"Credit Where It Is Due in the Middle East" Topic

Credit Where It Is Due in the Middle East
Erick-Woods Erickson
Oct 1

Iran's strategy in this war was never complicated. The mullahs believed that if they choked the Strait of Hormuz long enough, Americans would feel it at the gas pump and Washington would lose its nerve before the midterms. Brent crude spiked past $107 USD a barrel this month, and Iranian-aligned militias sent drones into Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline and shut it down for more than a week. Tehran was betting that pain at the pump would break us before its own economy broke.

That bet has failed, and President Trump deserves immense credit for it.

Crude exports from the Persian Gulf are back at pre-war levels. J.P. Morgan puts the 10-day average at 17.5 million barrels a day, which is 98 percent of where it stood before the war. Goldman Sachs estimates the region exported 19 million barrels a day over the past week. Brent has come off its highs to about $103 USD, and West Texas crude is trading around $90. USD

The Gulf producers did it by building 3 exits where there used to be 1. Before the war, 83 percent of Gulf crude had to cross the Strait of Hormuz. In September, about 60 percent crossed the strait, 23 percent loaded on the Gulf of Oman coast, and 17 percent left through the Red Sea. Much of that Red Sea oil moved through the same Saudi pipeline Iran's allies tried to destroy. Iran thought it held a chokehold on the world economy, and the Gulf simply routed around it.

Iran is now the one country in the region whose oil is not moving. Before the war, it exported roughly 1.7 million barrels a day. In September, satellite data showed no Iranian crude leaving by sea at all. That is the work of the American naval blockade reimposed in July.

Last week at the United Nations, Iran offered to reopen the strait within 7 days. Its price was the release of frozen funds, an end to sanctions, and an end to the blockade. The President said no. A regime that was winning would not be begging for its money back in front of the General Assembly. A government that cannot sell its oil cannot pay those who preserve its power.

The Obama administration sent pallets of cash to Tehran. The Biden administration looked the other way while Iranian oil flowed to China. This administration has paired American naval power with the reach of the American banking system. It has blockaded Iranian ports while making it dangerous for any bank anywhere to move money for the Revolutionary Guard.

Something more remarkable is happening alongside the oil. Our Arab allies are cooperating with Israel in ways they never have before. The Abraham Accords proved in President Trump's first term that Arab governments could work openly with the Jewish state, and this war has turned that diplomatic normalization into practical cooperation. Iran has fired on Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain. Those governments now understand that the threat to their people comes from Tehran, not Jerusalem.

Inside Iran, the regime is losing its grip. Outbreaks of violence suggest a destabilization campaign that the security services cannot contain. This regime has waged a 47-year war on Americans, plotted to shoot down Air Force One, and gunned down its own people in the streets in January. Is enforcers are now the ones who are afraid.

None of this means the war is won. I was hard on the administration this summer when it called off strikes on the promise that Iran wanted peace. Iran did not want peace then, and it does not want peace now. It wants a bomb. The Houthis are stepping up attacks in the Red Sea, and exports of diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel from the region are still running below last year's pace. The pressure has to continue, and this White House should resist the voices internally who think a regime that chants "Death to America" can be bargained with.

Notwithstanding all of that, the situation has changed. Our allies are working together, Gulf oil is flowing at pre-war levels, and Iran is broke, isolated, and asking for relief in front of the world. That happened because the President was willing to use every tool of American power at once and refused to accept that the Strait of Hormuz belonged to Tehran.

A month ago, Iran thought it could hold the world hostage at the gas pump. Today the Gulf's oil is moving and Iran's is not. President Trump deserves the credit for that.

The consequences of my mistakes are not as catastrophic as they could have been-- success!

🙄

Meanwhile the Daily Mail in the UK – not a paper usually associated with TDS – is reporting that the Trump administration is putting pressure on European countries to release emergency inventories to help to ease global fuel prices or face a potential American export ban.

The warning marks an escalation of pressure on Europe as the President considers the ban to bring down US fuel prices ahead of next month's midterm elections.

A US official… said: 'It is in Europe's best interest to work with the United States as we pursue multiple pathways to boost the supply of refined products and lower costs for consumers.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told reporters yesterday that… "We've lost some diesel exports from the ⁠Middle East, although we're restoring those, and we've lost diesel exports from China. So that's a lot of interruptions."

In the UK, diesel prices hit a new high on Monday, passing the previous record set in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022…

The cost of diesel has risen steadily in recent weeks due to the impact on global supplies from the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and from renewed hostilities in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the ongoing war between the US and Iran is continuing to disrupt the global trade in refined oil and other petroleum materials, with Iran's effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz limiting the production and supply of fuel needed by consumers.

link

Which all suggests a slightly different picture.

I printed this before, but here it is again:

The official numbers reported by traditional vessel tracking data tell only a fraction of the story right now.
Maritime intelligence agencies and shipping analysts confirm that a massive number of vessels are actively bypassing official counts by employing "shadow fleet" tactics and going dark—meaning they switch off their Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders. [1, 2]
The discrepancy between the official data and what is actually happening on the water comes down to a few key factors:

The "Dark Fleet" and Data Discrepancies
* Underreported Transits: While official public trackers (like Kpler or IMF PortWatch) often report anywhere from 2 to 17 visible ships passing through daily, analysts estimate that up to two-thirds of outbound tankers are sneaking through undetected by turning off their transponders. [1, 2, 3]
* The Scale of Shadow Movements: During the ongoing conflict, maritime data firms noted that while official daily numbers hovered in the single digits or low teens, nearly 900 tankers successfully trickled through the strait over a multi-month period using dark tactics to avoid naval blockades and missile threats. [1]
* Independent Observations: Independent maritime researchers who have physically monitored the strait report seeing tankers pass through 4 to 5 at a time in closely packed formations with all tracking devices fully blacked out, confirming that AIS data misses a massive percentage of real traffic. [1]
* Advanced Evasion: Beyond just turning off transponders, many vessels are utilizing aggressive GPS spoofing (which makes them appear on maps as if they are circling on dry land) or cloning the identification codes of entirely different, scrapped ships to blend in.

Mainstream media reports often cite public data streams like Kpler, IMF PortWatch, or MarineTraffic without providing the necessary context that these tools only map visible, transponder-active ships. When headlines declare traffic is "near zero" based entirely on public databases, it inadvertently distorts public perception of how effective blockades are and how much oil is actually moving. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Whether this omission is intentional narrative-spinning or simply a symptom of lazy, data-reliant journalism, the outcome is the same: it paints an inaccurate picture of the conflict.
The dynamic between media reporting, data limitations, and the reality of the strait comes down to a few critical factors:

1. The Trap of "Visible Data" Journalism
Most newsrooms rely on automated data feeds because they are clean, quantifiable, and easy to turn into charts. When a reporter looks at a dashboard showing only 3 to 17 trackable vessels in a day, they write the headline: "Traffic Plummets by 95%." [1, 2]
However, maritime intelligence firms using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites paint a completely different picture. For example, during periods when public trackers showed almost zero activity, satellite sweeps revealed dozens of large vessels operating entirely dark within the strait simultaneously. By focusing only on the "clean" data, the media presents an exaggerated narrative of economic strangulation. [1, 2]

2. Shaping the Perception of Control
Reporting strictly on public trackers serves distinct political and strategic narratives:
* The Illusion of Blockade Success: Showing a ghost-town waterway allows coalition forces or blockading nations to project absolute control, signaling that their deterrence measures or sanctions are working perfectly.
* Hiding the Sanction Bypasses: If the public knew that hundreds of millions of barrels of oil were still successfully slipping through the strait via the "shadow fleet", it would expose the limits of Western sanctions and naval enforcement. [1, 2, 3, 4]

3. The Dangerous Reality of "Going Dark"
What the media frames as a total shutdown is actually a shift in tactics. Turning off Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders used to be a trick reserved exclusively for rogue, sanctioned "shadow fleet" tankers. Because of the severity of the conflict, mainstream, commercial energy tankers have adopted the exact same behavior to survive. [1, 2]
They are turning off their lights, cutting their transponders, and moving through the strait in tightly packed, silent convoys—sometimes even coordinating quietly with naval escorts off the grid. [1, 2]

Tracking the Reality
To get an accurate picture of the conflict, independent analysts have to look past the media reports and cross-reference multiple hidden layers:
* Satellite Radar (SAR): Bypasses clouds and darkness to locate the physical steel hulls of dark ships.[1, 2]
* Infrared & Optical Imagery: Used by tracking groups to verify if a "dark" ship is riding low in the water (meaning it successfully loaded oil) or riding high (empty).
* Local Spotters: Maritime intelligence networks rely heavily on physical observers stationed in places like Oman's Musandam Peninsula, who visually count and log the massive blacked-out tankers passing through by eye.

[1, 2]
The Strait of Hormuz is far from empty; the traffic has simply transitioned from a public highway into a highly active, off-the-books shadow corridor. [1, 2]
Right here right

Yes Diesel is much more of an impact then gas. Another I posted before:

* The Ukrainian Drone Campaign: Ukraine has systematically targeted Russian industrial infrastructure using long-range drones (not drugs). According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Ukrainian drones successfully struck a Russian refinery an average of every three days over the first eight months of 2026. [1, 2, 3, 4]
*

2. Impact on Russia's Diesel Industry
Ukrainian drone strikes have knocked out roughly 45% of Russia's total oil refining capacity, deeply impacting its largest diesel-producing plants. [1, 2, 3]
* Production Drops: By mid-2026, Russia's diesel output fell by an estimated 30%, dropping to its lowest level in over 20 years.
*
* Export Restrictions: To combat domestic shortages and prevent fuel lines at home, Moscow was forced to enact strict export bans on diesel and gasoline. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
*

3. Why This Drives Up Global and U.S. Prices
Even though the U.S. does not directly import Russian oil, diesel is a globally traded commodity. When Russia—historically the world's second-largest exporter of diesel—suddenly removes hundreds of thousands of barrels from the global supply pool, it triggers a massive international scramble. This global shortfall pulls refined products out of the U.S. market via exports, driving pump prices to historic highs for American truckers, businesses, and consumers.

Year Average Price (Per Gallon) Key Market Drivers
2022

(War Begins) $5.00 USD – $5.81 USD Initial Invasion Shock: Prices spiked immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine, hitting a peak of $5.81 USD in June 2022 due to immediate fears of global shortages and bans on Russian oil.

2026

(Current Year)$3.45 – $6.53 USD

The Double Crisis Spike: Diesel started the year low (around $3.45 USD), but exploded starting in February. The combination of the war in Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz alongside aggressive Ukrainian drone strikesknocking out 45% of Russia's refinery capacity forced prices to an all-time record high of $6.53 USD this month.