US EU Panic $100 Oil Price; Khamenei's Hardline Son New Iran Leader Gets Putin Backing; Gulf Crisis

Good day! Today is Monday 9th March 2026 and before I proceed with this program let me remind you

again to tick the like button and check the subscription to this channel. If once you've watched

or listened to this program or whichever part of the program you want to watch or and listen to

you decide that you like what you've heard and you wish to indicate that fact.

Now I'm going to say that today we are opening, we're starting today, in a mood of gathering

crisis, not just in the United States and in the Middle East and in Israel but across the world

with information that the oil price, the international oil price is touching 120 dollars a barrel.

Obviously the proximate cause for this steep increase in oil prices, almost a doubling of oil prices

is the the effect of closure on the straight of whole moose, the fact that oil supply from the

Persian Gulf has almost completely stopped. I suspect that the fact that there are now attacks

taking place against oil infrastructure in the Middle East, I discussed in my program yesterday

how the Israelis had launched attacks on Iranian oil refineries and oil installations and this

morning there were reports that the Iranians were taking counter action that they were launching

attacks against oil installations in Bahrain and in the UAE and in all sorts of other places

well all of this is going to increase nervousness and worry within the global oil markets within the

maritime shipping and importantly maritime insurance industry and we can increasingly see

that oil flows are now almost all flows on the Persian Gulf are almost at a standstill

and predictably the oil price is surging. Now in a program that I did I think might even

be in my previous one I mentioned something which I believe very strongly based on my experience

of financial and economic panics if the oil price reaches 120 dollars a barrel and stays there

and if it starts to go beyond it then it will go higher much higher much higher still it may not

remain at whatever elevated extreme price it eventually reaches I've seen many suggestions

saying that it could hit 150 dollars a barrel I've seen one fairly well known agency or research

institution talking about 210 dollars a barrel it might not stay at those levels for very long

it could be that as the global economy moves into deep recession and we see demand for it could

be that that will cause the oil price to fall in turn or it could be that the market will come to

the conclusion that the oil price has overshot and the there might be a correction and we could see

oil prices fall back again but the key thing to understand is that if we are really looking at 150

dollars a barrel oil for any length of time even if we're only talking about a few weeks

well that is going to cause significant economic disruption and if we are talking about 210 dollars

the barrel well the disruption is going to be much greater and here again I would add

a further thing that I've noticed about financial panics which is that us we see the oil prices the

oil price rise the problems in the global economy in the financial markets tend to compound

so it is not a linear progression it is more like a geometric one the higher the price

the greater the disruption by orders of magnitude until of course the disruption becomes so great

that we start to see not just recession situations but potentially something worse still

with cascading effects in financial markets perhaps affecting financial institutions

and that sort of thing I don't want to discuss this in further detail I'm not going to pretend

that I'm an expert in these matters I am not but it is based on experience I don't want to look

forward to these outcomes but there it is that in my that in my experience is what tends to happen

and at some level policy makers in the west in the United States in Europe in Asia all understand

this so this morning even as the oil price is rising I was reading in the financial times in fact

it's the lead article in the financial times that the G7 states perhaps the United States and its

friends are now in urgent discussions with each other about drawing on their accumulated reserves

in order to try to take some steps to try to smooth over or stabilize oil prices

and this article talks grandly about the size of these reserves it says that they are

in the region of 1.1 billion barrels of oil and it says the China has at least

equivalent levels of reserves as well and presumably all this talk about the G7

flooding the world with oil from its reserves is supposed to calm things and to steady the mood

in the oil markets and of course possibly conceivably for a short a short time it might do that

but there are a number of points to make here which need to be taken into account and which I

noticed that this article in the financial times really didn't address which is that by far the

biggest strategic oil reserve amongst the G7 is the one that is held by the United States except

that oil reserve is heavily depleted Joe Biden's administration drew heavily on the reserve

during the 2022-2023 oil crisis in order to smooth the effect of oil prices in the United States

it was well aware of the bad political repercussions for Biden and the Democrats

of a very high oil price and so they drew down very heavily on the US strategic reserve

President Trump when he became president said that he would reverse this

that he would build up America's strategic reserve however he failed to do so

and I understand that while the American reserve oil reserve the safety margin is supposed to be

around 500 million barrels of oil in fact it is closer to for much closer to 400 million barrels

of oil in other words it is far below the level the the usual margin of safety so that then brings us

to what might happen because for Donald Trump for the Republicans for the administration trying

to smooth or contain energy price increases in the United States is a political imperative

and it may be in fact I am certain that it will be that any oil that the Trump administration

releases will be mostly intended to contain oil price increases in the United States itself

and they might be skewed to achieve that possibly by holding back oil for the domestic American market

and if the United States starts to do that expect all the other countries or the other members of

the G7 very quickly to start doing the same thing against perhaps a background of growing argument

and recriminations we could see Japan South Korea the Europeans all clicking on to their oil reserves

because they see an open ended crisis in terms of the situation in the Middle East and the

Straits of Hormuz and they sense that the Americans are not sharing their oil that is speculative

on my part it might be that the Americans behave with uncharacteristic generosity and of course

it's always possible that the Straits of Hormuz might reopen in which case in perhaps a month or

two things in the oil markets might just conceivably return to something closer to normal but if things

continue the way they are then long before we start seeing oil reserves significantly depleted

in the West we will see all of this this momentum starts to happen we will see a fragmentation

in the oil reserve situation the way in which G7 governments respond they will all of them

try to cling onto their oil they will try to husband their oil in order especially if they sense

that this thing is going to continue for a long time in order to cover a situation where the

situation might not be resolved quickly and of course they will need to hold back some oil

to keep at least a basic economy running this move by the G7 is unsurprising but it doesn't

even begin to solve the problem I doubt actually that it even addresses it and there was something

else incidentally that the financial times entirely failed to say yes there are reserves of oil

China has enormous reserves of oil at least similar to those of the G7 but those of course are

intended for China's use and they're not going to be shared but there are reserves of oil in the G7

and in other places around the world as well but the same is not true with natural gas natural gas

reserves in Europe are around 30% of necessary levels natural gas usage in Europe over the winter

was very heavy and the reserves were significantly run down supplies of natural gas from Russia have of

course stopped Ukraine and Hungary and Slovakia are involved in a major quarrel over the Dhrushba

pipeline Ukraine refuses to allow natural gas from Russia to flow through the Dhrushba pipeline

to Hungary and Slovakia Hungary and Slovakia are retaliating by posing sanctions on Ukraine of their

own they're going to stop exports of energy of diesel oil perhaps electricity as well so there is

that issue Vladimir Putin has recently said that Russia needs to stop and stop immediately supplies

of liquefied natural gas to Europe he said in an interview that he gave to his favorite journalist

Pavel Zarubin that there is no point in Russia continuing to supply LNG to Europe given that the

Europeans have already made a decision that from 2027 they're no longer going to accept they're

no longer going to source LNG from Russia so LNG from Russia according to Putin should transfer

to Asian markets now Putin did not give an order for this to happen he said that there should be

a study by the government and by the natural gas industry considering on whether to consider whether or not

something like that should be done in practice and in reality if Putin publicly says something

like this you can be certain that that study has already been made that it has already reported

its preliminary views to the Kremlin and that the Russians have all but made that decision to transfer

their natural gas flows eastwards mostly I am guessing to China so no natural gas flowing from Qatar

the world's third largest producer of natural gas limited supplies of natural gas from other

producers Norway Algeria Azerbaijan but there might be problems with flows of natural gas from Azerbaijan

because it too looks as if it might become drawn into this wider crisis in the Middle East and

besides its natural gas flows across pipelines through pipelines mostly controlled by Russia just

say so uncertainties about supplies of natural gas to Europe inability to source it from Qatar

and of course an energy crisis starting to develop in the United States and I have repeatedly warned

I warned since long before this crisis in the Middle East began that it always seemed to me

that there was a possibility in a crisis that the President of the United States Donald Trump

or conceivably even a successor to Donald Trump might decide that prioritizing the domestic

energy market in the United States trying to keep a cap on energy costs in the United States

dictated a stopping of LNG exports and I can very easily see I can very easily imagine how in the

situation where natural gas prices are also rising in the United States against a backdrop of

rising oil prices and energy prices altogether that at some point within the next few weeks or

months Donald Trump and the administration might decide to do this very thing it's often overlooked

that the United States only became a significant LNG exporter very recently from my recollection

and I might be wrong here but I believe that until relatively recently there was actually there were

actually laws in the United States restricting LNG exports precisely in order to keep the cost

of natural gas in the United States itself stable so there might be reserves of oil lying around

which can be tapped at this time I've already discussed the problems with that but reserves

of natural gas are an entirely different matter even as the oil price

touched $120 a barrel shortly before I started making this program I saw I saw that the natural

gas price in Europe now stands at $800 per million cubic centimeters I believe that's the correct

measure and that's the highest gas price since January 2023 and there is every reason to go to

expect that it will go much much further and if it goes higher still if the Americans start to

restrict exports well in Europe the sky is the limit I saw Kirill Dimitriyev the head of Russia's

direct investment fund make a comment that in Germany industry is in freefall he might have

been exaggerating but if all of these outcomes start to happen then frankly what he is perhaps

saying now could become an accurate prediction of what may come now what is extraordinary about all

of this is that it was perfectly predictable the outcomes that I've just been describing $150 a barrel

oil $210 a barrel oil if it comes to that I they would have been well within the range of what

people might expect if they had considered seriously the possibility of Iran closing the

Straits of Hormuz and keeping the Straits of Hormuz closed for a extended period and well

as Mr Pereira described in that stub sub stack piece I discussed two or three days ago it was

also completely predictable that the insurance markets the maritime insurance markets would pull

insurance from ships merchant ships tankers operating close to a war zone such as the Straits of Hormuz

has now turned out to be again had attempts to be made to check out the position with the insurance

markets and with the ship owners and with the oil company executives and by the way with the gas

company executives all of this could have been and should have been predicted and I have to say

again all of the all of the possibilities that I've just discussed about natural gas shortages

across Europe about closures of factories accelerated deindustrialization a major crisis

in Europe all of that was predictable as well I was reading in the media I mean reading in the

media over the last couple of days that Britain has around two days of reserves of natural gas

of course Britain is in an extreme position the British government has rushed to reassure

everybody that there is no course for concern and that the situation isn't as bad as that

I happen to know that it is every bit as bad as that just saying so all of this is predictable

but nobody apparently amongst the people who took the decision to begin the war with Iran

just over a week ago appeared to have thought about it there's no evidence that Donald Trump

beat Hegseth national security adviser and secretary of state Marco Rubio took wide

soundings saw wide wide information across the energy and industrial and insurance and maritime

industry sectors about what a war in the Persian Gulf might mean and I have to say this reminds me

exactly of what happened in February 2022 when the Biden administration began its sanctions war

its economic war against Russia there was no as I happen to know no wide consultation

as to the actual effect as sanctions on the Russian economy whether the predicted collapse

on the Russian economy would in fact happen I've consulted all sorts of people many people who

might know who have had involvement in the Russian economy who know much about the industrial

base in these programs I've consulted with an engineer a British engineer who has actually visited

factories all over Russian I asked him had did anybody see your advice he said no and that's what

I've heard from every other person I have spoken to when the disastrous decision to freeze

the Russian central banks reserves was made it turns out that neither the Federal Reserve Board

nor the European Central Bank nor the Bank of England were consulted in advance there was no

wide discussion of this idea no discussion of what the implications of it might be for the

international financial markets and for the reserve currency status of the various Western currencies

nor was there any real discussion about what the disconnection of Russian of Russian banks

from the swift into bank payment system might actually do there was a blind assumption that the

entire banking system in Russia would freeze up and implode no one seemed to understand that the

Russians had already created their own alternative messaging service specifically in anticipation

of this very event so one might have thought that that failure to assess risk the risk of all of

these actions the possible consequences of taking astonishing extreme measures like sanctioning Russia

in the way that was done or attacking Iran in the way that was done one might have expected that the

Trump people would learn from the mistakes of the Biden people but of course nothing like that

happened and this is where we now are and of course you are now starting to see all of the early

signs of panic the president says that $100 a barrel of oil is no big deal it is a small price to

pay for the victory he's going to achieve in Iran he's never quite explained what form he expects

this victory to take he's grandly talked about regime change about being the person who selects

the supreme leader and all of those things but if you're actually looking for a post war strategy

a strategy even after victory a plan well he's never outlined it and he's never come up and neither

his administration with any clear set of objectives so that's the president senator Lindsey Graham

has spoken grandly about the United States taking control of Iran's oil industry

just as the United States has taken control or virtual control of Venezuela's oil industry

again apparently based on all kinds of assumptions about how easy it would be to get that

deeply corroded oil industry back online and back online quickly so senator Graham appears to

believe that the United States can and will achieve the same thing with Iran and of course as I

discussed in my program yesterday we are already hearing stories about the United States

seizing hard island the major the major center of the Iranian oil export industry the port

and facility through which Iran's oil exports are channeled well again before senator Graham

achieves that result the United States has to win the war against Iran for the moment it doesn't

appear to be doing so we'll come to all of that shortly and even if it does win the war

what the state of the oil industry will then be what the state of Iran will then be whether Iran

is in any position to export oil it till years after the fall of Saddam Hussein before the Iraqi oil

industry properly came back online anyway we can leave I suppose senator Graham to his dreams

and well at the same time we hear that the United States is extremely alarmed or was extremely

alarmed yesterday by the Israeli attacks on Iran's oil refineries on Iran's oil industry this is

by the way absurd I cannot imagine that the Israelis and the Americans in conducting their

offensive their air and missile offensive against Iran are not in constant liaison with each

other and that the Israelis are not informing the Americans of what installations they are

attacking if the Israelis attacked oil refineries in Iran and oil facilities in Iran they would surely

have done this with the full knowledge of relevant US officials who were almost certainly participating

in the planning just saying but now we're told that the United States is very alarmed about this

well obviously they are with oil they are rising to $120 a barrel so the Americans are very

unhappy about this senator Graham has written another message saying that the Israelis need to stop

doing this that they need to understand and remember that Iran will need all of these oil

facilities all of these production facilities in the future in order to achieve a prosperous

life once the hated regime of the Ayatollas has been overthrown this is by the way the same

senator Graham who has just a few hours before talked grandly about the United States gaining control

of Iran's oil just saying he's now suddenly discovered a concern for the welfare of Iran's people

and he wants Iran's oil industry preserved for that reason in fact the real reason why the Americans

panicked over those Israeli attacks was because the Iranians then started to make announcements

that following the attack on their oil facilities they are going to start

conducting attacks of their own on oil facilities in the various Gulf states

around the Persian Gulf and there are reports that the Iranians have already conducted

powerful attacks against oil facilities in Bahrain and that these facilities have been so badly

damaged or destroyed that they are inoperable and will remain so for many many months even if

the fighting ends so suddenly there is this panic where we've got to stop this is an incredibly

bad idea i said before i said in one of my recent videos that attacks on Iranian desalination

plans and attacks on Iranian oil facilities seem to me extremely unwise even if you accept

the logic of this military operation which of course i don't because

those attacks invited counter attacks on desalination plans in Israel and the Arab states and on

oil facilities across the Gulf and by the way in Israel itself which would inevitably have

very very negative consequences i in fact pointed out that in terms of Iran's oil industry because of

the size of Iran the huge scale upon which Iran operates Iran probably has more ability to

absorb blows like this and can also probably receive oil and including refined oil products

from Russia especially which will enable Iran to keep going whereas Israel and the Gulf states

are not in the same position but nonetheless despite all of that those attacks on the desalination

plans the Iranian desalination plans and the oil refineries took place and as I said the

Iranians threatened and by the way carried out acts of retaliation and we see the administration

and Senator Graham Panic and over the next few hours we heard that the

discredited euro of Kushner and Whitgoth were flying to Israel to tell the Israelis don't do this

again except a short time ago we heard that this very same trip by the discredited euro of Whitgoth

and Kushner to Israel to give this warning to the Israelis that that trip has been called off

it's been cancelled I wonder why I wonder whether it's because the Israelis who are also themselves

I should say now in what I will describe with as an exalted mode if you read and listen to some

Israeli commentaries one census decision-makers there who are also becoming increasingly detached from

reality well it could be that the Israelis were not happy with this message that they're not

prepared to acknowledge these realities or it could be that the Israelis said did the opposite

they tell Kushner and Whitgoth you don't need to come because we've already taken the message

we've accepted the message and we are not going to attack Iranian desalination plants

and oil facilities after all oh and this is also a further possibility which should not be overlooked

it could be that with the present chaos in the Middle East with the missiles

falling across the Middle East and on Israel itself with Hezbollah in Lebanon now also joining in

and conducting its own missile and rocket strikes on Israel with the hoose is threatening to do so

it could be that Whitgoth and Kushner have looked at this situation and have decided that maybe

going traveling to Israel at this time might not be such a good idea after all it might in fact

be rather dangerous just saying well I'm not going to explore this again one small

actions taken without any planning without any regard for the consequences and one can be massively

critical of this administration which I am by the way I want to make that very clear but it's

starting to look like a pattern because as I discussed a moment ago the previous administration

Joe Biden's administration with regard to Russia was the same and of course we've had all of

these airy comments from President Trump about and other officials beat Hexeth but how there is

actually no shortage of advanced weapons the United States has abundant supplies of advanced

weapons the United States can keep up this war indefinitely that's what has been said

by the president and by some of his officials and well again lots of people not just me pointed out

that this was absolutely not the case there were articles in the American media itself

saying that there would be problems in an attack on Iran because missile numbers

running low L.I. Lake and Jennifer Kavanaugh have already written articles already wrote articles

before the war began about the shortages of air defense missiles and now we read that in fact

the shortages have become so bad that the Europeans still obsessed with keeping Vladimir Zelensky

armed to the level that President Zelensky has come to expect anyway the Europeans

are now becoming increasingly alarmed because they still place orders with the United States

for more and more weapons for President Zelensky but they can't deliver them because they have

to send them again instead to the Middle East and in fact as a number of people have now been

pointing out we are now in the absurd situation that instead of Ukraine receiving assistance from

the West the United States is now looking for assistance from Ukraine to deal with the drone attacks

now here I'm going to suggest the Iranian drone attacks now here I'm going to suggest that

the Americans might as well spare themselves the trouble yes the Ukrainians will send some people who

do obviously have significant knowledge of how to deal with Russian drones but it ought to be

obvious by now with what has been happening in the Middle East that all of the various grandiose

claims we have been hearing from the Ukrainians about their enormous success in shooting down Russian

missiles and in shooting down Russian drones has been massively inflated. Professor Postal

has repeatedly cast doubt on claims about Ukrainian or Western ability to shoot down ballistic missiles

in fact he has repeatedly said that shooting down ballistic missiles is impossible it can happen

every so often but it is in that case merely a lucky hit the actual ability to do that does not

exist I ought to say here that I am not entirely sure that Professor Postal is totally right about

this I think that the Russians specifically the Russians do have a certain ability to shoot down

ballistic missiles they appear to have had some success for example with certain types of Ukrainian

ballistic missiles and also high Mars rockets at least that's what they say it may be that the Russians

are overstating their success too but bear in mind that the air defense systems that Israel and the

United States have been using mostly patriots but also tads and also

Israel's various own air defense systems the Iron Dome David Sling all of those they are either

the same as the ones that the Ukrainians have been using the patriots or they are actually more

sophisticated as the tads and the Iron Dome and David Sling systems presumably are and yet they

are having limited success perhaps even no success in shooting down the more advanced Iranian ballistic

missiles so given that that is so why do people take seriously the continued Ukrainian

crack claims that they have been successful in shooting down hypersonic Russian missiles like the

Kinshaar the Serkhan and ballistic missiles like these kind of I've never myself

taken these claims from Ukraine seriously but of course many many people in the West have

well they don't see from the performance of the same Western systems in the Middle East

how fantastical how unreal those Ukrainian claims actually were and given that that is the case

given that Ukrainian ability claims are perhaps shooting down ballistic missiles

are almost certainly I know it I would argue provably shown to her being untrue why is

you that the Ukrainians really do have the prowess in shooting down drones that they claim

certainly they can shoot down some but can they really shoot down as many as they say and yes the

Ukrainians have developed anti drone drones they use them but this has been in the relatively

structured battles air battles that have taken place in Ukraine over a vastly wider territory such as

we see in the Middle East that might not be true and besides I'd already seen reports in Ukraine

that the effectiveness of these anti drone drones that Ukraine has has been greatly exaggerated

anyway there it is we are in an extraordinary situation there seems to be no preparation no

idea of how to plan or win this war to be frank I can't really see very much planning at all

and I read an article in admittedly the intercept which I don't consider to be a fully reliable

publication in these matters its hostility to Donald Trump is so strong that they will never

hesitate to make even the worst situation involving Trump even worse than it actually is just to say

but anyway they are saying that they have been speaking to all sorts of people within the

administration within the United States government trying to understand trying to find out from

them what the plan for the war is and that all of these people come back and say that they can discern

no plan at all that it is all being made up from day to day that all sorts of plans are floated

and then dropped we had the idea of using the Kurds we had ideas about capturing

harga island we have more aircraft carriers being sent to join the two existing aircraft carriers

but it's all be made up as the as the thing continues now the Iranians as I've discussed

in many programs clearly do have by contrast a battle strategy which is to wear

the Americans and the Israelis down and also to allow events in the oil markets eventually to take

their course again the Iranians are not announcing any demands or objectives

or that they say is that they want a permanent peace they want a guarantee at the end of this

battle that there will be no renewed battle no renewed attack on their country in the future

they have not explained what structures what safeguards they would require what guarantees they

would require from the Americans and the Israelis to ensure that and to ensure that those guarantees

once they are given our cast iron and will be indefinitely enforced just saying but for the

moment I get the sense that the Iranians are adopting a diplomatic tactic which I remember

that the Soviet Union used to use quite a lot which is to say very little to say nothing

to keep the other side guessing all the time about what it would settle for

to let events take their course to let the stress on the other side increase the heat increase

and to wait for the other side as it becomes more desperate more anxious to end the war to come

up with proposals which can then either be accepted when they reach the necessary level or can

be rejected in the interim I remember one of the American diplomats who used to negotiate strategic

arms control limits with the Soviets described it as putting money in a defective slot machine

you put in more and more money nothing necessarily comes out but you have no choice but to go on putting

in more and more until eventually something comes back well that could be the Iranian strategy

as I said I've seen it done the Russians certainly did it during the Cold War I get the sense that

the Chinese do it too from an Iranian point of view it clearly does make a kind of sense

meanwhile the Iranians have now announced the identity of their new supreme leader

and he is in fact the son of the previous supreme leader Ayatollah Hamanay

now I understand that the new supreme leader who is I believe 57 is not yet an Ayatollah

some people seem to think that this is a major issue this is an Iranian matter

for the record Hamanay the previous supreme leader the father of the new Hamanay who is now supreme

leader was also not yet an Ayatollah when he became Iran's supreme leader of 30 years ago

and eventually Hamanay did become an Ayatollah and he eventually acquired the status of a marja

one of those one of that small group of Iranian of of sheer clerical officials who are able to issue

to make to give guidance on questions of Islamic law and Islamic conduct that are considered

authoritative by the sheer community as a whole whether the son will achieve that level of learning

and status well only time can say now I'm not going to discuss in detail this Iranian decision

to make the junior Hamanay the successor to the father I know very little about this younger man

he said he's been described by someone he who had dealings with him a western commentator

who had dealings with him as a forceful personality and as an extremely effective administrator

which suggests that he's a rather shall we say less unwirldly figure in some respects

a more hands-on figure than his father was um I've also seen suggestions that

he has been heavily involved as his father's son and as one of his father's key advisors

in the political military and economic structures in Iran that he is another was an insider

who knows how the system works and where all the levers are and who is really important in the system

and who is not I suspect that at this moment of crisis these were more important factors

than Islamic scholarship just to say and um well allegedly according to some reports he was

a conservative and a hardliner and it has been pointed out also by many reports many members of

his family he's immediate family his father apparently a sibling perhaps his wife one of his children

were all killed on the first day of this conflict because they were all there in Hamanay's residence

when the Israeli missiles struck and well putting aside whether this individual

was is was or previously a hardliner or not it would not be he would not be human

if he didn't feel extraordinary loathing and antipathy towards the Americans and the Israelis

after the loss of so many members of his family and if this did not influence his decisions

now one world leader president Putin of Russia has congratulated the new Hamanay

on succeeding to the position of Iran's supreme leader I understand that in Iran the supreme leader

as well as being the commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces all of which by the way

have pledged their loyalty to him anyway I understand that Hamanay the new Hamanay is now Iran's head

of state so for that reason the congratulatory letter from Putin is perhaps understandable

but again it re-emphasizes the further fact that the Russians have been quite openly taking

Iran's side in this conflict in fact the Russian ambassador to Britain said quite straightforwardly

that Russia is not neutral in this conflict Iran is an ally Iran has been attacked Russia

is on Iran's side now the Russians continue to be active in their diplomatic activities

Lavrov has had further discussions with the leaders of the Gulf states he also hosted a meeting in

Moscow of the which brought together the ambassadors of the Gulf states he made no secret of his irritation

that the Gulf states in proposing a ceasefire resolution to the UN Security Council appeared to be

calling for a cessation of attacks upon themselves by Iran Lavrov pointed out that this was

unbalanced that Iran had previously been attacked that a resolution in order to fly needs balance

and that the proposed resolution that the Gulf states clearly was not balanced and well the Russians

are now floating a new proposal a summit meeting of the permanent members of the Security Council

Trump Putin Xi Jinping and by by the way Macron and Starmer very strict difficult meeting to

imagine but anyway a meeting of the leaders is summit meeting of the permanent members of the

Security Council in order to see what way forward can be charted in order to achieve what the

Russian school a cessation of hostilities in the Middle East in the meantime as I discussed in

my program yesterday the Russians continue to gain benefits from the immediate crisis with 120

dollars or at 120 dollars a barrel if this continues if this situation continues for much longer

the Russians will not only be able to close all the gaps in their budget this year but I suspect

they're going to be able to rebuild their reserves their financial reserves and pay off or plug

whatever remaining holes the were in the Russian budgets in the Russian budget last year as I said

previously people are overstating the significance of the financial stress that Russia has been under

and that financial stress anyway has in my opinion been connected less to lower oil prices

than to the very high interest rates that the Russian central bank imposed in order to bring

inflation under control that the Russians are going to accrue significant benefits from what

is happening is indisputable and there has now been as the Russians themselves have confirmed

a flood of new orders for oil from India and the Russians are indeed stepping up supplies

of oil to India however whereas in the past Russian oil supplies to India came with a discount

this time they're coming at a premium I still suspect that India is getting the oil from Russia

at a lower price than it would from say the United States but it is not as cheap as it used to be

now over the last couple of days there have been many reports about how India sought a

license from the United States to resume imports of Russian oil I said that

to my knowledge that was entirely wrong India never sought a license to stop buying Russian oil

it was the United States that anticipated that India would be buying more Russian oil

which rushed out an announcement that it had given India permission to do this and this has

finally provoked a very strong message a statement from the Indian foreign ministry they have

said that India does not require the US's permission to buy Russian oil and they want to make that

fact fully understood that it is India itself and no other party that makes that decision I think

that the Indians are now almost at the limit of their patience with the Trump administration

they've had to stomach Trump making up telephone calls with Prime Minister Modi in which Modi is supposed

to have promised Trump that India would stop buying Russian oil they've had to stomach tariffs from

the United States some of which are about India's general trade with the United States but some of

which have also been intended to put pressure on India to stop India buying Russian oil

they probably are generally annoyed about the sinking of the Iranian frigate that left India

after attending a naval exercise there Prime Minister Modi has begun coming under increasing

criticism both from Iran and within India itself because he is not publicly rebuked the Americans

for doing this there are reports coming out of India that the Indian authorities were providing

the United States with information about the whereabouts of the Iranian frigate I suspect that those

reports are true but I do not think country to some speculations that the Indians did that

in order to facilitate the sinking of this frigate on the contrary I think the Indians

were providing this information in order to to ensure or to try to ensure that the Americans kept

their distance from this frigate so that it was kept out of harm's way that is my understanding

of what happened anyway as we know the frigate was sunk large numbers of sailors died

Prime Minister Modi has been criticized I think this extraordinary announcement from the United States

that they'd granted India permission to buy Russian oil when as the Indians are now for the

first time straight forwardly saying they never stopped India never stopped buying Russian oil it

continued to buy Russian oil in January and February and has every intention of still doing so

anyway I think this was finally the moment when the Indians felt that they couldn't accept this

any longer and they came out publicly with the statement that India makes its own decisions

it is not for the United States to tell India what it should do anyway there we go so the Russians

are making money they are receiving all this money they are positioning themselves

in the future to try to see what they can achieve in order to achieve the cessation of hostilities

in the Middle East and to change the security structure in the Gulf but in the meantime the war

goes on and for the moment it goes on in the way that it always has the United States continues to

conduct and Israel continue to conduct air and missile strikes on Iran Iran continues to conduct

drone and missile strikes on the Gulf states on Israel on American bases scattered across the

Middle East the streets of Hormuz remain shut the calculus has not changed the situation overall

in the war has not changed there are reports there are some claims I should say more than reports

that the situation in some of the Arab states is now becoming critical but crane has now

invoked force measure it is no longer able or so it says to export oil as I've said in recent

programs as the oil storage depots across the Gulf fill up one producer after another is soon

going to have to declare force measure and stop production so as I said everything points

to the situation deteriorating and that deterioration I suspect is going to continue and across the world

it will be registered by an ever increasing energy price with all of these effects this is going

to have on the global economy I should quickly just quickly add by the way that I read a report

that the energy shock this time is potentially 17 times greater than the energy shock that

followed the start of the conflict in Ukraine in February 2022 and it's entirely understandable why

because Russia was always able to maintain its energy exports it was able to continue to export oil

at similar volumes its gas exports fell but not its oil exports whereas this time that isn't the case

because Persian Gulf production has been taken or is been taken off stream well there it is

now as I said no forethought no planning no real idea what to do

clearly expectations that culminates death would lead to a collapse in Iran no clear idea what to do

after that collapse failed to happen a war that continues because Israel

and the United States are now trapped inside it the Gulf states trapped inside it even further

and the Iranians calculating that it is not in their interests that it be brought to a stop now in fact

they appear almost to be welcoming escalation against themselves the Iranian foreign minister

Abbas Arakshi when asked about Iran's fears about an American ground invasion basically said

bring it on well there it is this is where we are in this war it looks as if it is

metastasizing as I said into a long war the Americans continue to say to claim that Iran is running

out of drone launchers and missile launchers and missiles and drones but for the record I haven't

seen myself this great reduction in Iranian drone and missile strikes that some people are claiming

to see whereas shortages of equipment in the United States and Israel are indeed increasingly becoming

visible entering a war without a plan seems to be extraordinary and clearly no one in the

administration sat down and thought it through even though that still strikes me as extraordinary

anyway there it is let me now finish off this program by returning to the topic of the situation

in Ukraine there is no growing alarm in Europe that and even amongst some commentators

there Jennifer Kavanaugh has a piece about this that with Russia now benefiting from the elevated

energy prices and with Ukraine receiving less and less in military support and equipment ultimately

from the United States the Russians are now in a crushing advantage and that their interests

their interests in negotiations has evaporated there some further clues that this is indeed the case

President Putin has given another interview in which he has spoken about the massive disruption

to the global system carried out by the reckless and lawless behavior of the western powers

his press spokesman Dimitri Peskov has again defended Russia's practice of conducting negotiations

with the Ukrainians and the Americans as saying that it had been in Russia's interests to do that

but he is clearly on the defensive he tried to say that the difference between the negotiations

with the Americans the negotiations the Russians conducted with the Americans and the negotiations

the Iranians have conducted with the Americans is that the Russians had direct discussions with

the Americans whereas the Iranians were talking to the Americans through an intermediary

who was the foreign minister of Oman and supposedly this makes all the difference

I myself can't see that it makes any difference at all all it means is that the Americans

instead of lying to the Iranians indirectly by giving false messages through the Omani foreign

minister have been lying to the Americans directly just as that lying sorry to the Russians

directly in face-to-face meetings I don't really see why as I said using an intermediary

to pass the lies to transmit the lies makes any significant difference but apparently Zelensky

himself has told the Americans that the negotiations with the Russians need to be called off

and by the way we might have had a reason for this because Admiral Kostyaakov the leader

the head of Russia's military intelligence the leader of the negotiating team the Russian

negotiating team which met with the Ukrainians twice in Abu Dhabi and who is also a member of the

negotiating team that participated in the last failed meeting in Geneva when the Russian delegation

was headed by Putin's aid Vladimir Medinsky anyway Kostyaakov has now given an interview

which is confirmed that the Russians did indeed bring up the whole subject of the dirty war

in the various meetings and that they particularly pressed the Ukrainians over the course of the Abu

Dhabi meetings and perhaps the meeting in Geneva I presume mostly the meeting in Geneva in the Geneva

meeting that they pressed the Ukrainians particularly roughly and hard on the attempted assassination

of Kostyaakov's deputy in Russian military intelligence Lieutenant General Alekseev just saying

I said that part of the original purpose of the Abu Dhabi meetings which for the Russians to discuss

the dirty war with the Ukrainians and Kostyaakov also it seems to me has basically confirmed that

anyway there are no meetings at the moment the Russians are going to be flush with cash very soon

they probably already are they're probably getting payments sent to them already from their various

customers for oil and gas though I would say that for the moment there's been no big surge

in the value of the rubles it's still at 78 rubles a dollar which is I suspect where the Russian

central bank wants it to stay anyway the Russians flush with cash knowing that the Ukrainians are

shorter men and machines and are unlikely to receive more machines from the west anyway the Russians

continue their various advances they continue their advances arousal of Yansk and Zaporozhye

and Dobropelye as well and we've had more information about the latest big Russian strike

on Ukrainian energy facilities and it does indeed appear to have done very very considerable damage

however the key thing to say is that the main Russian offensive is going to take place in April

after the end of the spring thaw which is now upon us the thaw which turns the landscape the

Ukrainian landscape into mud the Ukrainians are trying to comfort themselves by saying that after

this summer offensive the Russians will have exhausted their capabilities and will not be able to

maintain further offensive operations in Ukraine that is complete nonsense and just say

the Russians have ample reserves of trained manpower they have as all sorts of commentators have

pointed out large reserve armies that have so far not been committed to the battle

so any idea circulating in Ukraine that after this year the Russians are going to run out of steam

is fantastical of course the Ukrainians have made identical claims many times

I remember in particular in March 2022 shortly after the special military operation reading all sorts

of reports about how the Russians have run out of missiles and how they didn't have engines for

their subsonic missiles and how their entire tank fleet had been catastrophically depleted and

that it would take at least a decade to replace it and all of those things it is a sign of growing

desperation in Ukraine that they are coming up with these fantastic claims now so the big moment

in Ukraine is going to come in April there will be the Russian offensive starting then

and with the Western economies in crisis with every likelihood of an ongoing conflict in the Middle East

which is every possibility of turning up of reaching a catastrophic turn one has to say that

the prospects for Ukraine do not look at all good anyway this is where I'm going to finish today's

program let me remind you again that you can find all our programs on locals rumble x and sub-stack

don't forget that you can check out don't forget that you can support our work by patreon and

subscribe star and by going to our shop links under this video last but not least please remember

to tick the like button and to check your subscription to this channel that's me for today

more from me soon have a very good day

you