From my previous writing(which is published couple months ago) I have WARNED THAT TRUMP IS STEPPING IN THE TRAP.
AND THERE IS NO QUESTION THAT IRAN WAR WILL RE-ESCALATE AGAIN
CLICK HERE to read my previous article.
The hormuz choke problem was eased for sometimes until Trump realizes its not anymore. It may appear as the type the problem that seemingly can be resolved in diplomatic method until now.
THE HORMUZ CHOKE WAS THE LEVERAGE, A SUPER LEVERAGE THAT IRAN CAN MONETIZE/BENEFIT AND FORCES US TO DO WHATEVER THEY WANT.
AND THEY HAVE SUCCESSFULLY PROVED IT TO THE WORLD, AGAIN AND AGAIN.
Trump’s team thought this matter can be easily resolved as long as they keep more benefits on the table/or under the table, but they seem to forget their rivalry were not the one to be negotiated no matter how good Trump claimed himself to be in negotiation skills.
The most fatal mistake for one to make in the global geo-political arena is to expect people follow rules and you are acting on pure naivety and ignorance of your rivalry’s true capability.
Bab el-Mandeb was the bet on the table but constantly changing hands.
Up till now, this is no longer just a supply disruption issue, this is the total failure of US mid-east strategy: Skyrocketing oil price is just the result of this failure, not the symptom.
As the Brent price closed above $105 this week, but global investors/traders have their attention tied to oil price completely and lost sight of bigger picture, even the entire map.
Headlines and narratives are merely trying to ease the global attention from rising, world leaders are in fact way more nervous than they appear to.
This is what the media is trying to divert you attention from:
In the FIRST TIME in the modern oil trade history, two of the world’s three major maritime chokepoints are simultaneously hostile, and the one overland workaround just got drone-struck into a bonfire.
AND YET NO ONE REALLY TALKS ABOUT IT.
READERS ARE STILL OBSESSES WITH THE JAPAN DOOMER STORY.
Let’s break down the math behind the middle east conflict:
THE WAR THAT WON’T STOP
Round 2 OF WAR just started now, soon Trump is going to find out EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OUT OF ORDER, OUT OF HIS CONTROL.
AND THE FRAGILITY DOLLAR ORDER WILL FURTHER ESCALATE.
QUICK RECAP HERE:
The US-Israel war on Iran started February 28.
The war got worse, then in June it got a temporal deal — a preliminary US-Iran agreement to reopen Hormuz and from this point, US did not force Iran to reopen, US almost begged(narrative in a way of “hard bargain”.
Goldman, sensing the peace deal will be made, therefore cut its Brent forecast to $75-80 for 2027 and called for a return to oversupply by autumn. Fitch even penciled in a 4-million-barrel-a-day glut by Q4.
That peace deal was the act, a short “fix” to the world that US is”taking care” of the matter but in reality the matter gets far worse.
This act is something Trump’s team particularly good at.
President Trump is very good at “negotiating” even though he puts entire US’s odds on the table, as long as these bets are not from his very own pocket.
The world is going to pay so much for his
SHORT-TERM FIX (THE PIECE DEAL)
Or at least on life support in a Salalah conference room nobody’s allowed into anymore — Oman postponed the regional meeting this week “in the interests of consensus,” which is diplomat-speak for “everyone’s yelling and nobody’s coming.”
The conflict continued, Iran then re-tightened the noose on Hormuz then the entire world can feel the pressure.
And then — the actual news this week — Yemen’s Houthis, in a Revolutionary-Guard-choreographed coastal blitz, took the port of Mokha on September 10 and Perim Island the very next day, giving them what analysts are calling effective control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Saudi-flagged vessels are now barred from transit, according to the Houthi military spokesman.
Just to round out the week, drones launched from Iraq hit Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline — Petroline, the 1,200km, 7-million-barrel-a-day lifeline that lets the Kingdom export crude without going anywhere near Hormuz.
It’s been shut since September 10.
Nobody, including Aramco, will say when it comes back.
Three separate points of failure.
All within 96 hours of each other.
THE CHOKEPOINT MATH
Here’s the part that should actually worry global investors, serious traders and investors should not only look at the headlines and narratives.
THINGS ARE NOT OKAY
THINGS HAVE GONE BAD, TERRIBLY BAD.
Individually, any one of these three failures is a bad week for Saudi Arabia.
Together, they’re something the modern oil market has genuinely never priced: a producer with zero open export corridors.
Hormuz has been functionally closed since Iran expanded its naval presence in late August — commodity vessel transits fell to single digits over the weekend, down from roughly 125-140 a day in peacetime.
Bab el-Mandeb, which normally carries about 12% of global seaborne trade, is now sitting under the guns of a group that just told Saudi shipping to stay out.
And Petroline — the pipeline that exists specifically as the “in case Hormuz closes” insurance policy — is currently insurance nobody can collect on.
[CHART 1 — Saudi Export Corridor Status: Hormuz / Bab el-Mandeb / Petroline, Feb–Sept 2026]
Saudi crude output has reportedly fallen to its lowest level since 1990.
Riyadh is, per reporting this week, quietly trying to push more barrels back through Hormuz anyway — which tells you everything about how bad the alternative math looks internally.
That is a kingdom choosing the chokepoint with active mine warfare over the one with no throughput at all.
This is also, worth noting, an almost comically asymmetric trade for Iran and its proxies.
A handful of drones and an amphibious infantry push cost a rounding error compared to what they’ve done to global energy logistics.
Petroline alone moves 7 million barrels a day — about 7% of global consumption — and it went offline for what a few dozen munitions and some fast boats.
THE NUMBERS
[TABLE — Oil Price and Supply Snapshot, September 2026]
The whiplash in Goldman’s own forecasts across this year is the chart that tells the whole story better than any single price print.
Up to $90+ in the spring war peak.
Cut to $75-80 in June on the reopening deal.
Back up to $85/$80 now, with an explicit written warning that $120+ is the disorderly-escalation case.
That’s not a model being wrong.
That’s a model correctly pricing a war that keeps almost ending and then doesn’t.
THE PATIENT CHESS PLAYER
Not everyone perceive the WAR in this way,
YOU ARE BEING WAY TOO PESSIMISTIC , THEY MAY ARGUE.
Therefore, this is where the REALL ALPHA HIDES, especially when everyone else still underestimate of the current status quo.
China has spent the entire war quietly insulating itself — leaning on their oil strategic reserves, buying opportunistically when Iranian and sanctioned-barrel discounts widen, and using August’s dip to restock rather than draw down further.
Beijing’s position, repeated by its own officials, is that it’s “managed this situation successfully since the beginning.” Convenient, when your main crude artery from the Gulf isn’t the only route you depend on and your government doesn’t answer to gas-pump politics.
The US is the mirror image: the oil SPR near record lows after multiple drawdowns to blunt the price spikes, meaning the next leg of this crisis has less of a shock absorber underneath it than the last one did.
Asian refiners dependent on Middle Eastern grades — per Rystad Energy commentary this week — are the ones most exposed to a prolonged Yanbu outage, since you can’t just reroute Eastern Province crude to a shut pipeline.
Europe’s diesel market is its own separate mess, tangled up with Russian refinery strikes on top of the Gulf story, which is why Goldman is still recommending long positions in deferred European diesel timespreads as a hedge, not just outright crude.
THE CHESSBOARD
MBS reportedly called Trump twice in one day pushing for US strikes on the Houthis as they closed in on Mokha.
Trump said no — Washington isn’t interested in widening the campaign beyond Iran itself.
BUT WHO WAS THE ONE STARTED THE WAR THOUGH?
WHO IS THE ONE BEING TOLD THAT IRAN CAN BE EASILY TAKEN CARE OF?
The US wants this contained to a state-vs-state framing it can eventually negotiate away; Iran’s strategy is explicitly to keep opening fronts through proxies that don’t require Tehran to sign anything.
Every new Houthi advance is a new pressure point Washington didn’t choose and can’t easily close by talking to Tehran alone.
That mismatch — one side needs a single negotiated off-ramp, the other side just needs more chokepoints — is why “de-escalation” headlines keep dying within weeks of appearing. It happened in June.
The current dilemma is massive:
we cannot manufacture new chokepoints, nor can we scale up alternative pipelines fast enough. Iran is locked into a strategy of relentless torture, bleeding the global economy through sustained inflation.