March, 19-21: God is a comedian

A stiff drink is recommended

It is a well-established fact that the universe has a sense of humour. It is less well-established, but increasingly obvious, that the humour is of the kind best enjoyed from a great distance, like, let’s say the moon.

Three weeks into the Iran war, reality has passed through the looking glass, out the other side, and is now selling tickets to the gift shop. What follows is not satire. Satire requires exaggeration, and you cannot exaggerate something that is already operating at maximum absurdity. This is simply the news, and nothing but the news. Told straight, in a universe that has clearly stopped taking its medication.

The United States is sending 5,000 Marines into the Persian Gulf to seize Kharg Island, a speck of land 15 miles off the Iranian coast that handles 90% of Iran’s oil exports. This is, on paper, a reasonable military objective in the same way that sticking your hand into a beehive is a reasonable way to acquire honey. It is technically correct. The bees would disagree.

To reach Kharg Island, the Marines aboard the USS Tripoli and USS Boxer must first sail through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has mined. The strait is also, as of this week, a toll road. The IRGC verifies vessels on VHF radio and charges up to $2 million per transit, payable in cash, cryptocurrency, or barter. At least eight ships have paid. Iran’s parliament is legislating the arrangement formally, because even revolutionary theocracies require a compliance department.

A White House source told Axios they need “about a month to weaken the Iranians more” before attempting this. One month. Of a war Trump described as ‘winding down’ on Friday - three weeks in, which by his count is basically four days… Both statements were made, as far as anyone can tell, by people who occupy the same government and occasionally share a building.

A former Navy SEAL called the plan “insane”. A retired Vice Admiral called it “a massacre-in-making scenario”. A retired Rear Admiral pointed out that even if they seize the island, Iran simply turns off the pipeline at the other end. Frankly, I think they're being extremely polite. This is a clusterfuck of historic proportions and everyone who's ever held a rank knows it.

The USS Gerald R. Ford, meanwhile, the most expensive warship in human history, is retreating to Crete. The official reason is a “laundry fire”. 266 consecutive days at sea, 28 days short of the Vietnam-era deployment record, and the crown jewel of the US Navy is fleeing the theatre, not because of being damaged in combat, not because missiles are flying around it… But because someone's skivvies got too hot.

France, in a display of allied solidarity, deployed the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the region. Its precise location was then revealed to the entire internet by a sailor who went jogging on deck with Strava running. Iran’s calling B7.

There exists in diplomacy a concept known as “sanctions”, which works on the same principle as telling a child they can’t have dessert while you’re eating cake in front of them. The United States has been sanctioning Iran for years. It has also been bombing Iran for three weeks. These are, in the normal course of events, complementary activities. One is economic warfare. The other is the regular kind.

This week, the US Treasury lifted all oil sanctions on Iran. For 30 days. 140 million barrels of Iranian crude, sitting on ships at sea, may now be sold freely on the global market. Including to the United States itself.

In yuan.

The United States is purchasing, with Chinese currency, oil from the country it is currently bombing?! The same oil that funds the missiles that just shot down an F-35 for the first time. The same missiles that are redecorating allied oil infrastructure.

Treasury Secretary Bessent called this “narrowly tailored”. Narrow like in white, and tailored as in card, apparently.

In the same OFAC filing, Russian oil sanctions were lifted as well. And Belarus potash too, because apparently the universe was running low on irony and needed to top up.

The logic, insofar as there is any, goes like this: the war has crashed the global oil market so hard that the administration needs the enemy’s oil to keep gasoline prices from eating the midterms. They are unsanctioning the people they’re bombing because the bombing is working too well at the thing they didn’t want it to do. The sanctions were necessary to stop Iran funding the war, but the war made the sanctions too effective, so the sanctions had to be lifted to fund the war effort against the country that no longer needs sanctions because the oil revenues that sanctions were preventing are now required to prevent the economic damage caused by preventing those revenues, which is itself a consequence of the military campaign designed to make the sanctions unnecessary by making Iran the kind of country that doesn’t need sanctioning, which it would be, if the sanctions hadn’t been lifted to pay for making it that.

An F-35 just got “damaged” over Iran

Two F-35 stealth fighters have been hit by Iranian air defences. The first was confirmed by CENTCOM, which used the phrase “emergency landing” in the way that a funeral director might describe death as “a permanent change of address”. The pilot had shrapnel wounds. The aircraft, they said, “will not return to service”, which is the sort of thing you say about a car that hit a bridge abutment at speed, not about a plane that landed.

A Chinook helicopter was subsequently tracked conducting an extensive search pattern over eastern Saudi Arabia. This is what you do when something has come apart in the sky and you need to find the bits. It is not what you do after a landing, emergency or otherwise.

The entire F-35 doctrine, the single most expensive weapons programme in human history, rests on the assumption that the aircraft is invisible to radar. Someone forgot to tell the Iranians the planes were invisible.

Then there’s Diego Garcia. The B-2 bomber staging base in the Indian Ocean, roughly 4,000 kilometres from Iran. Iran sent two intermediate-range ballistic missiles. One failed mid-flight. An SM-3 intercepted the other. The outcome is beside the point. Iran had publicly claimed a maximum missile range of 2,000 kilometres. They were lying by a factor of two, which, in the context of ballistic missile capabilities, constitutes what experts call “a very bad surprise”. Rome, Paris, and London are now within the theoretical strike envelope. The British gave permission for Diego Garcia to be used for strikes against Iran and discovered that the Iranian response could, if Tehran felt creative, arrive at Heathrow.

Trump asked NATO to send ships to help secure the Strait of Hormuz. Every. single. ally. refused. Trump called them “cowards” and said NATO has a “very bad future”. He then announced that the United States doesn’t actually need the Strait of Hormuz. He then said countries that do need it should police it themselves. He then told China to police it. He then sent 5,000 Marines toward it.

This sequence of statements was delivered, as far as the public record shows, by the same person, using the same mouth, within roughly 24 hours. The allies are cowards for not helping with the thing he doesn’t need, which is why he’s sending Marines to die for it, unless the countries that do need it do it themselves, which they won’t, because they’re cowards.

Trump told reporters the strait could be opened with a “simple military maneuver” that is “relatively safe” but requires “a lot of help”. Help. From the cowards. Who he doesn’t need. For the strait. That he also doesn’t need.

On the other end of all this, sits Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi, who is not answering texts from US envoy Steve Witkoff. And why would he? The last Iranian official who engaged in negotiations was Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council. Israel killed him. The supreme leader before that was killed on day one. Defence Secretary Hegseth is openly calling senior IRGC positions “temp jobs”. You are assassinating everyone with the authority to negotiate and then complaining, with what appears to be genuine bewilderment, that nobody will negotiate.

This is the diplomatic equivalent of burning down every restaurant in town and then leaving a bad Yelp review about the lack of dining options.

The Gulf states, who are nominally America’s allies in this production, are having what might be described as a Moment.

Kuwait’s Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, the country’s largest, has been struck by Iranian drones. Again. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister told a gathering of 12 Arab and Islamic nations that Saudi “patience is not unlimited”, which in Saudi diplomatic language is roughly equivalent to throwing a chair. Qatar’s Prime Minister stated on camera that “everyone knows who the main beneficiary of this war is”. He didn’t name Israel. The sentence didn’t need the word.

QatarEnergy declared force majeure. Two of 14 LNG trains damaged, one of two gas-to-liquids facilities hit, 12.8 million tonnes per year offline, 17% of Qatar’s export capacity gone, $20 billion in annual revenue evaporated, repair timeline of three to five years. And because the universe’s sense of humour remains fully operational: Exxon holds 34% of Train S4 and 30% of Train S6. An American oil major took a direct missile hit from a war America started. The insurer’s phone must be making fascinating noises.

Israel’s Haifa refinery, the Bazan complex, 197,000 barrels per day, 40% of national refining capacity, was hit by Iranian ballistic missiles. The IDF said it was “shrapnel from an intercepted projectile”. This is becoming a pattern: Israel issues a statement, footage appears, reality picks the winner.

The entire post-1973 petrodollar deal was simple: Gulf sells oil in dollars, America provides the security umbrella. The umbrella is on fire. The refineries are on fire. And according to an Omani journalist on BBC Arabic, Trump has sent an invoice: $5 trillion to continue the war, $2.5 trillion to stop it. The petrodollar was already the payment. This is double-billing for a service that is visibly, combustibly, failing.

Rheinmetall’s CEO went on CNBC and said the thing that nobody in his position is supposed to say. “If the war lasts another month, we will have nearly no missiles available. All European, American, and also Middle East country warehouses are empty, or nearly empty.” This wasn’t a leak. Not an anonymous source. Not a think tank estimate. This was the CEO of Europe’s largest defense manufacturer, on camera, stating plainly that the cupboard is bare. It is the military equivalent of the pilot coming on the intercom to say he doesn’t know how to land.

The IEA released 400 million barrels from strategic reserves. The largest coordinated release in history. It will be remembered as such for 3.8 days. The fire extinguisher lasted less than a week and the fire hasn’t even noticed.

United Airlines is planning for $175 per barrel through the end of 2027. Whatever “winding down” means, United’s CFO doesn’t believe in it. Corporate planning has looked at the situation, done its own maths, and concluded that this is a two-year problem being described as a two-week one.

Gold had its worst week since 1983. Down over 10%. But Chinese banks are allocating 600 kilograms of gold bars per bank per day, and every single allocation sells out in under 60 seconds. Every trading day. On weekends it’s 100 kilograms. Also gone in a minute. The demand isn’t 600 kilograms. The demand is whatever number would empty the vault. The banks are rationing and the rations evaporate on contact with the Chinese public like water on a hot skillet.

Someone bought 11,000 COMEX gold options at $15,000-$20,000 strikes for December 2026. Paper gold crashes. Physical gold gets hoarded. The two markets are now occupying separate realities, waving at each other across an increasingly unbridgeable divide.

Friday’s press gaggle. Barely exaggerated: at 12:03 PM, President Trump told reporters he wanted a ceasefire with Iran. At 12:05 he declared victory. At 12:07 he announced he was sending Marines. At 12:08 he said no boots on the ground. At 12:11 he said he did not want a ceasefire. At 12:16 he declared victory again. At 12:17 he asked for a ceasefire. At 12:23 he told NATO they were cowards. At 12:29 he said Iran was begging for a ceasefire. At 12:31 he said everything was perfect. At 12:36 he said $500 oil was a good thing. At 12:37 he demanded Iran open Hormuz. At 12:39 he said Hormuz was never closed. At 12:41 he said the US was not at war with Iran. At 12:42 he declared victory in Iran.

By 3:43 PM he told CBS he doesn’t want a ceasefire. By 5:13 PM - 13 minutes after futures markets closed for the weekend, in a coincidence that should be studied in every securities fraud textbook - he posted on Truth Social that the US is “getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts”. The S&P reversed more than 1% in seconds. QQQ had already surged 1.1% in the 80 minutes before the announcement, with call options flowing in at a pace that suggests someone, somewhere, had an itinerary.

It is a well-established fact that the universe has a sense of humour.

It is an equally well-established fact that the best response to the universe's sense of humour is a stiff drink, a comfortable chair, and the quiet confidence that eventually, even the universe runs out of material.

Hopefully.

Edit note: I removed the Houthis section because this was content from June last year, repurposed as new.