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Iran mocks US for ‘solving’ domestic hunger problem, lecturing others on issue

Press TV – June 26, 2026

Iran has mocked the United States for “solving” its domestic hunger problem by simply stopping reports while lecturing other countries on the issue.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei made the remarks in an X post on Friday after US President Donald Trump claimed that Iran has “a hunger problem” and his deputy JD Vance alleged that the country’s unfrozen assets could help “feed” its people.

Baghaei cited a report by the World Hunger Education Service that found more than 47 million people in the United States, including 1 in 5 children, cannot consistently access or afford enough nutritious food to live healthy lives.

He further referred to another report by the NGO Feeding America that said 47 million Americans struggle daily with hunger.

“The ‘solution’ from US authorities? In September 2024, the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) quietly terminated its 30-year-old annual report on household food insecurity — effectively ending the official tracking and acknowledgment of hunger in America,” the spokesman said.

“So, after ‘solving’ domestic hunger by simply stopping the reports, Washington now feels qualified to lecture the world about hunger elsewhere.”

Baghaei added, “Charity begins at home — and it is desperately needed there.”

The latest Household Food Security report released by the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service for 2024 revealed that 47.9 million people lived in food-insecure households last year.

One in seven households (13.7 percent) in America experienced food insecurity, or lack of access to an affordable, nutritious diet, in 2024, according to the report. About 14.1 million American children lived in households that experienced food insecurity in 2024, a slight increase from the 13.8 million children reported in 2023.

The findings highlighted a deepening crisis in the US amid cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which enables low-income households to afford more healthy foods and boosts families’ food purchases.

Because the USDA’s 2025 survey data which would have been released in 2026 was canceled, no official government data on hunger for 2026 is available.

However, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has stepped in to fill the gap. In a report released in May 2026, the New York Fed presented new findings on food insecurity based on its Survey of Consumer Expectations.

The New York Fed survey found a “remarkable increase in food insecurity,” particularly among lower-income, lower-educated households, and households with young children.

The survey noted that between late 2025 and early 2026, the share of households reporting they had to skip meals or had insufficient food rose.

For households earning under $50,000 a year, the rate of those reporting not having enough food or kids missing meals reached 19.7% in early 2026, up from 16% in late 2025.

Nationwide, the share of households with limited or uncertain access to adequate food more than doubled from 4% in June 2020 to 10% in early 2026.

June 26, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Comments Off on Iran mocks US for ‘solving’ domestic hunger problem, lecturing others on issue

13-18 DAYS: The PRACTICAL DIESEL BUFFER… Does It Preclude Bombing Iran?

By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | June 26, 2026

I am indebted to my new friend who is an energy expert ,and currently working in the Persian Gulf, for explaining why the US is facing a very serious risk of a domestic energy crisis. If ignorance is bliss then I’ve spent my last 71 years happily believing that the conversion of oil to fuel for cars, trucks and planes was a simple process. Boy, was I wrong. The United States is facing a potential crisis surrounding the production of diesel and aviation fuel. According to this person, who has 35 years experience in the oil industry:

The U.S. does not have a month of freely deliverable diesel in a stress event. The headline EIA number shows 106.1 million barrels of total distillate fuel oil stocks and 3.631 million b/d of four-week average distillate product supplied, implying 29.2 days on paper. But that national inventory includes barrels in pipelines, refineries, terminals, regional storage, and operational positions that cannot all be allocated immediately to critical distribution hubs.
Operational estimate: applying a 45%-60% practical deliverability factor to total distillate stocks leaves roughly 48-64 million barrels of usable, allocable diesel-equivalent supply. At 3.631 million b/d, that is approximately 13.1-17.5 days, rounded to 13-18 days.

So let me explain how he reached this conclusion. Think of the diesel buffer as the gap between when supply stops flowing and when the economy starts breaking. Thirteen days is not a comfortable cushion — it’s essentially no cushion at all, because the economy runs on diesel in ways that cannot be deferred.

Diesel is not a lifestyle fuel. It moves every truck on every highway, powers every locomotive, runs every tractor during planting and harvest, and drives every piece of heavy construction equipment. When a family decides gas prices are too high, they drive less. When a freight company decides diesel is too expensive or too scarce, it cannot defer the shipment — the grocery store shelves just go empty. Diesel demand is largely inelastic. The economy cannot negotiate with it the way it can with gasoline.

Let’s use the worst case: 13 days. Thirteen days means that if anything disrupts the supply chain — a refinery outage, a pipeline failure, a crude supply disruption — the effects reach the real economy within two weeks. There is no meaningful time to arrange alternatives. A tanker from a replacement crude source takes longer than 13 days to arrive. A refinery turnaround takes longer than 13 days to complete. The buffer is shorter than the lead time for almost every possible remedy.

The geography makes it worse. The 13-day figure is a national average, which means some regions have more and some have less. The Southeast is particularly exposed, being heavily dependent on the Colonial Pipeline, which is itself a single point of failure that demonstrated its criticality when it was shut down for six days in 2021. Six days is nearly half the total national buffer.

What about aviation fuel? Here is where the two problems collide mechanically, and why it creates a genuine bind rather than just a theoretical tradeoff.

Diesel and jet fuel are not different products from different parts of the refinery. They are competing claims on the same physical fraction of crude oil — the middle distillate cut that comes off the atmospheric distillation column in the same boiling range. Every refinery scheduling decision is, at its core, a daily argument about how to divide that fraction between the two products.

With a 13-day diesel buffer, the refinery cannot let diesel output fall. The economic and political consequences of a diesel shortage materialize too quickly and too severely. Diesel production becomes, in practical terms, the floor that cannot be breached.

Now layer in a wartime demand for military jet fuel. JP-8 is pulled from the same middle distillate fraction. The military’s operational requirements are also non-negotiable — aircraft do not fly on goodwill. So you now have two inelastic demands competing for one fixed supply of middle distillate from each barrel of crude processed.

The refinery’s response to this bind is constrained in every direction:

It cannot simply run more crude. Crude supply itself may be disrupted — this is precisely the scenario the Persian Gulf blockade creates. And even if crude is available, refinery throughput is limited by physical capacity. You cannot run 110% of nameplate capacity.

It cannot shift to lighter crude to get more barrels. Light crude produces proportionally more gasoline and less middle distillate. Running lighter crude when you need diesel and jet fuel makes the allocation problem worse, not better, because you are shrinking the pool of middle distillate that both are fighting over.

It cannot get more middle distillate out of sour crude than the chemistry allows. A barrel of sour crude from the Persian Gulf typically yields around 20–25% middle distillates by volume. That fraction is fixed by the molecular composition of the oil. You can optimize within a range, but you cannot double the yield through operational choices.

Hydrogen becomes a choke point. Making JP-8 from sour crude to military specification requires substantial hydrogen — for sulfur removal, for aromatic ring saturation to meet smoke point requirements, and for freeze point management. Making ULSD from the same sour crude also requires substantial hydrogen — even more, to reach the ≤15 ppm sulfur specification. A refinery’s hydrogen generation capacity is finite. Every cubic foot of hydrogen diverted to jet fuel processing is a cubic foot unavailable for diesel desulfurization. At the margin, maximizing JP-8 production makes the diesel quality problem worse, not just the diesel volume problem.

The certification delay adds time pressure. Switching refinery configuration between maximizing diesel and maximizing jet fuel is not instant. It takes days to a week to restabilize the unit operations and certify the product meets specification. In a 13-day buffer environment, a week of transition time is not a casual cost — it represents a material fraction of the entire safety margin consumed by the act of reconfiguring production.

Under normal peacetime conditions, refineries optimise their middle distillate split based on market prices — jet fuel commands a premium, so they lean toward jet. The diesel buffer stays comfortable and the system works.

The Iran war changes all of that simultaneously in three directions at once:

First, the diesel buffer starts shrinking. Persian Gulf sour crude — even though only 8% of US imports — supplied roughly 17% of the medium-sour grades that US complex refiners prefer for middle distillate production. That quality gap is not easily filled by Canadian heavy or domestic light sweet crude without refinery adjustment. Diesel output drops or becomes more expensive per barrel just as the buffer needs defending.

Second, military JP-8 demand spikes. A naval campaign in the Persian Gulf, sustained air operations, and a mobilised logistics tail consume enormous quantities of aviation fuel. The military doesn’t queue behind civilian demand — it has priority. So the refinery is simultaneously being squeezed from both ends of the middle distillate barrel: the military is claiming more jet fuel from the top, and the diesel buffer is bleeding out from the bottom.

Third, the refinery cannot easily solve this by running harder. As explained earlier, maximising JP-8 from sour crude requires pulling a lighter, narrower distillate cut. This is precisely the action that reduces diesel yield — the heavier tail of the middle distillate that would have become diesel is either lost to the vacuum unit or downcycled to fuel oil. The more aggressively refineries respond to military jet fuel demand, the faster the diesel buffer erodes.

This creates a three-way constraint with no clean solution:

  • Protect the diesel buffer → limit JP-8 output → constrain military operations
  • Maximise JP-8 for military → draw down diesel buffer → trigger civilian supply cascade before the war ends
  • Try to do both → run refineries at maximum utilisation → lose the ability to flex for any further shock, with no margin for equipment failures, maintenance, or a second disruption

The 13-day buffer is what makes this bind acute rather than manageable. With sixty days of diesel inventory, a refinery operator can tolerate shifting the middle distillate split toward jet fuel for several weeks without civilian consequences. With thirteen days, the same shift starts a visible countdown almost immediately. Now do you understand why Donald Trump signed the MoU with Iran?

If the United States decides to renew its bombing campaign of Iran, that would likely trigger the stress event outlined above. Based on that fact I believe that Donald Trump, notwithstanding his threats, will not run the risk of crashing the US economy by bombing Iran again.

Video interviews

June 26, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | Comments Off on 13-18 DAYS: The PRACTICAL DIESEL BUFFER… Does It Preclude Bombing Iran?

Prof Seyed Marandi: WILL the US COLLAPSE the GLOBAL ECONOMY?

Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – June 25, 2026

June 25, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Prof Seyed Marandi: WILL the US COLLAPSE the GLOBAL ECONOMY?

Iranian Victory – Gulf States Creating ‘Regional Security Framework’ With Iran

By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | June 24, 2026

The failed U.S./Israeli war on Iran was not only a major loss for the United States and Israel and an Iranian victory, but it has also helped Iran’s status as a serious regional power.

This is best underscored by the fact that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states,-after facing Iranian retaliatory strikes against U.S. bases and assets during the war, is no longer relying on the United States for protection and is looking to form a security alliance with Iran.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, the Prime Minister of Qatar, told the Financial Times that “Part of what we are doing now, as regional countries, is to create this regional security framework between us and Iran, that will hopefully have economic co-operation in the future between all of us — to bring the region back to stability”.

He similarly told Al Jazeera, “Iran is a neighbouring country, and dialogue with it remains necessary to guarantee the security and stability of the region”.

This shows that the GCC no longer trust the United States to protect them, given that “Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar host US military bases and were attacked by Iran during the war. Washington struggled to supply its Gulf allies with enough interceptors to defend against Iranian missile attacks,” as journalist Kyle Anzalone noted.

As a result, the GCC states are seemingly deciding to stop relying on the United States for defence and make a security agreement with Iran, which has cemented itself as a serious regional power.

“They have to deal with Iran because it is not going anywhere”, Gawdat Bahgat, a professor of national security affairs at Washington’s National Defense University said referring to the Gulf nations new approach to Iran.

“Even while Iran attacked them, they kept diplomatic channels open because the day after, they and Iran have no choice but to live together” he noted.

“Our aim is that Iran flourishes and their economy grows; and our investment basically has always been purely on commercial decisions”, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told the Financial Times.

This destroys the U.S./Israeli goal of isolating Iran, instead causing regional countries to forge closer ties to Iran for their own national security interests.

This is yet another way the U.S/Israeli war on Iran was a loss for the U.S. empire and a win for Iran and its influence as a serious regional power.

June 25, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Iranian Victory – Gulf States Creating ‘Regional Security Framework’ With Iran

IRGC Navy rejects new Strait of Hormuz shipping routes

Al Mayadeen | June 25, 2026

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy has warned that safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz is only possible via routes announced by Iran, rejecting newly declared navigation lanes and insisting that vessels coordinate directly with Iranian naval authorities.

In a statement issued in the name of the IRGC Navy, Tehran said that “some authorities” had recently announced new shipping routes in the strategic waterway “without informing or coordinating with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” saying the move is “unacceptable and completely dangerous.”

The statement stressed that the only authorized passage routes through the Strait of Hormuz are those designated by Iran, warning that navigation outside these channels is “very dangerous and prohibited.”

“All vessels are warned to strictly avoid any navigation outside the notified routes,” the IRGC Navy said, adding that coordination via Channel 16 with Iranian naval forces is mandatory and that “violator vessels will be dealt with.”

The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow maritime chokepoint linking the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, remains one of the world’s most sensitive shipping corridors, with competing claims over navigation management and maritime safety procedures.

Regional diplomatic efforts underway

The warning comes amid renewed diplomatic activity involving Gulf states, Iran, and regional mediators aimed at reshaping maritime governance in the strait.

On Wednesday, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani arrived in Muscat for talks with Omani officials on launching a new round of negotiations involving Iran, Iraq, and Gulf Arab states on the future management of the waterway, according to Reuters, citing a diplomat briefed on the discussions.

The proposed talks are reported to be separate from ongoing Iran-US negotiations and existing de-mining arrangements. According to the same source, Gulf states are expected to push for the removal of transit fees, while Iran may propose alternative charges linked to environmental, navigation, and security services.

The initiative is said to stem from a recent memorandum of understanding calling for structured discussions between Iran, Oman, Gulf states, and Iraq on maritime governance in the strait, with Pakistan floated as a potential mediator.

Separately, broader regional reconciliation talks are expected to be held in Riyadh involving Iran, Gulf Arab states, and other regional actors.

Oman announces new shipping lanes

Earlier on Wednesday, Oman announced the establishment of two temporary shipping routes in the Strait of Hormuz, positioned north and south of the existing lane, in coordination with the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

Under a phased operational plan, vessels will be grouped and contacted individually with navigation instructions, including designated routes and departure timings. Oman’s maritime authorities said shipmasters remain responsible for conducting independent risk assessments, and vessels are required to keep Automatic Identification Systems active while reporting hazards to the Oman Maritime Security Centre.

Oman also confirmed that no transit tolls would be imposed on ships passing through the strait, in line with understandings reached in recent Iran-US discussions.

Joint Iran-Oman framework

The developments follow earlier agreements between Iran and Oman to establish a joint committee tasked with discussing the future management of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

The committee is part of broader consultations between Tehran and Muscat aimed at enhancing maritime safety, coordinating navigation rules, and addressing associated services and costs in line with international law and sovereign rights of coastal states.

Both sides have previously reiterated their commitment to keeping the strait open for international navigation while maintaining sovereignty over territorial waters, underscoring the strategic importance of continued coordination to ensure stability in the waterway.

June 25, 2026 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Comments Off on IRGC Navy rejects new Strait of Hormuz shipping routes

There Are No Budget Constraints In New York City: “Coastal Resiliency” Edition

By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | June 14, 2026

I often make fun of the federal government as operating with what it thinks is an “infinite credit card,” outside and beyond any budget restraints. And thus all problems, real or imaginary, can be solved by dispensing some of the infinite federal loot. In its partial defense, the federal government does have the ability to print money, although that ability too eventually runs into limits.

And then we have New York City. The City has no ability to print money, but nevertheless operates as if there are no constraints on spending. The sky is the limit! Recently I wrote about how the City spends about triple the national average per student on preK-12 education, and more than double the national average per capita on Medicaid. Those are crazy excessive amounts, but at least education and healthcare are bona fide purposes for the spending of resources.

But how about spending huge amounts of money on pure fantasies that accomplish absolutely nothing? Yes, we have that too. For today’s example, how about “climate resiliency”?

Maybe you don’t even know what that is. I’m not sure that I do either. A good summary is that it is a substance-free buzzword that is being used to dispense tens of billions of dollars on consultants and construction projects along the coastline, without any discernible benefits within the lifetimes of anyone around today.

About a year ago, in April 2025, I had a post about a project the City was in the process of building at something called Wagner Park, basically a small lawn area along the water near the Southern tip of Manhattan Island. Wagner Park accounts for about 400 feet of Manhattan waterfront, out of a total of about 32 miles of shoreline for Manhattan (and some 520 miles for New York City as a whole). The City was trucking in vast amounts of dirt in order to raise the level of the park by about 10 feet. The idea, supposedly, is to protect against a rise in the level of the sea that climate doomsayers claim may occur by some time around, say, the year 2100. The cost of the Wagner Park “resiliency” project, as reported in my April 2025 post, was some $300 million.

Well, now it seems that the Wagner Park insanity is metastacizing like a cancer. New and far bigger shoreline-raising projects have now gotten underway both East and West of the relatively small Wagner Park effort. One such project covers about a mile of the waterfront of Battery Park City on the Lower West Side, and another covers 2+ miles of the waterfront at East River Park on the Lower East Side. Steve Cuozzo covers the story in a piece in the New York Post on June 10. Here is his description of the work now getting underway in Battery Park City:

At Le District’s alfresco Battery Park café, customers who previously enjoyed views of the river and the New Jersey skyline now face a chain-link fence and roaring excavation machines. Battery Park City’s beloved Hudson River Esplanade, a treasure of Lower Manhattan, will be closed for years to come as it’s needlessly reconfigured. Its off-limits condition shocks those who loved its airy refuge from the city’s thrum — and appalls nearby residents of this once magnificent neighborhood.

And over in East River Park:

In the now “resilient” segment south of the Williamsburg Bridge, scores of old trees have given way to saplings that might throw shade in a mere 25 years. The mostly level recreation lawns that were favorite gathering grounds for residents of nearby NYCHA housing projects have sprouted hilly, segmented zones mostly too small for easy use.

Cuozzo quotes residents from both the Lower East and West Side areas as being appalled by the endless construction and the desecration of their prior waterfront parks. But then there is Mayor Mamdani, who recently commented on the opening of the Wagner Park project:

The area is “on the front lines of the climate crisis,” [Mamdani] lectured. “With phase one now complete, we are taking a major step toward safeguarding Lower Manhattan . . . from rising seas and stronger storms.”

What “rising seas” and “stronger storms” exactly? Cuozzo correctly points out that the UN itself has recently backed away from its extreme climate doom scenarios. The idea of sudden sea level rise of multiple feet was always ridiculous. Meanwhile, the costs are enormous. This City release from October 2024 puts the cost of the East River Park project at $1.45 billion. In the same release, a guy named Rohit Aggarwala, then Commissioner of the City’s Department of Environmental protection, boasted that the City had “more than a dozen similar projects now underway, from Staten Island to the Rockaways to Red Hook.”

If you are a bureaucrat in New York City, just somehow attach the word “climate” to your budget demand and they’ll give you whatever you ask for. Keep this in mind next time the City comes around looking for another tax increase.

June 23, 2026 Posted by | Economics | | Comments Off on There Are No Budget Constraints In New York City: “Coastal Resiliency” Edition

The UN’s plan to levy taxes on global trade is a sinister power grab

If these precedents on emissions charges and compulsory offsets stand, the appetite of unelected institutions for fiscal power will grow

By Brenda Shaffer | The Telegraph | June 22, 2026

International energy and climate policies stand at the center of one of the most defining political issues of our time: the expanding power of unelected institutions such as the United Nations in the lives of people in democratic societies.

Two UN agencies – the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) – plan to tax global shipping and aviation for their greenhouse gas emissions. This would mark the first time an unelected institution has levied taxes on major sectors of global economic activity. The planned levies would expand the power and budgets of these agencies with no democratic accountability.

Regardless of one’s views on climate change, proponents of democracy should recognize the threat posed by taxation without representation and oppose this power grab by the UN.

If implemented, the UN agency levies will raise global shipping and aviation costs, adding to inflation worldwide. Shipping produces just around 2 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet a UN tax on it would add costs to virtually every traded good. Shipping carries more than 80 per cent of global trade, a share expected to grow. Civil aviation accounts for approximately 2.5 percent of global emissions. The planned carbon offset requirement would add further costs to international flights.

In October 2026, the IMO will take a final vote on launching its carbon tax. The ICAO’s requirement that airlines purchase carbon offsets for international flights comes into force in January 2027.

If implemented, the IMO scheme will rake in billions from shippers while doing little to lower greenhouse gas emissions: there is simply not enough zero-carbon or low-carbon fuel available that meets the IMO’s criteria. The IMO estimates the scheme will add between $11bn (£8.1bn) and $13bn (£9.6bn) to its budget.

The IMO taxation scheme would at minimum double shipping fuel costs. The current generation of low-carbon fuels – hydrogen, methanol, and ammonia – are not suitable for wide use in the shipping industry. These fuels are more flammable than those in use today, increasing risks for ships and crews. If adopted, insurance costs would soar, particularly following the first inevitable accident attributable to these fuels.

June 23, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Comments Off on The UN’s plan to levy taxes on global trade is a sinister power grab

Iran’s Oil Spigot Could Open Soon But Hurdles Remain

Sputnik – 22.06.2026

Iran could recover up to 1.6 million barrels per day within four to eight weeks, independent political analyst Faisal Alshammeri told Sputnik commenting on Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi’s recent announcement that oil and petrochemical export restrictions against the Islamic Republic have been lifted.

Iran returning “sustainably to the pre-war range of about 1.9 million barrels per day may require a full quarter,” Alshammeri pointed out.

The analyst pointed to “the uncertainty surrounding the political and legal framework” as Iran’s “primary challenge” in terms of durable oil exports.

“Sustainable normalization will depend on banking, insurance, shipping security and, above all, the durability of the political agreement” between Iran and the US, Alshammeri underscored.

He was echoed by energy economist Kazi Sohag of Saint Petersburg University who didn’t rule out a substantial increase in Iran’s oil output already in July.

“Iran can recover a good chunk of exports relatively quickly if the US waivers are implemented and the Strait of Hormuz is kept open,” Sohag noted.

As for potential first-wave buyers, China is expected to be the initial and largest importer of revived Iranian crude, the analysts predicted. They added that India could form the second wave, while Türkiye may also return relatively early. South Korea, Japan, and eventually EU member states could follow suit in the future.

June 22, 2026 Posted by | Economics | | Comments Off on Iran’s Oil Spigot Could Open Soon But Hurdles Remain

Strategic Oil Reserve Nears Collapse… US Must Choose: Guns or Butter

By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | June 21, 2026

As of the week ending June 12, 2026, the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) held approximately 340.25 million barrels of crude oil… Sounds like a lot, but it is approaching the danger zone. In late May, that number was 372 million barrels, which consisted of Sweet crude: ~142 MMB | Sour crude: ~230 MMB, according to the US Department of Energy.

The oil is stored in caverns at four sites:

  • Bryan Mound: ~166 MMB
  • Big Hill: ~90 MMB
  • West Hackberry: ~72 MMB
  • Bayou Choctaw: ~44 MMB

To understand how perilous the situation is you need to know that if the oil level in these caverns falls below a certain level that the structural integrity of the caverns would be jeopardized. The most commonly cited operational floor is around 20% of capacity. Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, told CNN that the SPR must be at least 20% full to remain operational — that’s roughly 143 million barrels against the SPR’s ~727 million barrel design capacity.

So subtract 143 barrels from 340.25… That means the US only has 197.25 million barrels left before the caverns could face irreparable damage. If the US consumers, who use 20 million barrels a day, had to rely exclusively on the SPR, the US only has less than a 9-day supply of reserves. If you compare the amount reported at the end of May (i.e., 372 MMb) with the June 15th report, the US is drawing 16 million barrels a week from the reserve. This is the optimistic scenario, i.e., the US has roughly a 12-day supply before the proverbial shit hits the fan.

But wait, it gets worse. The US Military has blown through its jet fuel reserves. The problem is compounded becuase Diesel reserves are at 25 year low. Diesel and Jet Fuel are critical Distillates. So the Trump administration must make a choice: support the military jets with jet fuel, or support the trucking Fleet with enough diesel fuel, to provide food and products to US consumers. Trump can’t wage war and keep the economy going at the current rate because diesel and jet fuel compete with each other when comes to production. So the question is, do you want to wage war or do you wanna save the economy and keep the trucks moving on the road? This is the main reason Trump signed the MoU with Iran.

A friend who is an energy analyst summarized the dilemma as follows:

The strategic warning is that the United States cannot assume it can fight a major fuel-intensive conflict and protect the domestic economy without tradeoffs. Military jet fuel, commercial aviation fuel, diesel, heating oil, and marine fuel all draw from the middle distillate portion of the refined barrel. Refineries can bias output, but they cannot instantly maximize every middle-distillate product at once.

The risk is not that every truck or aircraft stops at once. The risk is that a forced fuel-priority decision creates cascading shortages and price shocks across logistics, aviation, agriculture, construction, and consumer supply chains. A war-time jet-fuel surge could reduce the diesel cushion; a civil-aviation diversion could disrupt passenger movement and air cargo. Either channel can become recessionary because both diesel and jet fuel are operating fuels for the real economy.

The US is not the only country or region facing a massive problem. Europe is screwed. An April 2026 report by Karl Miller — The Iran War, the Strait of Hormuz and Europe’s Compound Energy Trap — spells out the danger facing Europe. Here is the Executive Summary:

This report assesses whether the European Union faces a structural energy-security Prisoner’s Dilemma with Russia, with Germany at its centre and the Persian Gulf crisis as the accelerant. The argument is blunt: the Union has deprived itself of the low-cost Russian oil and gas system that underpinned much of its industrial base, while the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz disruption have simultaneously impaired the maritime energy system that supplies a decisive share of the world’s oil, refined products and LNG.

Europe is on its knees in strategic terms. It is not literally without emergency stocks, because EU and IEA rules require minimum oil inventories. The harder reality is more damaging: those inventories are finite, unevenly usable, commercially fragile and unable to replace the normal flow of crude, diesel, jet fuel, LPG, naphtha and LNG through global markets. Emergency stocks buy time; they do not restore cheap Russian pipeline gas, reopen Hormuz, rebuild refining flexibility or prevent member states from bidding against one another.

The EU therefore faces a compound trap. Russian gas is being removed by law, Persian Gulf flows are exposed to war, U.S. LNG has become indispensable but expensive, storage refill is costly, and Germany’s industrial model remains dependent on affordable dispatchable energy. Each member state can rationally protect itself through bilateral contracts, subsidies, exemptions and emergency procurement, yet those same choices weaken the Union’s collective bargaining power and deepen fragmentation.

The conclusion is that the EU is locked into a repeated, asymmetric collective-action game. Escaping it requires enforceable solidarity, shared critical-fuels planning, coordinated storage, firm-capacity realism, a diversified LNG portfolio, strategic petroleum-product management, and legal reforms that make cooperation faster and more profitable than national defection.

June 21, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | , | Comments Off on Strategic Oil Reserve Nears Collapse… US Must Choose: Guns or Butter

Iran announces plan to link electricity grid with Qatar, transfer up to 1,000 MW of power

The Cradle | June 17, 2026

Iran is planning to connect its electricity grid with Qatar and announced on 16 June that work on the matter is in its “final stage,” reviving a years-old agreement with the Gulf state in the aftermath of the brutal US-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic.

Iranian Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi said on Tuesday that “the connection between Iran and Qatar will begin soon.”

He added that “studies are in the final stage, and we are beginning the implementation phase.”

Aliabadi also said Tehran was “studying” power grid connection with other Gulf countries, according to Tasnim News Agency.

The minister affirmed that this would happen “in the near future.” The deal will involve a transfer of up to 1,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

Talks on the matter had been taking place between Tehran and Doha in December 2023.

The two countries had previously signed an electricity memorandum of understanding (MoU) under the late Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi’s government.

The new announcement comes several days after Qatar denied a Washington Post report that said the Gulf state cut a “secret” deal with Iran to avoid further retaliatory strikes.

“Any suggestion that operational decisions relating to energy production were – or have ever been – made in coordination with Iran, for Iran’s benefit, or to influence the course of the conflict is entirely unfounded,” Qatar’s International Media Office said on 12 June.

The Washington Post had cited western and regional officials as saying that Qatar approached Iran at the start of the war, following Tehran’s major strike on the key Ras Laffan energy facility.

“Seeking to protect its economic crown jewel, Qatar approached Tehran … to present a mutually beneficial arrangement: Iran would refrain from hitting Ras Laffan, and Qatar would halt gas production unilaterally – a move that would send energy prices soaring and put economic pressure on the US and Israel to shorten the war,” the sources said.

After the Iranian strike on Ras Laffan, Doha said the attack caused $20 billion in losses and wiped out 17 percent of the Gulf state’s gas export capacity.

Iran largely refrained from attacking the country in the days that followed, although some drone attacks and explosions were reported.

Tehran said during the war that many attacks on the Gulf were actually Israeli “false-flags” aimed at inflaming tensions.

Political commentator Tucker Carlson also reported in early March that Qatar and Saudi Arabia detained Mossad agents who were planning bombings, implying that the foiled attacks were designed to be pinned on Iran.

Tehran’s announcement on the electricity agreement with Qatar coincided with a Bloomberg report that said Qatar is planning to rapidly increase liquefied natural gas (LNG) production once the Strait of Hormuz reopens, aiming to restore up to 80 percent of its export volume within two months.

June 17, 2026 Posted by | Economics, False Flag Terrorism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Iran announces plan to link electricity grid with Qatar, transfer up to 1,000 MW of power

A New Economic Front: Yemen’s Entrance to Regional War against US-Israeli Alliance

By Robert Inlakesh | The Palestine Chronicle | June 11, 2026

During the Ramadan War earlier this year, Yemen’s Ansarallah’s role was notably limited – a move that is now turning out to have been strategic. The Yemeni Armed Forces now have the potential to tighten the noose of the global economy if the US-Israeli-UAE alliance seeks to escalate its war of aggression regionally.

When the Islamic Republic of Iran imposed a new equation by striking Israeli military targets in response to the bombing of southern Beirut, it did so with a carefully calibrated plan that continued after the initial 15-hour missile exchange. That is being done through the implementation of Yemen’s blockade in the Red Sea.

What has effectively just occurred is the re-imposition of the blockade in support of the Gaza Strip, which was in place until October 8, 2025. Originally, the closure of the consequential sea route – that passes through the Bab al-Mandab Strait and leads up to the Egyptian Suez Canal – was imposed on the Israelis alone. That was before the US and its European allies decided to launch naval campaigns in support of Tel Aviv.

In December of 2023, the US Biden administration launched the failed “Operation Prosperity Guardian”, which cost the American taxpayer roughly $600 million per month alone. Periodically, the intensity of the operations would increase, bringing on greater costs, yet the efforts were just an enormous waste of funds, achieving precisely nothing. During this period, Israel’s Eilat Port went bankrupt and economic strain destroyed countless Israeli businesses.

Fast forward to March of 2025, US President Donald Trump decided to step things up a notch and initiated “Operation Rough Rider” against Yemen. The Trump administration pledged to destroy Ansarallah, using B-2 Bombers to target sites believed to be storing missiles and drones – which failed to properly penetrate the bases. In the first three weeks alone, the US had spent a minimum of over $1 billion on the embarrassing operation, which was solely launched for Israeli interests. By the end of it, including equipment losses/damage, the cost was in the billions.

Yemen’s Ansarallah established an equation whereby they could strike Tel Aviv with ballistic missiles and drones, while maintaining the blockade, even preventing US ships from passing following their intervention, with the only response being airstrikes on civilian targets.

Due to a clear lack of intelligence information on the ground inside Yemen, Israel’s occasional strikes on Yemen eventually became too much of a logistical nightmare to continuously conduct. They had to accept that there was no way to stop the Yemeni Armed Forces.

Following the US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28, Ansarallah was expected to play a much larger role in the conflict than it did, only firing a handful of missiles towards Israeli targets. Tel Aviv didn’t even respond to these attacks, as they were overburdened already with fighting both Iran and Hezbollah simultaneously.

It could be argued that the Yemen card was never truly played during the hot war itself. Now that card is on the table. The Strait of Hormuz has been on lockdown since the start of March, the economic fallout of which has not yet been truly felt, but is beginning to take effect. Through Ansarallah’s new step, reimposing its blockade on Israeli shipping, another lever has been turned.

If the war continues escalating, it will be simple for Ansarallah to completely close the Bab al-Mandab Strait, meaning that all trade will have to be conducted without the Suez Canal. In order for cargo to reach Europe, it will have to go all the way around the African continent instead. This will mean economic devastation if the situation is not quickly reversed.

What is perhaps the most troubling part for the US Trump administration and its allies is that there is absolutely nothing they can do about it militarily. On top of this, the entire world will be feeling the effects of a war launched entirely for Israeli interests, with no real game plan at all, and all because the man in the White House couldn’t summon the strength to tell the Israelis: No!

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.

June 11, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on A New Economic Front: Yemen’s Entrance to Regional War against US-Israeli Alliance

Ukraine must compensate Germany for blowing up Nord Stream – AfD co-leader

RT | June 9, 2026

Ukraine should compensate Germany for the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, the co-leader of the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel, has said.

German investigators have attributed the explosions, which crippled the pipelines built to transport Russian gas to Germany, to a small group of Ukrainian operatives. The alleged ringleader was extradited to Germany from Italy last autumn.

Moscow has repeatedly questioned Berlin’s account of the attack, arguing that such a sophisticated operation could not have been carried out by a handful of divers in NATO-monitored waters without state backing.

Speaking at a party event on Tuesday, Weidel rejected German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s proposal to grant Ukraine associate membership in the European Union, describing the country as a “bottomless pit” that is already heavily reliant on foreign financial assistance.

“Germany has already transferred more than €100 billion to Ukraine over the past four years alone,” she said.

Weidel argued that Kiev should first explain its role in the Nord Stream sabotage.

“We need to know how this state-terrorist act against the most important infrastructure we had, namely the Nord Stream pipelines, came about and what role Ukraine played in it,” she said.

“The flow of payments should actually be moving in the opposite direction. Ukraine must pay reparations to the Federal Republic of Germany, because we have suffered enormous damage – and so has Europe as a whole – from the loss of cheap Russian fossil fuels,” Weidel added.

The AfD co-leader also called for an immediate halt to German military and financial assistance to Ukraine, urging Berlin to focus instead on facilitating negotiations between Kiev and Moscow and restoring dialogue with Russia.

According to several recent opinion polls, the AfD is currently Germany’s most popular political party. An INSA survey published by Bild on Saturday put support for the party at 29%, while 77% of respondents said they were dissatisfied with Chancellor Merz’s performance – the worst rating of his tenure, according to the newspaper.

June 9, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , | Comments Off on Ukraine must compensate Germany for blowing up Nord Stream – AfD co-leader

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