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.

A TRIFECTA IN 1776.

Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Thomas Jefferson, et. alia, The unanimous declaration of the united States of America, and Boulton and Watt's steam pump.

The Declaration of Independence, written 250 years ago this week, was a bright torch of the Enlightenment. So was Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, also published 250 years ago this year. But for me the most momentous happening in 1776 was the inauguration of James Watt’s first practical steam engine.

We have the industrial revolution backwards. We tend to think that clever people in powdered wigs came up with ideas – democracy, free enterprise, stock markets, science, intellectual property – that enabled men with dirty fingernails to set about changing the world. But I think it was more that the fingernail fellows made the wig wearers possible. Smith’s division of labour and Jefferson’s democracy were all very well. But Thomas Newcomen and Watt mattered more. Thermodynamics – the science of heat and work – was invented to explain steam engines, not vice versa.

Arguably, political economy (which later fractured into various social sciences) might have emerged to explain human action, not (despite the best efforts of the Men of System) to be an instruction manual.

For the miracles of emergence to work, though, don't the institutions governing the relationship of citizen with state have to be biased toward freedom?

The great flywheel of positive feedback began delivering higher living standards not just for the rich but for the poor too. Previous civilisations in ancient India, China, Greece, Rome, Arabia, Italy, the Netherlands, had made the rich richer but had done little to help the poorest. This one was different - thanks almost entirely to coal, then oil and gas. As John Constable, the energy analyst, puts it, the economy is a thermodynamic machine: it takes random arrangements of atoms and turns them into improbable, useful forms.

It's when the Men of System cloak themselves in Protecting Mother Nature, though, that the "great flywheel of positive feedback" gets jammed.  "Britain’s pursuit of high energy costs is a reckless catastrophe."

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.

THE BOTS HAVE BEEN EVEN BUSIER.

I hope they are learning something.  Sometime during the Flag Day weekend our page view counter rolled through ten million, about three weeks since the counter rolled past nine million and about two months since the counter took a weekend stroll through eight million.  It's half past June and the page counter is nearly at a million for the month.

It's been the same pattern, episodes of activity in the tens of thousands of page views, interspersed by days with our more common experience of two hundred to two thousand page views in a day, and views of specific posts in the thirty to sixty range.

I extend my thanks, once again, to the two hundred to two thousand real readers who look in each day, and I surely don't lack for things to carry on about.  It's still likely that I'm going to carry on about how expensive ignorance is, based on the ongoing public conversations about data center construction.  Not today.

PROGRESSIVE PRIMITIVISM.

That's the answer to Frances MacGuire's question, "Could High Fertilizer Prices Change the Face of Farming?"  It's the usual sort of Common Dreams wishful thinking dressed up as sustainability.

The global disruptions caused by the war in Iran have brought renewed focus to the vulnerability of global fossil fuel supply chains. But what has received less attention is how the war also highlights the vulnerability of industrial agriculture supply chains reliant on massive amounts of chemical fertilizers and other inputs. Like oil and gas, these frequently travel long distances through turbulent waters.

A big advantage of renewable energy technologies like solar is that sunlight doesn’t have to pass through the Straits of Hormuz. The same can be said for many of the inputs required for agroecological and regenerative farming systems. The development of these approaches would see a food system that is not only less vulnerable to the supply chain shocks being felt today, but would be better for the environment, human health, and animals. It would be healthier, kinder, and more resilient.

That was mostly true of North American agriculture in 1926, and almost surely true of North American agriculture in 1826 or 1726.  Oh, wait, the lady said "healthier, kinder, and more resilient."

Perhaps, if you lived.

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.

LET THE THING BE PRESSED.

Last week, Gatestone Institute contributor Con Coughlin contended, "Renewing Military Strikes Against Iran Is the Only Way to End Its Nuclear Ambitions."  As of this evening, those strikes are on again, at least for now.  Mr Coughlin's contention concludes, "With the American president continuing to insist he is under no pressure to reach a deal with Tehran, the intransigence of Iranian leaders could ultimately persuade him that, in order to ensure the Iranians have no chance of resuming their nuclear and ballistic missile programme, he has no alternative but to resume military action against the regime."

What part of "turn over your nuclear dust and we'll stop whacking you" do the mullahs and their gangbanger proxies not understand?  Perhaps Our President will take that position.  He's supposedly taking calls from somebody in Iranian leadership asking him to stop the bombing.  I hope his response is something along the lines of "turn over your nuclear dust and we'll stop whacking you."  Otherwise it's more of the same.  In The (Not Detroit) Free Press, Aaron MacLean counsels, "Mr. President, Don’t Let Tehran Dupe You."  Strategic patience, in his view, isn't working, and Trumpian mercurial treatments of Israel and the Gulf Arab states looks foolish.

Despite the leverage the United States has over Iran, in the form of the blockade and the very substantial U.S. military force still in the region, Iran does not behave as though it is particularly deterred. But Trump certainly seems to act as though he is deterred. Along with his dogged pursuit of a deal, his fear of escalation is another Obama-esque aspect of the president’s current approach, even if the overall comparison has its obvious limitations.

Perhaps Our President is drawing on the experience he obtained working with the people one encounters in the building trades and building services in New York, and he's trying a mix of charm and force.  Mr MacLean's predictions from a couple of days ago might not have aged well.

Tehran certainly seems contemptuous of the risks it faces from the American military capacity in their neighborhood, given the president’s refusal to return to major combat operations in the face of repeated Iranian aggression since the start of the so-called ceasefire—and now, his demonstrated willingness to restrain the Israelis.

The Iranians know the president’s options are limited: taking a bad deal, returning to major combat, or waiting. The first option is politically difficult at home, and the president seems deterred from major combat—but he does say he is content to wait.

The Iranians, meanwhile, are trying to make “waiting” as painful an option as possible. They want to force him to weaken his bargaining position. The question now is whether they succeed, or if Trump rediscovers the confidence and resolve that he projected when this episode began.

We'll see what the next couple of days of kinetic action, or not, brings.

THE MANAGER HAS TO APPROVE.

The ritual for buying a car used to involve one of the dealer's floor sales representative doing most of the dickering: we can hope for precisely the make, model, and options you want to be scheduled in a month, or we can put you in something similar right now, and perhaps at a lower price; here's what I think I can get the manager to sign off on your trade-in, and have you considered financing through us?  But whatever the buyer and the floor representative shook hands on still had to be cleared by the manager, who was the dealer's last chance to extract more favorable terms from the buyer.  Once upon a time, my dad and a floor representative had a price sheet worked out and my dad wrote a deposit check, then the representative went to the manager, and came back with the manager's extractions.  My dad asked for the deposit check back.  The dealership caved: evidently making a sale today was better than having the deposit check go out the door.

PEAK COMMON DREAMS.

I read them so you don't have to.  "GOP Gerrymanders Make the South’s Black Communities More Vulnerable To Data Centers."

THE STANDOFF CONTINUES.

William Usher contends "US-Iran Negotiations Have Stalled, Leaving Trump with Only Bad Options."

In principle, both the Gulf Arab states and Iran could agree to recognize the Strait of Hormuz as international waters.

The broad outlines of a two-phase framework are visible. Phase one would extend the ceasefire, reopen the Strait of Hormuz with no tolls, clear Iranian mines from the waterway, and lift the US blockade on Iranian ports. In exchange, Iran would be permitted to sell oil freely under limited sanctions waivers. Phase two—a 30-to-60-day negotiation—would tackle the nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and a permanent settlement. But the outlines are where agreement ends and the gaps are where it breaks down.

That's what current secretary of state Marco Rubio told the Senate in testimony yesterday.  The Iranians, though, apparently prefer a bigger bundle in which other sanctions, in place before the February hostilities,  go away before any negotiation about nuclear development, ballistic missiles, and the continued funding of proxies takes place.  That's loosely how the Obama administration did business: those notorious "pallets of cash" refers to assets confiscated after the mullahs ousted the Shah.

ETHANOL FAILS ANY REASONABLE ECONOMIC ANALYSIS.

Matthew "Slow Boring" Yglesias, who argues with but mostly votes for Democrats, correctly details that argument.

Uisung Lee, Hoyoung Kwon, May Wu, and Michael Wang from the Argonne National Laboratory say that [ethanol lowers greenhouse gas production] because improvements in corn yields have eliminated prior concerns. By contrast, Tyler Lark, Nathan Hendricks, Aaron Smith, and Holly Gibbs say that the land-use changes induced by ethanol mandates (i.e., turning more acreage into growing corn) mean that “the carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the [Renewable Fuel Standard] is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24 percent higher.”

The thing is, even if you use the Argonne numbers, this still comes out to something like $160 to $190 in costs per ton of carbon dioxide abated. Using less generous math, of course, the cost is essentially infinite because you’re raising emissions.

Beyond the specific carbon accounting, though, there are without a doubt significant environmental impacts of growing dramatically more corn. This means extra pesticide in the water and corn grown in space that could otherwise be used for conservation or recreation or housing. In a world of growing electrification, that land could also be used for utility-scale solar and wind projects that are dramatically more energy-dense.

All this carbon math really hinges on the fact that the amount of land dedicated to growing corn goes up, which happens because the biofuels mandate pushes up the price of corn, making it lucrative to grow more corn.

The primary cost here is simply that turning corn into gasoline makes food more expensive.

As we noted, directly, in the price of beef, and as multiple researchers called attention to, directly in the price of other food grains as farmers plant more corn and fewer beans, grain grasses, and substitution toward rice takes place.

THE BOTS HAVE BEEN BUSY AGAIN.

I hope they are learning something.  Sometime during the Memorial Day weekend our page view counter rolled through nine million, some five weeks since the counter took a weekend stroll through eight million.  It's been the same pattern, episodes of activity in the tens of thousands of page views, interspersed by days with our more common experience of two hundred to two thousand page views in a day, and views of specific posts in the thirty to sixty range.

I extend my thanks, once again, to the two hundred to two thousand real readers who look in each day, and I surely don't lack for things to carry on about.  It's likely that I'm going to carry on about how expensive ignorance is, based on the ongoing public conversations about data center construction.

THE 1970S CALLED AND THEY WANT THEIR MALAISE BACK.

"Shell’s profits ‘obscene’ as European oil majors’ profits surge by 43%."  Logic is always to socialists as crucifixes are to vampires, and so it is as the anaconda's coils tighten on Iran.  "In the first quarter of 2026, the combined $21.7 billion* in quarterly profits recorded by bp, Repsol, TotalEnergies, Eni and Equinor was 43% higher than the same period last year, reflecting a significant windfall from volatile oil prices caused by the US-Israel war in Iran."

The way out?  More enforced deprivation.  “It’s time to break free from the fossil fuel doom loop – we need robust taxes on big polluters to insulate households from price shocks and to fund a cheaper, cleaner, more stable energy future for all.”

Nothing changes.  The way to avoid the end of the world the doomsday environmentalists fear is to restore the sustainable life of the primitives.  That'll show those energy profiteers!

CEASE AND DESIST THIS POINTLESS PALAVER?

There are multiple layers of conflict in Asia Minor.  The United States seek freedom of seas, including transit of the Strait of Hormuz, and an end to Iranian nuclear weapons work as long as the crazies are in charge of former Persia.  Israel's government have their own, more salient fears, of an Iranian hot rock, while they and the Lebanese seek some sort of recognition that Lebanon's government have the monopoly on violence in Lebanon, whether or not the Hezbollah militia like that.  Recently, news has come out that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have been trading shots with Iran, both in the closing days of Epic Fury and after the so-far frustrating negotiations between Iran and the United States began.

NOW DO HEALTH CARE.

The strong libertarian position on positive rights bestowed by government is that they involve the conscription of others.

In "The Impossibility of Endless, Cheap Gas," a Common Dreams contributor who majored in sociology grasps that point, at least in the special case of energy.  Yes, she starts with the recognition that oil is most likely an exhaustible resource (although the Hotelling price pattern that provides incentives to optimally conserve and to develop backstop technologies has not yet presented itself) she then acknowledges the labor of others.

Access to cheap fuel is not a right. It is a subsidy built on violence, both societal and environmental harm. The price of cheap oil is exploitation and death, including death of children and the destabilization of our climate, which all risk future generations’ viability on Earth. In the face of such consequences, surely we can do better.

It's asking too much for the lady to acknowledge the "exploitation and death" inherent in the mullahs looking the other way while infidel oil transited the Strait of Hormuz while the infidels looked the other way while the mullahs used their oil money to exploit their people and fund gangbangers masquerading as religious nationalists throughout Asia Minor.  It's certainly too much to point out that access to college, or medical services, or Doritos, is no more a right than access to cheap fuel is, nor that such access is also a subsidy built on violence.

LET THE ANACONDA'S COILS TIGHTEN.

In The American Thinker, Heyrsh Abdulrahman, who has foreign policy experience germane to the conflict, notes, "The era of believing the Iranian regime can simply be managed indefinitely appears to be ending, and Washington should not waste the opportunity created by that realization."  It's a lengthy essay, considering several dimensions of the conflict, and it reinforces the Cold Spring Shops position that the current Iranian government ought not have nuclear capabilities, ought not be financing gangbangers masquerading as religious zealots in Asia Minor or beyond, ought respect the status of the Strait of Hormuz as an international waterway, and ought compensate the Gulf Arab states for damages resulting from their unstructured response to the Israeli and United States military campaign.

SAGE ADVICE FOR OUR TIME.

In Brussels Signal, Conrad Black offers a verdict that it might behoove the process-worshippers in the faculty common rooms to read and understand.

China is a challenge but not a rival and America’s ostensible allies are much less formidable than they were in the World Wars or even most of the Cold War. If Europe wishes to be taken seriously by the Americans, it has to act seriously and bring something to the party besides unction, loquacity, patronisation, and the compulsive will to appease America’s enemies.

For that consummation to be achieved, dear reader, it is essential that the coils of the anaconda continue to tighten.

What appears to be the last shot in the locker for the beleaguered and fragmented Iranian regime is the false claim that they control the Strait of Hormuz. The United States Navy could certainly convoy oil tankers through in approximately three 30-tanker convoys per day. They have the ships and aircraft necessary to assure reasonable safety and could put Marines on all ships to repel boarders and respond instantly to shore attacks and to the small craft of the Iranians that have so terrorised unescorted tankers. President Trump has already declined the belated offer of the Europeans, who need this oil, to assist in clearing the Strait. The United States doesn’t really need oil from this source and its lack of alacrity in reducing the price of oil for allies who would not allow the United States use of their own airspace and American bases in their country for the purposes of conducting this war, is understandable.

In his view, the mullahs might posture and puff in the way of men of Asia Minor, but it's likely for show for the benefit of their own subjects, but they won't do anything foolish.

The correlation of military forces now between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other is approximately a thousand to one, and any recourse to aggression against the United States by Iran would be so horrifying a mistake that even the blooded and divided fighting bull government of the Islamic Republic has eschewed it. The departure of the United Arab Emirates from OPEC also indicates that that country will assist in moderating the world oil price while Iran flounders to the end of this operetta of a war in which the principal terrorism-sponsoring country in the world and a relentlessly belligerent source of threats and outrages has been reduced to impotent mendicancy, all at a cost to the United States of eight battlefield fatalities and a non-combat accident in which five other servicemen died.

What has been most remarkable in the response of the West has been this sour grapes recognition that the United States does not need anything from NATO to achieve its international strategic goals.

All of which might be true, and yet now is not the time to go wobbly.

Turn over the fissile material and destroy the machinery of uranium enhancement.  Stop funding proxies throughout Asia Minor.  Compensate the Gulf Arab states for damages to their tourist infrastructure.  Recognize that the Strait of Hormuz is international waters.

PAIN FOR THE MULLAHS, NOT AT THE PUMP.

Let's set the Wayback Machine to August 2003.

The University's press liaison just rang, asked if I would speak with a reporterette about gas prices. Here's the fieldwork I did: nominal and real gasoline prices to 1997, and an inflation calculator. When you see unleaded regular at $2.73 a gallon (I'm not sure how the Energy Information Administration treats taxes) give me a holler. For an exercise, plot the size of a passenger truck against the price series you see.

In those days, Blogger did not have image embedding capabilities, which we now have.  Adjusting for inflation, when you see unleaded regular at around $6.00 a gallon, and again, my disclaimer about accounting for taxes applies, give me a holler.

That's a screen capture from an Energy Information Administration series, and the agency publish additional inflation-adjusted price series.