran Condemns Fresh US Bombing Campaign as ‘Serious Threat to International Peace’."  Pure projection, but isn't it the way of the abuser to accuse everybody else of being abusive?

The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Sunday condemned the United States’ latest round of airstrikes as a “flagrant violation” of international law that threatens to permanently derail efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution to the war, which US President Donald Trump launched earlier this year in coordination with the Israeli government.

This past weekend, said Iran’s Foreign Ministry, the US carried out “brutal attacks” and “acts of aggression” that pose “a serious threat to international peace and security, rendering futile all efforts made over the past several months to reduce tensions and restore stability in the West Asia region.”

For 47 years the mullahs and their revolutionary guard storm troopers have been fomenting instability and raising tensions.

LET THE THING BE PRESSED.

The Memorandum of Understanding is a dead letter, kinetic actions that might not involve the United States or Israeli forces, and Dmitri Bolt advises Our President, "Iran Is Already Begging for a Deal. Don't Give Them One."  I can understand Our President's hope to leave those Iranians who are not mad Moslems, such as the ones who took advantage of the weekend of mourning to go to the beach, with the vestiges of a civilian infrastructure once the mullahs bug out.

LET THE KIDS PLAY.

Self-described women's basketball reporter Cassandra Negley asks, "Caitlin Clark has become a pawn in everyone's game, but what about her own?"

Sitting around a real-life bonfire in my backyard, a safe distance from the online firestorm still raging around Caitlin Clark, Alyssa Thomas and the WNBA, a friend waded into the conversation everyone wanted to have this past July 4th weekend.

"Ya know," he said, "it seems to me like Caitlin Clark just wants to hoop."

Talk about some cold water splashed onto a red-hot saga that won't end.

It became clear many controversies ago that Clark just wants to play basketball, talk basketball and live basketball. It's true she is quick to jump into (or jump-start) the fray on the court. Yet, off the court, she steps away from making anything messier than it already is simply because her name is attached.

She is as aware as most of us that the nonsense erupting around her is not about her. But, damn, it must be exhausting. Which is largely what Clark said, with much more eloquence, late last week in one of the more raw and vulnerable moments we've seen from her of late.

"It can be really frustrating to me at times," the 24-year-old said. "I think it's difficult. I think a lot of people sometimes think I'm a robot. I'm not a robot. I have emotions, I have feelings, and it can be really difficult to go through a lot of that."

In the three-time All-Star's first appearance back at team practices on Friday, she opened her media availability with nearly five minutes of unscripted remarks on the flagrant 2 foul called on Alyssa Thomas (of which she agreed without question), officiating (including specific ways the league can improve), the discourse around the incident ("none of that is OK"), how it took all the oxygen ("that's just a real disservice to our league") and the difficulties navigating all of that as Caitlin Clark.

Perhaps it is as simple as the league getting the quality of officiating it's paying for, which isn't very good, which players can approach only gingerly in peril of sanction from the main office.

WHERE'S MOJTABA?

Iran's Ayatollah Farewell Tour goes the way such things often go.  "Angry mourners hurl abuse at Iran’s peace negotiators."

Hardliners heckled Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister, and Masoud Pezeshkian, the president, as the funeral for Ali Khamenei continued into its fourth day.

Crowds shouted at Mr Araghchi: "Death to the traitor who sold out the homeland" and "bisharaf, bisharaf" ("dishonourable, dishonourable") as he moved through the mourners. The word "bisharaf" has a more powerful meaning in Persian than its direct English translation.

It was reported that he left the scene on the back of a motorbike.

Amid the crowd was Saeed Jalili, the hardline former negotiator and the only member of the supreme national security council to vote against the deal.

Some mourners kissed him on the cheek and urged him to "fix the country" – a pointed rebuke to the government staged at the very event meant to project national unity.

It comes after Iran's living former presidents – Mohammad Khatami, Hassan Rouhani and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – were not invited to Sunday's funeral prayer in Tehran.

They did not attend the Sunday procession, though Mr Ahmadinejad, who was thought to have been killed in the war's opening days, surfaced on Monday among the mourners in the capital.

The dead-enders continue to flip drones at ships exiting the Arabian Gulf.  Our President has revoked the "license" Iran has to sell oil.

What comes first, a return of internal unrest in Iran, an Iranian tanker seized by the U. S. Navy on the high seas, or Israel and the USA opening up a can on the mullahs?  Now that Independence Day is over, will that can be opened during the World Cup closing rounds, before the general elections, or after those?

DO WE REALLY WANT TO MICRO-MANAGE IRAN?

That's a V. D. Hanson rhetorical question, which he answers, at some length, in the negative.  We're still hung up in a "peace process," which might be an exercise in futility.

There are legitimate concerns about the tentative memorandum, including the idea of third-party cash infusions to the regime and claims that violence in Lebanon is somehow Israel's fault. In truth, history shows that Hezbollah, with Iranian financial support, consistently instigates the killing and then whines when Israel—or the U.S. in past conflicts—responds disproportionately.

That said, much of the current hysteria assumes a radical change in Trump's strategy rather than a continuity that has brought us to the current denouement. It also does not consider the wider strategic context of the memorandum, the critical role of domestic public opinion in shaping how wars are conducted, or the broader strategy of isolating and weakening the regime.

A closer look at the current position of the U.S. suggests it has done an enormous amount of fiscal, economic, and military damage to Iran—the full extent of which will not be known until foreigners are allowed into the country.

We might be, he argues, in the worst situation but for all the possible alternatives.

Iran has been militarily devastated, but it does not yet consider itself strategically inert. The regime has little concern for the welfare of its own people and assumes Trump will not retaliate against dual-use targets in the manner of most past presidents who ordered bombing campaigns.

Remember, Trump could have gotten a much better deal had we dealt with the Iranians as we did with the once-defeated Iraqis and Taliban, whose governments were forcibly replaced by ones more agreeable to U.S. demands.

But, with a population of 93 million, Iran is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan, which together required decades of U.S. ground troops, $2 trillion in treasure, 7,000 American deaths, and 53,000 wounded. And in the end, those efforts still did not result in lasting Western-style governments aligned with U.S. interests.

Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq was as large or as formidable as Iran. To fully dictate terms to Iran as if it were an inert protectorate, the U.S. would either have to bomb it to smithereens or send in thousands of ground troops, both politically unpalatable to the American people. Trump must deal with the reality that Americans have been sick of dealing with the Middle East for years. By now, they believe that any costly, enforced regime change on the ground—or any years-long no-fly zone—is not worth the life of a single American soldier.

I suspect Our President still hopes, perhaps ever more forlornly, that Iran's civilians will say no to the mullahs, and that leaving the civilian infrastructure in relatively good shape will pay off.

ISRAEL GETS A SAY.

Andrew Fox suggests that's what might be motivating the latest round of phony peace talks.

Iran needs time first. Time to get oil moving through Hormuz again, but in a way that makes the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz conditional, reversible, and politically useful. Tehran’s position goes beyond simply “open” or “closed”. Every barrel, every tanker, every demined shipping lane, and every assurance to markets comes at a price.

That price is leverage over Washington’s relationship with Israel. The conflict in Lebanon between the IDF and Hezbollah is now central. Iran has been explicit that the talks must focus on the Lebanon ceasefire, the terms for reopening Hormuz, oil sanctions, and access to frozen assets. In other words, Hezbollah is being inserted into the US-Iran negotiations as a test of whether Trump can restrain Israel.

This is the Hezbollah-shaped wedge Tehran is trying to drive between Washington and Jerusalem. Iran needs Hezbollah to remain a persistent enough problem that every Israeli action in southern Lebanon can be turned into an Iranian complaint about American bad faith. Israel strikes, Iran claims the memorandum has been breached, and Trump either pressures Israel or risks Hormuz. The point is to trap Washington between oil prices and Israeli operational freedom.

Trump has already shown Tehran where the pressure point lies. The president has today publicly threatened Iran, including over Hormuz and Hezbollah, while JD Vance has tried to project a softer, deal-making tone from Switzerland. Vance said the talks had made “great progress”, while Trump was simultaneously warning that Iran must stop its “proxies in Lebanon” or face harder strikes.

Iran's control over the strait is a wasting asset: every day construction progresses on pipelines from Gulf Arab oilfields to ports beyond the reach of those Iranian speedboats.  Israel remains a sovereign country, as, on paper, does Lebanon, and progress in cooperation between those governments to re-establish Lebanon's monopoly on violence over Hezbollah or any other insurgent or criminal organization, further limits Iran's ability to make mischief.  And who knows what sort of internal politicking is going on in Iran?

Internal allocation is a matter of internal dispute. Hardliners will want money for rearmament and deterrence. The security state will want money for surveillance, prisons, salaries, and coercive capacity. Ordinary Iranians will want relief after war, sanctions, inflation, and exhaustion. Every dollar that returns to Iran becomes part of an internal struggle over what kind of state survives this war.

Here's where the Iranian propensity to dicker as if a faculty committee doling out $1.38 in merit money might work to the advantage of the United States, Israel, and the Gulf Arab countries that are not currently parties to the negotiations.

PRIVATE EQUITY RESTRUCTURING IRAN?

Do the ongoing negotiations make sense?

The whole Iran thing remains totally baffling to me. I can't make any sense of it at all, at least not without going full Sherlock Holmes or putting on a tinfoil hat. I mean, you could make a good Homeland episode out of some of the things that I have begun to think.

— Ken Gardner (@KenGardner11) June 23, 2026

In the face of the on-again-off-again, yes-you-said-it-no-we-didn't coming out of Switzerland, perhaps a Patrick Wood essay recommended by James "Long Emergency" Kunstler is no worse than any other interpretation.

The Iran settlement is not the end of a confrontation. It is the beginning of an economic reintegration. And the men who built it were not trying to contain Iran at all.

Look first at who negotiated it. Not the Secretary of State. Not the National Security Council. The two principals who carried the final framework were Steve Witkoff, the Special Envoy to the Middle East, and Jared Kushner, who holds no office in the United States government whatsoever. Both are real-estate developers. The deal that reopened the Strait of Hormuz, lifted the blockade, and put $300 billion on the table to rebuild Iran was shaped by two men whose entire professional formation is the financing and construction of buildings. It shows. The agreement reads like a development deal because it was assembled by developers.

That is not an insult. It is the key to the document.

A diplomat sent to contain Iran writes a deal full of restrictions, inspections, and walls. A developer sent to a country he sees as undervalued writes a deal full of investment, access, and the removal of barriers to capital (like the removal of sanctions). The Witkoff-Kushner framework is the second kind of document. Its center of gravity is not a list of things Iran may not do. Its center of gravity is a $300 billion private investment vehicle to rebuild the country that the United States was bombing four months ago.

Read that number again, and read what kind of money it is. It is not appropriated by Congress. It is not foreign aid. It is not reparations. It is a privatized fund — capital from firms in the Gulf, Asia, and beyond — organized to invest in Iranian energy, logistics, manufacturing, and transport. The framers were explicit that the United States Treasury puts up nothing. This is not a government rebuilding a defeated enemy. This is a privately financed mechanism wiring a sanctioned economy back into the global system, run by men who specialize in exactly that kind of work.

Perhaps my cracking wise about a Trump casino on the Caspian Sea has merit.

The instrument tells you the intent. You do not build a $300 billion development fund for a country you intend to contain. You build it for a country you intend to absorb.

Now, the part that should hold the attention of every American watching this, and is being missed by nearly all of them: Jared Kushner is a private citizen. He represents no agency. He took no oath for this work. He is the President’s son-in-law, operating as a civilian proxy, and he runs an investment firm — Affinity Partners — whose capital comes overwhelmingly from Gulf sovereign wealth. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar are the funders of that firm. They are also the states being asked to fund the Iran development fund. The man who designed the mechanism to rebuild Iran is paid by the governments that will pay for the rebuilding.

I am not alleging a crime. I am describing an architecture. The negotiation of a sovereign settlement with Iran was placed in the hands of a private financier whose investors are the very Gulf states whose capital the settlement mobilizes. That is not a conflict of interest in the narrow legal sense. It is the structure itself. Statecraft has been handed to a fund manager, and the fund manager’s clients are the beneficiaries of the statecraft. This is what the privatization of foreign policy looks like when you stop using the polite words for it.

So the criticism arrives, and it is loud, and it is aimed at the wrong target. Ted Cruz called the settlement a disastrous mistake. Roger Wicker called the ceasefire a disaster. Lindsey Graham warned against any outcome that leaves Iran a dominant regional force. Every one of those objections is framed in the language of containment. Did we stop the nuclear program? Did we beat them? Did Iran end up weaker? The base that wanted a military victory is judging the deal by whether it produced one, and concluding that it failed.

They are arguing about a war that was never the point.

The war was the pretext. The corridors are the prize.

I'm old school enough to read "privatization of foreign policy" as "captured by rent seekers," and I'll hold off on endorsing any position on the purpose or the outcomes of these negotiations until I see something, which is unlikely to be anything meaningful until the November elections in the United States.

POPULAR OPINION INFLUENCES POLICY.

In "Trump Just Made the Worst Possible Deal… Except for the Alternatives,"  Michael Smerconish contends, "Once the conflict started, the United States faced a difficult reality: no clear path to victory, no public appetite for a prolonged war, and no support for a large-scale ground invasion. The result was an imperfect agreement that satisfies almost no one—but may have been preferable to the alternatives. The memorandum ends active hostilities, reopens the Strait of Hormuz, and creates a 60-day window for broader negotiations."

Reason's Michael Petti argues, "Compromise With Iran Isn't 'Surrender'."  At the moment, the only compromise that seems to be holding is the movement of ships and goods through the Strait of Hormuz, which is mutually beneficial trade at work, something possible with or without diplomacy.  "Both sides give something up and both sides get something in return."  Mr Petti notes,

The United States and Iran were unable to defeat each other in the first round, and, staring at an unacceptably costly escalation, they came to the table. While a final deal hasn't been agreed to, the ceasefire memorandum commits both sides to giving things up, with the U.S. promising to lift all economic sanctions if Iran negotiates away its nuclear program.

Strictly speaking, the ceasefire memorandum commits both sides to sixty days of palaver that might lead to somebody giving things up, that is, if the palaver lasts that long.

MAYBE EVERYBODY LOST.

I was being flippant earlier this week, but I'm having trouble finding anyone who likes the "memorandum of understanding," which is nowhere near a treaty, let alone as well defined as Barack Obama thought his never-ratified accord was.  Then, only a few minutes ago, Red State's RC Maxwell dropped "Iranian Hardliners Denounce US Deal as ‘Surrender’ and ‘Path to Colony’."  That was quick: unbundling the opening of the Strait of Hormuz to navigation prior to discussing everything else isn't opening the Strait under Iranian regulation after everything else is signed off upon and the True Believers object.

The strongest backlash has come from the Paydari Front, also known as the Endurance or Steadfastness Front, which is a small but vocal faction of ideological purists. The group positions itself as the guardian of the revolution’s anti-Western principles.

Prominent hardline lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian, a Paydari-aligned figure and former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, has emerged as the deal’s most outspoken critic. Nabavian warned that the agreement would transform Iran into a “U.S. colony.” He slammed the deal’s requirement that Tehran seek permission from the “Great Satan” for even limited uranium enrichment. “This is surrender,” Nabavian declared, according to reports.

What, did somebody leak the Trump Organization's plans for a hotel and casino on the Caspian Sea?

GROYPER DREAMS.

From time to time, Common Dreams run essays lamenting too much money in politics, particularly money raised by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.  Then there's Jamal Kanj.

There are many lessons to be learned from the lates made-for-Israel war on Iran. The first and most damning is that the war resolved the very crisis it created. Donald Trump celebrated the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the lifting of the blockade against Iran. Two conditions that were fully in place before Benjamin Netanyahu dog walked Trump into this war. The agreement that concluded the war took us back to exactly where we stood before America spent $200 billion, and where Americans continue to pay Israeli surcharge tax at the pump and grocery stores.

Those two conditions ostensibly being the terms of Barack Obama's time-limited agreement involving nuclear weapons, and more evidently being the free passage of ships in and out of the Arabian Gulf.  I'm still reviewing commentary on the memorandum of understanding, which, first, is not a treaty; and second, I suspect is merely another Sitzkrieg before the bombers fly again, and will note only that until last week, free passage of ships was only going to happen if the thirteen other items on Iran's wish list were fulfilled.  I still view most of the items on that memorandum as wishful thinking.

A FACULTY MEETING, WITH HIGH EXPLOSIVES.

There is a fourteen point "memorandum of understanding" circulating that appears to be what diplomats are using to, for the moment, restore the free transit of oil at market prices through the Strait of Hormuz.  The Institute for the Study of War offer their analysis in their 16 June briefing.

DID EVERYONE LOSE?

Reason's Liz Wolfe asks the obvious question about the so-far-unseen "memorandum of understanding" continuing the ceasefire in Asia Minor.  "A digital preliminary memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran has been signed, leading to an opening of the Strait of Hormuz and a 60-day pause in fighting while final details get hashed out."  That's consistent with something we noted about two weeks ago.  "From that perspective, letting Iran's government export oil is splitting a gain from trade harvested by consumers of Gulf Arab oil and fertilizers. But U.S. forces must remain on station, which brings a different set of risks with it."  And so it might seem, or not.  Our President is carrying on about ships sailing freely and the Iranians are making noises about tolling, even if they call it "providing security" or something.

It's messy emergence, Ms Wolfe suggests, not continued evolution of that rules-based international order.

We still don't know what types of restrictions Iran will agree to with regard to its nuclear program, nor do we know what Israel will do with regard to Hezbollah and the fighting in southern Lebanon. We don't know how U.S.-Israeli relations will be impacted in the long run. (Tensions between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been rather high during these last few weeks.) We don't know whether Iran will, in fact, keep the Strait of Hormuz open, or whether we'll see it mess around with the strait to gain leverage over the U.S. once again.

"Months of fighting revealed that multiple countries can impose costs," wrote Foreign Policy's Will Todman, "but none can impose order."

"The tactical and operational successes that the U.S. and Israeli militaries achieved masked a deeper strategic defeat, with neither securing the political objectives cited to justify the war in the first place," argued Todman. "The Iranian regime survived and emerged more hard-line, and it discovered a new, powerful negotiating chip in closing the Strait of Hormuz." But even bigger picture: "The war did not produce a clear victor or a more stable regional order. Instead, it accelerated fragmentation, deepened insecurity, and imposed costs on every key regional and global power involved, including Iran, the Arab Gulf states, Russia, and China. The war demonstrated that no state will be able to navigate the new era of global disorder unscathed."

Also in Reason, Matthew Petti contends, "The U.S. and Iran have moved to the next stage of the peace process. Hawks on all sides are terrified that it will succeed."

A BOTCHED DECAPITATION REFUTES A FILING CABINET FULL OF POSITION PAPERS.

John Feffer's "Pete Hegseth’s D-Day Remarks Prove the US Is No Longer an Ally to European Democracy" is a predictably silly appeal to Foreign Policy in Focus types, you know, the sort of conscience-cowboy for whom "rules-based international order" is a Holy Incantation and blaming America first is as instinctive as splitting tens.

IF IT'S THE WEEKEND, THERE MUST BE AN IRAN DEAL.

Here. We. Go. Again.  Again.  "Here.  We.  Go.  Again.  Holding meetings to establish a framework to develop a process will not yield a single gram of fissile material, although it is probably a good way to keep the likes of Danny in McMansions in McLean.  Might be time to punch the mullahs in the mouth again, and let them know that once they turn over the fissile material the anaconda's coils can be loosened."  That was toward the end of May.  Toward the end of last week it was "Here comes another weekend of 'an agreement is near.' The hardliners in Iran and among the Militant Normals are not prepared to be patient."

SHOWING THEM WHAT THEY WANTED TO SEE?

On Tuesday, we noted the quiet movement of tankers out of the Arabian Gulf along the Omani side of the Strait of Hormuz and with the shepherding of the United States Navy.  That story was coming out a week ago.  "The Strait of Hormuz is more open than previously thought as the U.S. shoots down Iranian drones threatening ships and provides ‘naval overwatch’."

Apparently the Navy setting its blockade line at the Iranian - Pakistani border was thought through.  That the Iranians were not seeing many ships moving, and that their enablers in the palace guard media were scoffing at how ineffective Project Freedom was made the likes of CNN and MSwhatever part of an information operation.

The operation consisted of Very Large Crude Carriers, we'd call them "supertankers," exiting through Hormuz without their Automatic Identification System, the maritime equivalent of an aircraft transponder shut off. Once in the Gulf of Oman, these vessels rendezvoused with other tankers and were emptied via ship-to-ship transfers. The empty tankers then headed back into the Persian Gulf to pick up a new load of oil from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, or Iraq. This kept the number of ships in the Persian Gulf stable and provided no hint of Washington running its own "dark fleet" of oil smugglers. Wash, rinse, repeat.

It also explains the U.S. Navy's aggressiveness in the Gulf of Oman in turning around inbound ships bound for Iran. Yes, it served to support the blockade, but it also prevented an Iran-bound ship from stumbling upon a transfer operation and blowing the whistle when they made port.

The blockade runners were covered by a $40 billion war insurance pool furnished by the Development Finance Corporation. Oddly enough, this was another Trump administration initiative that was derided as a failure.

It looks like President Trump's announcement was made because the whole operation was about to become public.

It wasn't so much that the United States was not in a hurry to reopen the strait as it was that keeping the Iranians from profiting by their blockade might have better been accomplished by having only a few ships risk the passage while transloading out of Iranian sight.  "Assuming the accuracy of Trump's statement, it means Iran doesn't control the Strait of Hormuz and can't prevent other Gulf countries from exporting oil. This means the only people Iran is blockading are itself."

Whether that was the cargo that broke the mullahs' economy and that's why they might be signing an agreement remains to be seen.  Here comes the weekend, prepare to be whipsawed.