Not burnt out, but I felt the pull. So I had to pull back.
Not that much going on for now (the past month or so). Bomb fly there, bombing back. Some drones (or planes) 7700'd. But that's about it. And when something did happen, I wrote about it.
But to me it was back to geopolitics (that means including Iran) and the markets 😉
I understand that a few weeks ago in a meeting the president , realizing how badly things were going , was heard screaming people were going to compare him to Jimmy Carter if something wasn't done soon. Before this is over he will wish they would compare him to President Carter. Thanks for another great article No1.
Just as quiet on the Ukrainian front - except that pesky Putin may be actually thinking about flattening Kiev? you think? no . . .
But never on a US holiday weekend, well?
But it's not a holiday weekend in Russia, you say?
Well, not in Sweden either, so that evens our the score, doesn't it?
If we get the flattening of Teheran at the same time as Kiev, the whole world will not believe what just happened, think "it can't happen here", "they had it coming", or something like that, after taste, and go completely quiet.
So go back to sleep . . . it can't happen here . . .
One more detail. There is no cease-fire. Not really. A cease-fire is a formal document, with stated terms, signed by local force commanders at a minimum. This is just an informal truce. One that is broken every day the blockade is declared to be on force, as that is an act of war in itself.
So here is the final kicker, when does it come to the point it makes sense for Iran to take the offensive? Let us say after Saudi and Qatar get peeled away from the coalition by diplomacy? What then?
If I'd be Iran, I would want the GCC to remove the US from their territory. A lot of them won't like that. As they HATE Iran with a passion. But they do love money more. And an angry Iran means no money... So... For Iran it makes sense not to play too hardball. It'll be easier to convince the population to be "not-enemies" (I'm not saying friends) than the opposite.
"For Iran it makes sense not to play too hardball."
Agreed. If the shooting starts up again, I'd expect Iran to concentrate its fire on Israel and avoid damaging the GCC's energy infrastructure. Simple reason, once this is all over you want the GCCs to still be shipping oil because you'll be making money off the transit tax, plus you won't be seen as a pariah for destroying the world economy. $2M bucks per VLCC is only $1/bbl. You get roughly 20 gals of gas from one bbl of oil, 12 of diesel and 4 of jet fuel, so that's less than 3c/gal. Most of the world can absorb that 'shock' I would say.
The problem is that the GCC monarchies' money is in Wall Street and the City. And you know better than me that means it's Wall St's money now... On the other hand, exiled monarch is a singularly unprofitable occupation, so I guess we discover just how firm is the grip of the Epstein class on them! 🤔🤑🤡
One other thing I meant to add. When do all the sleeper cells in this country get the green light to go total jihad? We know it is coming. We know about all the military aged Chinese men that crossed the boarder during the Biden years. Michael Yon did an excellent job of detailing this. And, all those middle eastern hordes from the various Muslim nations that are here setting up training camps (There is one near to me in Commerce, GA) and mosque beachheads.
I have been keyed up about this Iran situation since mid February. My anxiety has come and went along the cycles of escalation and cooling down periods. To be fair I am not a normal American. I have known the SoH would become a deliberate choke point for the world economy.
If this were to end now I suspect it would end up being nothing more than an inconvenience for most of the world. I read this article earlier from Simplicius (below). Outlined in it are the threats Iran is making if they are attacked again. I do not believe they want to do it but they are probably going to have to. This is all about the hegemony of USrael plain and simple.
But after this past Tuesday my gloves are off. A foreign power literally purchased a benign congressional seat in Kentucky. It was as brazen as anything I had ever seen in the political arena. These Zionists including Trump obviously do not care what we think. They are essentially daring us to do something about it. It leaves little doubt that they are in process of building a mass surveillance state with programmable money under cover of AI. Soon not only will they not care what we think, they won’t even have to tolerate it.
So fuck it, I say do it. Bomb Iran and let them hit back. Send the world into a Great Depression. I am of the firm belief things will get a mite ugly in the USA at 20% unemployment. So much so that I expect the violence will bring us into 90%. Example you can’t function as a country when police officers are scared to leave their homes. It’s a nasty spiral effect.
One might be tempted to think the elites don’t want that. I believe that is true, they don’t. But they have been so corrupted and insulated from the fallout of their actions I believe they think that they will walk through it unscathed. And of course if things get too bad they can always go to ground in one of their illustrious bunkers and ride out the storm. And to that I say, fat chance. If things reach a certain point no one is going to listen to a goddamn word they say. They will have rendered themselves Useless Eaters. I believe their security teams will do the rest.
Apologies for the long rambling post. My point is if they are going to make life hell for the rest of the world at least take some comfort knowing they are ultimately screwing themselves in the process.
I'd love for you to be right, but I think that's the comforting version. Guards protect the hand that feeds right up until it stops feeding, sure, but a guy in a bunker with programmable money and a surveillance grid doesn't necessarily need their loyalty. He needs their dependence. Different thing.
The Kentucky seat should scare people more than Hormuz actually.
A chokepoint closing is loud, everyone sees it, markets react. A seat quietly changing hands is the kind of thing that only looks obvious in hindsight, by which point it's three more seats down the road...
The Massie election nearly broke my eardrums. But then The thing that really motivated my previous rant was in that Simplicius article. Bloomberg tweets about facing a financial situation if the SoH was not opened by August. They compared it to 2008. Am not sure if that’s apt because 2008 was caused by money. 2026 is caused by energy supply disruption. It’s a lot harder to print oil as you well know. Of course if the energy disruption turns into destruction it will get VERY ugly. Unless Trump pulls some secret alien technology out of his ass that works along the same lines as cold fusion.
And I suspect once we reach a certain point of travesty they will become the dependent. I think it was on a Tucker podcast I learned that FDR kept a book close by about societal collapse. In other words he was concerned about it and it might have even led him to implement social security. These people today have no such wisdom as far as I can tell (not talking about SS lol).
I think they're being .. cute ... I think the 30's are more like it. '08 (at least in my corner of the world) was a nothing burger. Life went on. Wobbling here and there, govs making bad decisions, same old same old. But life went on.
In the long run trade routes and oil deliveries will work itself out. And we'll probably will need to do more with less. Which is a GREAT way to innovate.
I think the 2008 comparison is if the status quo continues until August. Some oil is moving thru now (China) and being rerouted to some degree i suspect. Red Sea is also normal from what I understand. Yes, 2008 was insignificant compared to what might happen next.
IMO if all of that infrastructure gets smoked including the Red Sea oil I agree with the 1930s comparison at least for a little while. BUT I do not believe our demographics will tolerate that well nor for very long. People are going to get dangerous. With all the guns out there it could get out of hand. Comes a point when a cop, lineman, water treatment worker, truck driver will be scared to leave his family. I think it happened in Yugoslavia in the 90’s.
We need Matt Bracken in here. He knows, this is his forte. I actually found you via an X post he made I think.
Back in 1971, final Vietnam War years, SF writer John Brunner wrote a short story titled "The Inception of the Epoch of Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid". At the time there was a bomb going off everyday (young boomers did boom).
I hate this phrase but, it seem appropriate now...'everything is fake and gay!'
Nothing is hinged in reality. The stock market is nothing but a gambling den. It should not be at all time highs. I remember when investing meant looking at P&E ratios!
It seems, at this juncture, that those 1% of the 1% that are pulling the strings want another endless conflict / war in Iran with the sole intent of keeping the Gulf of Hormuz closed (or mostly closed?).
And why after 4 years (or is it going on 5 years) is the Ukraine / Russia 'war' going on? Why has Putin not finally said "enough is enough" and put an end to that conflict? After all, drones are now making their way to Moscow.
Putin is a cold blooded lawyer, that is his background. He initially attempted a quick cabinet war to force Ukraine to terms. Once Boris Johnson promised unlimited support for Ukraine, shifted to casualty averse attrition war. As long as the Russians see the attritional strategy as a winning one, they won't shift, as there is no reason to gamble while the cold math of war favors them.
The drone stuff is less consequential than the Doolittle raids on Japan or the German V2 rockets. Great at keeping up morale, such as it is, for the Ukrainians. Got to keep them dying for the European Dream (of dismantling Russia for its resources).
And they're gonna do this with the Hajj starting on the 25th? I guess the goal is to beat Iran by driving prices to $300/barrel and demand-destroying the world economy. That will reduce demand so control of the Strait doesn't matter. And I guess you can sell the oil for $300/barrel too for those sweet war profiteering profits. Not too good of an outlook for the November midterms, though. Nor for the civil unrest index of 200+ countries. But if your job is to deny your enemy their objective and not give a sh*t about anything else, it tracks.
As a consideration, it may not be Iran. Cuba is on the menu, boys, it's a quick, easy win and a way to re-claim the champion belt that got lost to the Mad Shiek from Persia.
Every ego needs a boost when it's been wounded, but some more than others, so if I were to bet, this would be the bet.
Great article. Filled me with dread. Lots of dots connected I'd rather not see.
Minor point-- Don Jr. has been married before. He and Vanessa, his ex, have 5 kids. She's now dating Tiger Woods. Don and Bettina got married a couple days ago in a private ceremony in Palm Beach ahead of the party this weekend in the Bahamas. Certainly possible that Trump attended that ceremony.
Still filled with dread because I'm not convinced that if anything was going to happen it already would have. Plenty of time for more chaos this weekend.
Also agree with commenter who wondered about Russia's dragging out their 'special operation' so long. That nonsense seems like it should have been completed long ago.
Woops. I remove "for the first time". Thanks! Little bit less conspicuous then, although still. I'd attend both events if it were my kids. Unless I had to bomb bomb bomb... Which I'm happy not to be in a position to do 😉
I agree on more time this weekend, but you better wrap it up before the markets open. You know. Oil and bonds can only take so much...
As if Europe's going to decide anything any time soon. By the time their bureaucracy is finally through shaping the drafts, Russians will be dying in droves... Of old age.
It's important to realize that as far as Russia is concerned, they are not fighting on enemy territory. I think this map gives the best estimate of the amount of territory they intend to reclaim. It may be less, it may be more, but the point is this is Russian friendly territory and they want to cause as little harm to its inhabitants as possible, thus the restraint which the other side does not exercise.
The Groundhog Day frame is the right one but the loop has a specific breaking mechanism that this piece maps without naming it. The loop breaks when someone in the room delivers an honest assessment that forces a course change. General Kruse did that and got removed. The loop accelerates when you systematically replace the people whose job was to break it with people whose survival depends on not trying.
Each departure sends a signal to everyone still in the building about what happens when your assessment contradicts the principal's narrative. By the fifth or sixth exit, the remaining staff have self-selected for a very specific skill: telling the room what it wants to hear. Thats how a decision-making apparatus loses its error-correction function in real time. And losing error correction during a war is how institutions produce the strategic surprises they spent their entire budget trying to prevent.
Outstanding article Mr No1. I still hope you're wrong and nothing happens during this long weekend.
We're living interesting times.
I'm "number 1" (this one time only!) in hoping I'm wrong...
Although if something would have started, it should have by now in my opinion.
I agree, nothing so far, cannot see any spike in BTC or CL (on hyperliquid). Crossing fingers.
Awesome Substack.
Way underrated
Yes it is. He used to give the best sitreps after the Iran conflict got rolling. I think he got burned out but they were great while they lasted.
Not burnt out, but I felt the pull. So I had to pull back.
Not that much going on for now (the past month or so). Bomb fly there, bombing back. Some drones (or planes) 7700'd. But that's about it. And when something did happen, I wrote about it.
But to me it was back to geopolitics (that means including Iran) and the markets 😉
I understand that a few weeks ago in a meeting the president , realizing how badly things were going , was heard screaming people were going to compare him to Jimmy Carter if something wasn't done soon. Before this is over he will wish they would compare him to President Carter. Thanks for another great article No1.
??!?
Go back to sleep, all quiet on the Persian front.
Just as quiet on the Ukrainian front - except that pesky Putin may be actually thinking about flattening Kiev? you think? no . . .
But never on a US holiday weekend, well?
But it's not a holiday weekend in Russia, you say?
Well, not in Sweden either, so that evens our the score, doesn't it?
If we get the flattening of Teheran at the same time as Kiev, the whole world will not believe what just happened, think "it can't happen here", "they had it coming", or something like that, after taste, and go completely quiet.
So go back to sleep . . . it can't happen here . . .
*click* __lights out__
Thanks - essays like this one ar the reason why I (happily) pay the subscription.
One more detail. There is no cease-fire. Not really. A cease-fire is a formal document, with stated terms, signed by local force commanders at a minimum. This is just an informal truce. One that is broken every day the blockade is declared to be on force, as that is an act of war in itself.
So here is the final kicker, when does it come to the point it makes sense for Iran to take the offensive? Let us say after Saudi and Qatar get peeled away from the coalition by diplomacy? What then?
If I'd be Iran, I would want the GCC to remove the US from their territory. A lot of them won't like that. As they HATE Iran with a passion. But they do love money more. And an angry Iran means no money... So... For Iran it makes sense not to play too hardball. It'll be easier to convince the population to be "not-enemies" (I'm not saying friends) than the opposite.
I believe the word you may be searching for is “frenemies.” 😆
"For Iran it makes sense not to play too hardball."
Agreed. If the shooting starts up again, I'd expect Iran to concentrate its fire on Israel and avoid damaging the GCC's energy infrastructure. Simple reason, once this is all over you want the GCCs to still be shipping oil because you'll be making money off the transit tax, plus you won't be seen as a pariah for destroying the world economy. $2M bucks per VLCC is only $1/bbl. You get roughly 20 gals of gas from one bbl of oil, 12 of diesel and 4 of jet fuel, so that's less than 3c/gal. Most of the world can absorb that 'shock' I would say.
The problem is that the GCC monarchies' money is in Wall Street and the City. And you know better than me that means it's Wall St's money now... On the other hand, exiled monarch is a singularly unprofitable occupation, so I guess we discover just how firm is the grip of the Epstein class on them! 🤔🤑🤡
One other thing I meant to add. When do all the sleeper cells in this country get the green light to go total jihad? We know it is coming. We know about all the military aged Chinese men that crossed the boarder during the Biden years. Michael Yon did an excellent job of detailing this. And, all those middle eastern hordes from the various Muslim nations that are here setting up training camps (There is one near to me in Commerce, GA) and mosque beachheads.
I have been keyed up about this Iran situation since mid February. My anxiety has come and went along the cycles of escalation and cooling down periods. To be fair I am not a normal American. I have known the SoH would become a deliberate choke point for the world economy.
If this were to end now I suspect it would end up being nothing more than an inconvenience for most of the world. I read this article earlier from Simplicius (below). Outlined in it are the threats Iran is making if they are attacked again. I do not believe they want to do it but they are probably going to have to. This is all about the hegemony of USrael plain and simple.
But after this past Tuesday my gloves are off. A foreign power literally purchased a benign congressional seat in Kentucky. It was as brazen as anything I had ever seen in the political arena. These Zionists including Trump obviously do not care what we think. They are essentially daring us to do something about it. It leaves little doubt that they are in process of building a mass surveillance state with programmable money under cover of AI. Soon not only will they not care what we think, they won’t even have to tolerate it.
So fuck it, I say do it. Bomb Iran and let them hit back. Send the world into a Great Depression. I am of the firm belief things will get a mite ugly in the USA at 20% unemployment. So much so that I expect the violence will bring us into 90%. Example you can’t function as a country when police officers are scared to leave their homes. It’s a nasty spiral effect.
One might be tempted to think the elites don’t want that. I believe that is true, they don’t. But they have been so corrupted and insulated from the fallout of their actions I believe they think that they will walk through it unscathed. And of course if things get too bad they can always go to ground in one of their illustrious bunkers and ride out the storm. And to that I say, fat chance. If things reach a certain point no one is going to listen to a goddamn word they say. They will have rendered themselves Useless Eaters. I believe their security teams will do the rest.
Apologies for the long rambling post. My point is if they are going to make life hell for the rest of the world at least take some comfort knowing they are ultimately screwing themselves in the process.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/us-admits-no-hormuz-plan-b-as-preparations?r=nvvvu&utm_medium=ios
I'd love for you to be right, but I think that's the comforting version. Guards protect the hand that feeds right up until it stops feeding, sure, but a guy in a bunker with programmable money and a surveillance grid doesn't necessarily need their loyalty. He needs their dependence. Different thing.
The Kentucky seat should scare people more than Hormuz actually.
A chokepoint closing is loud, everyone sees it, markets react. A seat quietly changing hands is the kind of thing that only looks obvious in hindsight, by which point it's three more seats down the road...
The Massie election nearly broke my eardrums. But then The thing that really motivated my previous rant was in that Simplicius article. Bloomberg tweets about facing a financial situation if the SoH was not opened by August. They compared it to 2008. Am not sure if that’s apt because 2008 was caused by money. 2026 is caused by energy supply disruption. It’s a lot harder to print oil as you well know. Of course if the energy disruption turns into destruction it will get VERY ugly. Unless Trump pulls some secret alien technology out of his ass that works along the same lines as cold fusion.
And I suspect once we reach a certain point of travesty they will become the dependent. I think it was on a Tucker podcast I learned that FDR kept a book close by about societal collapse. In other words he was concerned about it and it might have even led him to implement social security. These people today have no such wisdom as far as I can tell (not talking about SS lol).
Thanks for keeping me sane!
I think they're being .. cute ... I think the 30's are more like it. '08 (at least in my corner of the world) was a nothing burger. Life went on. Wobbling here and there, govs making bad decisions, same old same old. But life went on.
I see this disruption in the short to medium term as a disaster for the west. Both the US (see https://no01.substack.com/p/americas-energy-independence), and the EU that's running out of oil.
In the long run trade routes and oil deliveries will work itself out. And we'll probably will need to do more with less. Which is a GREAT way to innovate.
I'm long humanity, short human IQ.
My take too fwiw
I think the 2008 comparison is if the status quo continues until August. Some oil is moving thru now (China) and being rerouted to some degree i suspect. Red Sea is also normal from what I understand. Yes, 2008 was insignificant compared to what might happen next.
IMO if all of that infrastructure gets smoked including the Red Sea oil I agree with the 1930s comparison at least for a little while. BUT I do not believe our demographics will tolerate that well nor for very long. People are going to get dangerous. With all the guns out there it could get out of hand. Comes a point when a cop, lineman, water treatment worker, truck driver will be scared to leave his family. I think it happened in Yugoslavia in the 90’s.
We need Matt Bracken in here. He knows, this is his forte. I actually found you via an X post he made I think.
It would be cool to cooperate with other great minds indeed!
Back in 1971, final Vietnam War years, SF writer John Brunner wrote a short story titled "The Inception of the Epoch of Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid". At the time there was a bomb going off everyday (young boomers did boom).
[Just double checked, actually it was five bombs a day in 1971-72: https://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/ ]
I hate this phrase but, it seem appropriate now...'everything is fake and gay!'
Nothing is hinged in reality. The stock market is nothing but a gambling den. It should not be at all time highs. I remember when investing meant looking at P&E ratios!
It seems, at this juncture, that those 1% of the 1% that are pulling the strings want another endless conflict / war in Iran with the sole intent of keeping the Gulf of Hormuz closed (or mostly closed?).
And why after 4 years (or is it going on 5 years) is the Ukraine / Russia 'war' going on? Why has Putin not finally said "enough is enough" and put an end to that conflict? After all, drones are now making their way to Moscow.
Yep...it's all fake and gay!
Putin is a cold blooded lawyer, that is his background. He initially attempted a quick cabinet war to force Ukraine to terms. Once Boris Johnson promised unlimited support for Ukraine, shifted to casualty averse attrition war. As long as the Russians see the attritional strategy as a winning one, they won't shift, as there is no reason to gamble while the cold math of war favors them.
The drone stuff is less consequential than the Doolittle raids on Japan or the German V2 rockets. Great at keeping up morale, such as it is, for the Ukrainians. Got to keep them dying for the European Dream (of dismantling Russia for its resources).
Well, given the menu, Id love some TACO right now
I had kebab today. Close second...
And they're gonna do this with the Hajj starting on the 25th? I guess the goal is to beat Iran by driving prices to $300/barrel and demand-destroying the world economy. That will reduce demand so control of the Strait doesn't matter. And I guess you can sell the oil for $300/barrel too for those sweet war profiteering profits. Not too good of an outlook for the November midterms, though. Nor for the civil unrest index of 200+ countries. But if your job is to deny your enemy their objective and not give a sh*t about anything else, it tracks.
Let's do a calculation shall we?
Iran sold their oil for $70 - $10 discount = 60/barrel pre-war. About 1.5M bpd.
So let's say you're right and oil goes to 300/b to "beat" Iran. That would mean they need to sell around 300k bpd.
1 VLCC can carry up to 2M barrels. That means every week only 1 VLCC needs to go through either blockade, and their budget STILL balances...
What WILL get destroyed at 300 is NOT Iran. It's the west.
Which might be _exactly_ the point. (reference: https://no01.substack.com/p/march-14-agent-orange)
Agreed. But once you've engineered it so you don't need any oil going through the Strait, then you just start sinking tankers.
True of course. But I would push back and tell you: we're not there yet. Not even close.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-ship
+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch2Rqte6XOs
As a consideration, it may not be Iran. Cuba is on the menu, boys, it's a quick, easy win and a way to re-claim the champion belt that got lost to the Mad Shiek from Persia.
Every ego needs a boost when it's been wounded, but some more than others, so if I were to bet, this would be the bet.
How funny would it be if they went to Cuba this week end and this ended up not easy after all
Bay of Pigs (take 2)
Bay of TACOs
Gay of TACO's
Great article. Filled me with dread. Lots of dots connected I'd rather not see.
Minor point-- Don Jr. has been married before. He and Vanessa, his ex, have 5 kids. She's now dating Tiger Woods. Don and Bettina got married a couple days ago in a private ceremony in Palm Beach ahead of the party this weekend in the Bahamas. Certainly possible that Trump attended that ceremony.
Still filled with dread because I'm not convinced that if anything was going to happen it already would have. Plenty of time for more chaos this weekend.
Also agree with commenter who wondered about Russia's dragging out their 'special operation' so long. That nonsense seems like it should have been completed long ago.
Woops. I remove "for the first time". Thanks! Little bit less conspicuous then, although still. I'd attend both events if it were my kids. Unless I had to bomb bomb bomb... Which I'm happy not to be in a position to do 😉
I agree on more time this weekend, but you better wrap it up before the markets open. You know. Oil and bonds can only take so much...
Russia's attritional strategy once made sense but now it seems to be buying Europe time to rearm.
As if Europe's going to decide anything any time soon. By the time their bureaucracy is finally through shaping the drafts, Russians will be dying in droves... Of old age.
It's important to realize that as far as Russia is concerned, they are not fighting on enemy territory. I think this map gives the best estimate of the amount of territory they intend to reclaim. It may be less, it may be more, but the point is this is Russian friendly territory and they want to cause as little harm to its inhabitants as possible, thus the restraint which the other side does not exercise.
www.researchgate.net/figure/The-1994-Ukrainian-presidential-elections_fig2_325670572
A clue to how this will proceed (one step closer to becoming part of Russia):
https://iz.ru/en/node/2099111
Do you think the young white men of Europe so despised by their own governments are going to die for more diversity and lgbtq+-%?
Why do you think the strikes always get pushed back.it's been at least a month where there's a threat and a back down. What's the end game on that?
My cynical take? It's to play the market. Go full leverage, press conference, TACO. Rinse, repeat.
It's a weird war. A war by press conference...
And Lego videos.
It feels like he's purposely destroying the economy,and just somehow syphoning a bunch of money
I don't know if you were here at the time, but I've written about this already: https://no01.substack.com/p/march-14-agent-orange
Wow, wish i had found you earlier
I've a few other hidden gems in the archive 😉
This was an all-time hit: https://no01.substack.com/p/so-much-winning
The press conferences and rambling social media posts remind me of Stephen Paddock's brother: THOUSAND DOLLAR SUSHI
Confusion and chaos. And who is the author of chaos? Hint: He has come to steal, kill & destroy!
Gives new meaning to the term “weekend warrior.”
The Groundhog Day frame is the right one but the loop has a specific breaking mechanism that this piece maps without naming it. The loop breaks when someone in the room delivers an honest assessment that forces a course change. General Kruse did that and got removed. The loop accelerates when you systematically replace the people whose job was to break it with people whose survival depends on not trying.
Each departure sends a signal to everyone still in the building about what happens when your assessment contradicts the principal's narrative. By the fifth or sixth exit, the remaining staff have self-selected for a very specific skill: telling the room what it wants to hear. Thats how a decision-making apparatus loses its error-correction function in real time. And losing error correction during a war is how institutions produce the strategic surprises they spent their entire budget trying to prevent.