That didn’t last long. This was supposed to be a 60 cease-fire between us and Iran, which Iran kept violating so badly that we finally gave it up. All it really was, was a break so both sides could re-arm, anyway. We’d used up much of our munitions inventory over there and the Israelis were probably getting low on stuff too.
Meanwhile the Iranians could be counted on to keep pushing limits and violating agreements because we all knew that’s what they’d do, because it’s what they’ve always done.
So now it’s back to war but still a limited war, where Iran attacks someone or something and then we blast them, probably Israel does too, but not as hard as they need to be hit, Iran hits back, we hit them, they hit back, blah blah blah. The story line here is that we’re not invading because we don’t want to get into another endless M.E. war, so instead of invading we do all our fighting from the air, endlessly repeating. Right.
As long as this “limited engagement” continues, the Strait of Hormuz will see only limited ship passage. It sure looks to me like this is being deliberately regulated and orchestrated to maintain an oil shortage that keeps the price up, because if the free flow of shipping through that strait was the main issue, then we’d see an all-out attack to end this problem.
We won’t. What we’ll maybe see is a US takeover of Iran’s Kharg Island, which is pretty critical to their ability to process oil and load it into tankers to sell. Take that away from them and keep it away and this will crash their economy completely and put an end to their ability to purchase materials to build weapons. Meanwhile the people will be starving, which might finally force them to take their government back.
Kharg Island or not, while the Strait is closed, the rebuilding of Venezuela’s oil production is proceeding apace under the management once again of US oil producers. You get it? As the US continues to block Middle East oil from reaching the market, at the same time we’re developing those Venezuelan oil fields that our people hold leases to that were abrogated by dictator Maduro, whom we first conveniently removed from power and then scared the living shit out of the next in line for power to get in line with us as the first step in this plan.
The goal of all this is to strip the Middle East nations of their long held clout over the rest of the world because of their oil, reduce their incomes and the influence of their treasuries, and bring all that back into the Western hemisphere with the USA controlling it all.
So I have an obvious prediction, that by the time the Strait of Hormuz is safe and open to shipping again, if it ever is, the USA and Venezuela will have cornered the oil market, the vast majority of oil tankers will have abandoned the M.E. trade route and will be running the Western trade route and the reign of the M.E. oil sheiks will be history. This has already started as US and Venezuelan oil production ramps up.
There is only one thing I can think of that could change everything, and that’s if Iran is able to drop a nuke on Israel. This is why Trump kept insisting that regime change in Iran wasn’t a goal. It wasn’t. The goal is the end of Middle Eastern oil hegemony and preventing Iran from starting a nuclear war was vital in achieving this goal and still is.