Trump's Palm Beach finance and donor buddy, John Phelan, was a champion of the "Golden Fleet," but apparently clashed with Hegseth over bizarre blockade of Hormuz
The situation is compounded because of the stupidity of solar, wind- that is inefficient and ruins the environment. I understand you don’t like Trump and his support of Israel- I didn’t like Iran contra- with trickledown Reagan. Question: why are the Muslims leaving there homelands? Why is it that Palestinians are harboring terrorists and not fighting them? Why is it that Palestinians left their original homeland (mostly from Jordan) and now are called Palestinians? Why is it that Egypt closed borders and won’t let them “migrate”? I think as a USA citizen I want my borders secure- and if south and north won’t do it- then we build walls and charge the countries. I don’t want Muslim politics (they claim it’s a religion but tell me why they are forcing their ways on us?)seeping into my culture. I also want free flowing oil- too bad Europe and Asia didn’t take control of their energy/oil supply. I am disappointed in all factions- but I am least concerned about Iran losing money or livelihoods- when they don’t have human rights on most basic level and want to rule the world. We see it hear it - John sorry you are assuming this guy left because he didn’t get along- in business we all leave if we don’t see eye to eye- doesn’t mean one side was right or wrong or even ill feelings. Sowing the seed of doubt at this time isn’t good for anyone.
There is overwhelming evidence that the Israeli military is raping Palestinian detainees with dogs.
We don’t just have repeated testimonies from Palestinians - but that of Israeli soldiers, too.
Last week, Euro Med Monitor, an NGO based in Geneva, released a report headlined “Another genocide behind walls”: Sexual violence in Israeli prisons and detention centres and engineered impunity.
They carry the testimony of 35-year-old Amir, who was detained by the Israeli army in the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp. He testifies the following:
I was detained in Sde Teiman. They took a group of detainees and me to a corridor between the sections and forced us to strip completely naked. The soldiers brought in several dogs. One of them urinated on me. One of the dogs then raped me, penetrated my anus in a trained manner while I was being beaten. This continued for several minutes. I felt profoundly humiliated and violated.
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They then report the testimony of another 35-year-old Palestinian former detainee in the same camp, who says the following:
We heard dogs barking in the area, and from time to time, the dogs would urinate on us while we were detained in the metal cages. The shock came when they forced me to lie down, and a dog climbed on top of me and tried to insert its penis into me. At first, I did not understand what was happening, but then I realised that I was being raped.
I was completely naked, with no clothes on. I felt the dog’s fluids on my body. I tried to resist, but I was handcuffed, and the space was so small that I could not move. Two of them were holding me down tightly. This went on for three to four minutes.”
Last November, another NGO, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, also released a report carrying the Testimonies of Systematic Rape and Sexual Torture in Israeli Detention against Released Palestinian Detainees.
They detail the case of a Palestinian man named A.A. who reports being tortured during 19 months of his detention including forced stripping, obscene insults, threats of rape against him and his family, culminating in his rape by a trained dog inside the Sde Teiman military camp.
He says:
I was moved to a section I didn’t know inside Sde Teiman. During the first weeks there, amid repeated suppression operations, I was taken with a group of detainees in a degrading manner to a place far from the cameras—a passage between sections. We were stripped completely. Soldiers brought dogs that climbed on us and urinated on me. Then one of the dogs raped me—the dog did it deliberately, knowing exactly what it was doing, and inserted its penis into my anus, while the soldiers kept beating and torturing us and spraying pepper spray in our faces. The dog’s assault lasted about three minutes; the overall suppression lasted about three hours. Because of the severe beating, all of us sustained injuries across our bodies. I suffered a severe psychological breakdown and deep humiliation; I lost control because I could never have imagined experiencing such a thing. Afterward, a doctor stitched a wound in my head caused by the torture—seven stitches without anesthesia. I also suffered bruises, fractures in my limbs, and a rib fracture
Am I the only other reader of these comments who believes this testimony? I have heard this from very credible sources. These jailers are as bad as anything Germany produced in the dark days of the Reich. History repeats itself in shocking interations.
The news for me from John's article was that the guy supposedly in charge of the Navy was just another Palm Beach donor/crony with zero military background. Wonder if the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians staff so carelessly? In terms of sowing doubt, why worry about John when all the members of Trump's cabinet other than Hegdeath are distancing themselves from the war, claiming they were sceptics from the beginning but afraid to risk Trump's Epic Irrational Fury. Profiles in courage. In the end, Trump will probably put the blame on Hegdeath, because Roy Cohn taught him back in NYC never to admit blame.
I used to say I voted for all three of Trump's wins, but now realize it was six times if we include the primaries. He's not the same guy that ran in 2016.
What would two fictional characters in a book about the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars think about a US Blockade of Iran during the current period? Well, if they were in fact honest representatives of that time the first thing they would say is, “Wow! What wonderful capabilities!”. When asked about the Blockade they would answer, “What about it? Don’t you do that all the time? We did. We blockaded a number of Napoleon’s ports at various times. Pain in the butt, maintaining the Blockade, but it gives excellent results. But you gotta stick with it. Can’t quit.”
But… we do have to weigh reducing the capabilities of terrorist supportiveIranv versusv asking sailors to tolerate coffee machines that need repair - oh! and fresh produce.
So... let me get this straight: we're about to cause an energy crisis in other parts of the world, because of Israel? Because they dragged us into this war here?
Traitor and coward are inaccurate. Arrogant and mentally failing is more like it but remember, Trump has been on the "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" tune since the record dropped in the 1980s. He was primed and ready to go, totally in the dark about the paper tiger that is our military. I fully expect the next big scandal is finding out that the US doesn't have nearly the nuclear weapons capabilities it claims to have. Hell, maybe the reason they want Iran's uranium so badly is we don't have any ourselves...I wouldn't be surprised at anything at this point.
Traitor because he sold out America because Netanyahu has him Blackmailed which makes him a Coward. All the Awful things on him in the Epstein Files is coming out regardless to how much he cowers to Netanyahu!
It's a chicken and egg situation to me. Would he have been so easily duped by Israel if he weren't addled? I don't think so. Netanyahu tried to get this done in 2016-2020 and Trump said no. Four years later there's suddenly blackmail material so powerful that it led to his support? That's a stretch.
And he has not betrayed America, aka been a traitor / committed treason. America has fought wars for Israel for 80 years. This is something the majority of Americans have supported strongly for that entire time. The world has changed and the delusional boomers will soon be gone and the world order will be very different. Israel will quite likely cease to be a nation given their current trajectory.
Then you wouldn't be surprised Then if the uranium was actually ours and given to Then by Hillary, Obama, et all? I suppose Then, that would be ok with you?
Yes, I want a nuclear Iran. It's the only way to bring peace to the ME. Otherwise, Americans are going to continue to get jerked off with this "2 weeks to a nuclear weapon" bullshit for the next 100 years. Iran could have easily had one decades ago if that's what they wanted. They soon will have one now, though, and there isn't anything anyone can do about it. Iran now knows it needs to follow the N. Korea model if it doesn't want to be bombed over and over again.
It's not just energy. What's worse is sulfur and fertilizer, both of which are used in the modern food industry.
This stupid, illegal war by Trump, one he stated many times he would avoid, will not end well.
A very accurate model I follow predicted several years ago that, at this time, Europe will enter a depression and the US will enter a recession. It gave data, not reasons. Now we can see why.
You can only see what you want to see. No use in trying to explain what is really happening, because you are the ultimate intelligence in your mind, right? Wait until, and you're not going to wait too long, what is really happening.
How will our masters build their data centers without helium to make the chips? What will happen to Trump and Bondi's glorious DJIA? (Yeah, I know Bondi's gone).
How ever will the poor astrophysicists of the world get to their Copenhagen conference (paid by taxpayers) in July? There's always zoom but then they can't buy cases of wine......
There is a lady named Susan Kokinda that theorizes that this entire show is a breaking of the Bank of England’s grip on monetary and political power. I know nothing but it appears to be opposite to the conventional believe your screens narrative.
Not familiar with Kokinda, but that sounds like more 38D chess. Trump's whole world has been financed by bankers, perhaps why he loves low interest rates and paying back loans in depreciated dollars. The new Fed head Warsh swears he'll be independent. Maybe of Trump, but not of the bankers who own the Fed. From Wikipedia's bio: "In January 2006, Bush nominated Warsh to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. He served as a lieutenant to the board's chairman, Ben Bernanke, particularly in responding to the 2008 financial crisis. As the Federal Reserve's central liaison to financial markets, Warsh was involved in the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and the bailout of American International Group." So Warsh was an understudy to Helicopter Ben Bernanke, dropping pallets of cash on the very bankers who caused all the problems. More money Warshing.
You think USN logistics can't feed sailors? What is your source?
IRGC is holding non-IRGC commerce hostage. Trump is now holding IRGC commerce hostage. The test of wills is b/t Iran economy collapse and worldwide impacts. Acuteness sitting squarely atop Iran, projection is that Iran craters first.
Not appropriate to characterize blockade as punishingly mundane. It may be mundane, but until you serve in a fleet, your diagnosis of the effects of fleet maneuvers is silly.
The IRGC is a proxie of the City of London. The uranium came from the US via Hillary and Obuma et al. All else is distraction. Full stop. Do your research.
ANonnyMouse “evergreen” perseverates with its “how dare those Iranians interfere with commerce”…. As if the long history of the King of Sanctions (the US) didn’t exist. Sanctions = siege warfare. (500,000 dead Iraqi children…). How dare those Iranians resist the U.S./Zionist war of aggression with asymmetric warfare! PS: the U.S. and Israhell have lost this war. The DUAL LOYALTY of Trump and the Zionists in his administration is traitorous.
Jack Aubrey would, along with Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington, have rolled his eyes at having orders issued by men who got their positions of high office through the use of money and influence rather than military experience. It was ever thus.
(I have a painting by Geoff Hunt of HMS Suprise hanging in my living room - it's one of my favourite paintings!)
I don't see how you could possibly have read the Master and Commander series and still make comments like the U.S. blockade "was probably the most effective in history" and compare the hardships currently being experienced by U.S. sailors with the hardships of British sailors blockading France. Good grief, it's like you never read the books at all. The Brits had to blockade a country bigger and more powerful than themselves with coastline in two different oceans! and they shut the French up so effectively that when they occasionally ventured out of port they were lacking in experience and basic sailing skills! AND the Brits had to do this in sailing ships during winter weather while eating food that was often rotten before they even left port and required banging on the table before eating to knock the bugs out! AND they did this for years at a time without any shore leave allowed whatsoever!
Great to hear from another Auibrey/Maturin fan! My favorites are Desolation Island and the Thirteen Gun Salute/Nutmeg of Consolation duo....
But the day of the Blue water Navy has passed...the ships are enormously expensive, as is the crewing of these complex machines, and they're vulnerable to cheap drones and missiles, especially hypersonic missiles...That's why China doesn't have huge aircraft carriers....
“Another Tuesday and another TACO night. But of course we are not complaining that the bombs aren’t falling. Thank heavens for the partial and tenuous respite from the BibiDon mayhem in the Persian Gulf.
What this latest Trumpian gambit tells you, however, is something far more ominous: To wit, the blithering fool domiciled in the Oval Office started a war thinking it would be snatch-and-grab Maduro 2.0 type operation, but now has no idea whatsoever about how to end it.
And we do mean none, as in nada, nichts, nugatory and NFC (no f*cking clue). The Donald is just tacking, improvising and sliding by the seat of his ample britches, hoping to find an exit he can call “victory” and then move on. We’d guess the latter will turn out to be the impending “liberation” of Cuba, which, at length, is not likely to happen, either.
In this context, his apparent current silver bullet on the Iranian War—-the blockade of all tankers and other ships coming and going from Iranian ports—may be the biggest thumb sucker yet. We explain why in detail below, but here’s the crucial nub of it: The Donald is going to be waiting for Godot if he thinks this will force the mullahs/IRGC to surrender on the theory that the blockade will dry-up Iran’s cash flow and also quickly force the shutdown of its oil fields due to the filling-up of its above ground storage tanks on Kharg Island.
To the contrary, Iran has upwards of $5 billion worth of oil on 45 ghost-fleet tankers that are out on the blue water heading for STS (ship-to-ship) transfers and eventual delivery to customers, mostly in East Asia. Likewise, the blockade by all accounts from the professional firms which track global vessel traffic, such as Kpler and Vortexa, is leaking like a sieve.
Current estimates indicate that this may amount to 1.2 million barrels per day of Iranian exports which have gotten through the blockade during the first nine days. At that rate, these leaking exports would generate a revenue intake of about three-quarters of a billion dollars per week!
As for the projected constipation of the storage tanks on Kharg Island—forget about it. Iran has potentially vast underground storage capacity in salt domes and its massive industrial caverns inside the mountain ranges that ring the Persian Gulf and the vast interior of the country.
So we don’t think the mullahs or IRGC will starve and throw in the towel on those kind of rations any time soon. But if the blockade lasts for weeks and weeks—with the Donald alternating between bellicose bluster on the weekends and TACO Tuesdays thereafter—there will be another even more crucial clock ticking.
That is, the global above ground storage tanks for oil and gas liquids are being depleted at a rate of upwards of 20 million BOE/day. As shown below, Grok 4 estimates that the normal pre-war flow in BOE (barrels of oil equivalent) was 22.5 million/day for hydrocarbons sourced inside the SOH (strait of Hormuz), including the derivative products like LNG, urea, sulfur and helium which come from oil and gas.
Needless to say, the current 92% shortfall from normal flows is fanning out accross the global economy in ways that the Sunday afternoon warriors around the Donald can’t begin to imagine, let alone track. For instance, one of the Persian Gulf’s big energy exports is actually the natural gas embodied in the huge aluminum exports from Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman.
As it happens, these exports of about of 14,300 tonnes of aluminum per day account for upwards of one-third of global aluminum trade and nearly 10% of global supply. And the reason that 250,000 BOE/day of natural gas ordinarily exits the SOH hiding in aluminum ingots and wrought light metal shapes is that smelters are god awful energy hogs, and the Gulf is the motherland of the cheapest energy around—-and relatively lax environmental controls, as well.
The same is true of industrial-scale helium. To move its massive reserves of natural gas from the giant North Field, Qatar built a huge natural gas liquefaction complex at Ras Laffan Industrial City.
As it happens, the North Field/South Pars (Iran’s side of the field) natural gas deposits—-by far the largest in the world—contain unusually rich helium content. So in the process of converting gas into cryogenic liquid form, there is a huge by-product off-take of helium, which remain in gaseous form owing to its ultra-low boiling point.
Accordingly, in becoming the world’s second largest LNG exporter Qatar also became the supplier ofone-third of global helium, which is the mother’s milk of semi-conductor factories the world around. Who knew?
Obviously, the Donald and his foreign policy frat boys—Hegseth, Rubio, Kushner—had no clue whatsoever. Nor did they know that the SOH is the gateway to 45% of the world’s seaborne sulfur trade.
Again, it pays to know something if you are going to start blowing up stuff. As it also happens, the prodigious crude oil and natural gas fields of the Gulf region are generally pretty sour, meaning that the local refineries and nat gas processing plants extract via desulfurization equipment a goodly amount of sulfur, amounting to upwards of 5 million tons per year.
And to put frosting on the cake, roughly 60% of global sulfur supply, in turn, goes into the production of phosphate fertilizers—the virtual lodestone of modern high yield farming. Accordingly, the Trumpian war party has scored a double whammy: By shutting down the Persian Gulf energy/industrial complexes it has also disrupted a huge 35% share of global trade in urea/ammonia/nitrogen fertilizer—along with the essential ingredient of the phosphate fertilizer supply. Alas, together nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers literally feed the planet.
So, can you say soaring food and grocery prices? As it were, they are already baked into the cake for the coming crop year because the fertilizer mother lode of the planet has been detoured into the Trumpian war zone.
Along with the multitude of refined petroleum product channels, all of the products listed in the table below flow into daily global commerce in material magnitudes relative to worldwide demand. And, now, the Donald has seen fit to gut every one of these arteries of commerce because Bibi told him Iran has a nuke. Which it doesn’t.
In any event, Washington’s current blockade strategy is going to keep the Gulf shutdown until the Donald, not the mullahs, cry uncle. But even if some of the 20.75 million barrels per day shortfall shown in the table above is subject to work-arounds, such as the 2-3 mb/d of incremental Saudi crude oil being diverted through the East-West pipeline to Red Sea ports, the fact remains that global stocks are being drained at a rapid rate.
Thus, there are normally 1.3 billion barrels of oil on the blue water, which amounts to about 12 days of global petroleum liquids consumption. The fact that tankers have not been loading at anything even close to normal rates means that waterborne inventory has already been drastically depleted.
The context of this daily drain on stocks is as follows: At the end of 2025, just before the conflict intensified, independent tracking firms estimated the global “oil on water” inventory at the aforementioned 1.3 billion barrels. This figure included both normal in-transit volumes and elevated floating storage built up during the previous year’s supply surplus. Because Persian Gulf crude and refined products have historically accounted for a large share of long-haul tanker movements, any major disruption in loadings from the region disproportionately affects this floating inventory.
Over the 53 days from February 28 to April 22, 2026, the Persian Gulf experienced an average daily production and export cutback of roughly 10–14 million barrels per day. Using a conservative midpoint of 12 million barrels per day as the representative reduction, the cumulative shortfall in tanker loadings reaches approximately 635 million barrels.
Accordingly, dividing this missing volume by the pre-war blue-water inventory of 1.3 billion barrels yields a depletion rate of about 49% already as of April 22. Even at the lower end of the cutback range (10 million bpd), roughly 530 million barrels — or 41% — of the floating stocks would have been drawn down. At the higher end (14 million bpd), the depletion climbs to approximately 742 million barrels, or 57% of the original inventory.
Therefore, a realistic first-order estimate is that 45–55% of the global blue-water petroleum inventory has already been depleted as a direct result of the Persian Gulf loading shortfall. This cumulative depletion is particularly significant because the pre-war 1.3 billion barrel floating inventory was already weighted toward Middle Eastern barrels. Long-haul VLCCs carrying Iranian, Saudi, Iraqi, and UAE crude typically spend weeks at sea, making the Gulf’s contribution to global “oil on water” structurally large.
As these tankers on the blue water unload in China, India, and other Asian destinations without being replaced by new Gulf loadings, the buffer will shrink rapidly.This drawdown helps explain the volatility evident in oil markets during March and April. Although the U.S. blockade has proven porous — with Vortexa data showing at least 10.7 million barrels of confirmed Iranian crude slipping through in the first nine days after April 13 — the overall volume of new oil entering the blue-water system remains far below normal.
The shadow fleet provides Iran with some revenue and breathing room, but it does not come close to restoring the full pre-war export rhythm of the broader Persian Gulf. In practical terms, nearly half of the world’s floating oil stocks that existed at the start of the year have now been consumed.
In turn, this depletion also increases reliance on onshore commercial stocks and strategic reserves to bridge the gap — inventories that are themselves being drawn upon in Asia and elsewhere. As to the former, the level of commercial above ground stock across the total global storage, processing and distribution grid was about 4.4 billion barrels prior to Feb. 28th. But as the bow wave of seaborne stocks continues to shrink day by day, normal above ground commercial stocks are being drained in lieu of new waterborne tanker arrivals.
Needless to say, most of this 4.4 billion barrels of above ground commercial stocks is comprised of “working” inventory. That is, everything from crude oil and product tanks at refineries, to storage farms for distribution systems, to oil tankers on the rails and highways, to gasoline in the 290 million auto gas tanks on the roads of America alone. To be sure, you can drain these working inventories somewhat, but if it becomes too pronounced or visible—production and distribution processes breakdown and waves of hoarding by users up and down the supply chains render stocks unavailable for the next level of users.
Finally, there is also 2.5 billion barrels of so-called government-held strategic reserves. But the IEA (International Energy Agency) has already authorized a drawdown of 400 million barrels or 16%—a one-time expedient that has tamped down global oil prices slightly, but is no real solution to a prolonged closure of the Gulf.
Moreover, the story is no better with respect to Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent’s silly plan to constipate the Kharg Island storage tanks. Or as he pontificated this AM: Iran’s storage tanks will allegedly fill-up within days owing to the blockade, leaving it no choice but to shut in wells, which is an expensive, technically risky move that could permanently damage reservoirs.
“In a matter of DAYS, Kharg Island [oil] storage will be FULL…” “…and the fragile Iranian oil wells will be SHUT IN.”
No, not at all—even with the Trumpian ALL CAPS.
Barely a week into the blockade, independent tracking data revealed a far different reality: Namely, that the embargo is already leaking badly—even as it is also become clear that Iran possesses a powerful, underappreciated backup plan rooted in its unique geology and decades of underground engineering.
As to the blockade breach, the cargo-tracking firm, Vortexa, whose data was first highlighted in a Financial Times report and amplified across social media, documented the scale.
Between April 13 and April 22 — roughly nine days — at least 34 tankers with clear Iranian links evaded the U.S. Navy blockade. Of those, 19 sailed out of the Persian Gulf and 15 entered from the Arabian Sea. Six outbound vessels were positively identified as carrying Iranian crude, totaling nearly 11 million barrels.
At prevailing wartime discounts of roughly $10 below Brent (Brent itself trading near $100 per barrel), that single confirmed tranche generated approximately $910 million in revenue for Tehran. Averaged over the nine days, the documented flow alone equated to the aforementioned 1.2 million barrels per day — a figure that almost certainly understates the true leak, because many additional tankers are operating in “dark” mode or using spoofed signals.
The fact is, Iran’s shadow fleet has refined evasion into an art form owing to decades of sanctions. Tankers routinely disable Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders, repaint hulls, switch flags, and conduct ship-to-ship transfers in congested waters where the sheer volume of traffic overwhelms naval surveillance.
The Strait of Hormuz itself is one of the world’s busiest choke-points. Even with U.S. warships turning back dozens of vessels and boarding at least one (the Touska), the US Navy cannot physically intercept every tanker in such a narrow, high-volume waterway. The result is a blockade that is porous enough to keep meaningful volumes of oil moving — and revenue flowing—the US Navy to the contrary notwithstanding.
The leakage of this magnitude obviously eviscerates Secy Bessent’s timeline. Pre-blockade, Iran produced roughly 3.5 million barrels per day and refined about 2 million barrels for mainly domestic use. That left an excess of around 1.5 million barrels per day that normally needed to be exported or stored.
Public estimates of Iran’s surface storage capacity — focused on Kharg Island’s roughly 30 million barrels of tanks plus smaller terminals — suggested the country could absorb only 10–16 days of excess production before facing a genuine crisis. Bessent’s public statements framed this as animminent “storage cliff” that would force painful shut-ins.
Needless to say, if 1.2 million barrels per day continue to exit the SOH via the shadow fleet, Bessent’s storage clock will slow dramatically. The “days until shutdown” narrative assumes an airtight seal; the Vortexa data shows the seal is already seriously compromised.
What makes the situation even more resilient for Iran is a factor that rarely appears in Western commentary: Namely, its extraordinary underground storage potential. Iran sits atop some of the world’s most favorable geology for salt-cavern storage. The Zagros and Alborz mountain ranges contain extensive salt formations and domes ideal for solution mining — the same technique the United States has used for decades to create its own Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
We actually have some knowledge about the latter owing to our role as the champion of strategic oil storage rather than inefficient, government-subsidized energy autarky during the Reagan era. As it turned out, salt caverns came at de minimis cost versus the huge premiums for homegrown energy like coal liquefaction that were being pushed by the crony capitalist/ energy independence crowd.
The same economics lesson applies today. By pumping seawater underground, Iran can dissolve vast cavities in salt layers, creating bottle-shaped caverns hundreds of feet wide and thousands of feet deep. Salt’s self-sealing properties mean cracks heal naturally, making these structures exceptionally secure for long-term crude storage.
They are also buried deep beneath mountains, rendering them nearly impervious to conventional airstrikes. Not surprisingly, Iran has been preparing for exactly this contingency for years. Academic studies and technical papers dating back to the mid-2010s, in fact, examined the feasibility of converting abandoned salt mines — such as the giant Sardareh complex near Garmsar—one of the largest in the Middle East—–into petroleum storage.
The economics are compelling: Underground caverns cost far less to build and maintain than surface tanks. Tehran has publicly discussed plans to store millions of barrels in hidden “caves” and has drawn explicit comparisons to international models used by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and China. While Iran’s underground gas-storage program is more advanced, the same salt-dome technology translates directly to crude oil.
Recent reporting confirms accelerated use of Persian Gulf seawater to carve new caverns near the Strait of Hormuz, precisely for strategic oil reserves that remain invisible to satellite monitoring. These would be virtually identical to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which stores its crude in dozens of individual caverns, which have been solution-mined inside Gulf Coast salt domes.
The largest of these US sites, Bryan Mound in Texas, alone holds up to 254 million barrels across roughly 20 caverns. As it happens, a facility that size could potentially hold six months of current Iranian exports, even if the blockade somehow became air tight.
Obviously, Iran does not need to match even a fraction of that scale overnight. But even modest additional underground capacity — tens of millions of barrels — would extend the “storage cliff” from days or weeks into months. So when added to the ongoing shadow-fleet exports, the pressure on Iran’s surface infrastructure would drop sharply. Contrary to the know-it-all Wall Streeter at the Treasury Department, the Iranian regime can continue producing at near-normal rates without risking permanent reservoir damage from well shut-ins for an extensive period of time.
In short, the combination of leaky maritime routes and hidden subterranean storage creates a strategic buffer that the Donald’s advisors appear to have badly underestimated. As usual.
Meanwhile, the salt-cavern program leverages Iran’s two great advantages: Formidable mountain terrain that has shielded its nuclear and missile programs for decades, and a deep institutional expertise in underground construction born of necessity under sanctions.
Critics of the blockade have long warned that maritime enforcement in the Strait of Hormuz is inherently difficult. The waterway is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest, yet it carries a staggering volume of tanker traffic even in normal times. High-volume “wave” tactics — sending multiple vessels simultaneously — saturate monitoring assets.
Add AIS manipulation, flag-hopping, and the willingness of Chinese and other Asian buyers to accept discounted Iranian crude via ship-to-ship (STS) transfers in the Indian Ocean, and the embargo’s practical effect shrinks dramatically.
The regime has also already banned many petrochemical and urea exports to prioritize domestic needs, signaling a “fortress economy” mindset. But the oil lifeline remains open enough to prevent immediate collapse.
Bessent’s optimistic timeline assumed surface storage was the only variable, but Iran’s geology and ingenuity add a subterranean dimension that dramatically changes the equation. So the simple narrative of an airtight embargo forcing rapid Iranian capitulation has already given way to a more complex reality.
At the end of the day, what we really have now is dueling blockades: The Iranian one has dried up non-Iranian exports through the SOH almost completely, while the US blockade of the Iranian ports—-positioned outside the SOH for fear of Iranian missiles and drones taking out multi-billion US warships—is leaking like a sieve.
What that means is the impending catastrophe for the global hydrocarbon supply system and world economy is likely to come sooner than the day when Iran actually runs out of cash and storage capacity.
Needless to say, that won’t be any kind of “win” that the Donald can peddle to even the shrinking echo chamber in MAGA LAND. To the contrary, the loud belligerent voice now emanating from the Oval Office is likely to soon be taking on a different tone—hopefully the final blatherings of Dead End Donald.”
Trump's entire shit show is a sinking ship. It's no surprise that rats only there to seek profiteering opportunities jump overboard at the first sign of failure. We now only receive a blizzard of lies from this administration and the so called "mistakes" are going to cost us trillions just like Trump's fake pandemic.
Did John Phelan, Ret. Sec. Navy, ever even own, and spend time on, a yacht ? Or for that matter, spend time sailing on a sailboat ? Those might be my first questions.
There is much to learn by reading Patick O'Brian's series of novels (see The Great Santini's comment below). Disciplined gunnery practice is key to many of Jack Aubrey's successful outcomes.
Persuasion by Jane Austen is also enjoyable and informative. In that book, Captain Wentworth states that he knew that he would be lucky, and that would be key to the outcomes of his naval adventures. Consider the importance of the luck from the great storm in the outcome of the Spanish Armada.
The situation is compounded because of the stupidity of solar, wind- that is inefficient and ruins the environment. I understand you don’t like Trump and his support of Israel- I didn’t like Iran contra- with trickledown Reagan. Question: why are the Muslims leaving there homelands? Why is it that Palestinians are harboring terrorists and not fighting them? Why is it that Palestinians left their original homeland (mostly from Jordan) and now are called Palestinians? Why is it that Egypt closed borders and won’t let them “migrate”? I think as a USA citizen I want my borders secure- and if south and north won’t do it- then we build walls and charge the countries. I don’t want Muslim politics (they claim it’s a religion but tell me why they are forcing their ways on us?)seeping into my culture. I also want free flowing oil- too bad Europe and Asia didn’t take control of their energy/oil supply. I am disappointed in all factions- but I am least concerned about Iran losing money or livelihoods- when they don’t have human rights on most basic level and want to rule the world. We see it hear it - John sorry you are assuming this guy left because he didn’t get along- in business we all leave if we don’t see eye to eye- doesn’t mean one side was right or wrong or even ill feelings. Sowing the seed of doubt at this time isn’t good for anyone.
There is overwhelming evidence that the Israeli military is raping Palestinian detainees with dogs.
We don’t just have repeated testimonies from Palestinians - but that of Israeli soldiers, too.
Last week, Euro Med Monitor, an NGO based in Geneva, released a report headlined “Another genocide behind walls”: Sexual violence in Israeli prisons and detention centres and engineered impunity.
They carry the testimony of 35-year-old Amir, who was detained by the Israeli army in the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp. He testifies the following:
I was detained in Sde Teiman. They took a group of detainees and me to a corridor between the sections and forced us to strip completely naked. The soldiers brought in several dogs. One of them urinated on me. One of the dogs then raped me, penetrated my anus in a trained manner while I was being beaten. This continued for several minutes. I felt profoundly humiliated and violated.
Upgrade to paid
They then report the testimony of another 35-year-old Palestinian former detainee in the same camp, who says the following:
We heard dogs barking in the area, and from time to time, the dogs would urinate on us while we were detained in the metal cages. The shock came when they forced me to lie down, and a dog climbed on top of me and tried to insert its penis into me. At first, I did not understand what was happening, but then I realised that I was being raped.
I was completely naked, with no clothes on. I felt the dog’s fluids on my body. I tried to resist, but I was handcuffed, and the space was so small that I could not move. Two of them were holding me down tightly. This went on for three to four minutes.”
Last November, another NGO, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, also released a report carrying the Testimonies of Systematic Rape and Sexual Torture in Israeli Detention against Released Palestinian Detainees.
They detail the case of a Palestinian man named A.A. who reports being tortured during 19 months of his detention including forced stripping, obscene insults, threats of rape against him and his family, culminating in his rape by a trained dog inside the Sde Teiman military camp.
He says:
I was moved to a section I didn’t know inside Sde Teiman. During the first weeks there, amid repeated suppression operations, I was taken with a group of detainees in a degrading manner to a place far from the cameras—a passage between sections. We were stripped completely. Soldiers brought dogs that climbed on us and urinated on me. Then one of the dogs raped me—the dog did it deliberately, knowing exactly what it was doing, and inserted its penis into my anus, while the soldiers kept beating and torturing us and spraying pepper spray in our faces. The dog’s assault lasted about three minutes; the overall suppression lasted about three hours. Because of the severe beating, all of us sustained injuries across our bodies. I suffered a severe psychological breakdown and deep humiliation; I lost control because I could never have imagined experiencing such a thing. Afterward, a doctor stitched a wound in my head caused by the torture—seven stitches without anesthesia. I also suffered bruises, fractures in my limbs, and a rib fracture
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Am I the only other reader of these comments who believes this testimony? I have heard this from very credible sources. These jailers are as bad as anything Germany produced in the dark days of the Reich. History repeats itself in shocking interations.
The torture of Palestinians by the Zionists has been documented for decades.
No, you're not the only one...mountains of evidence supporting this.
The problem my dear is Zionist terrorism.
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The news for me from John's article was that the guy supposedly in charge of the Navy was just another Palm Beach donor/crony with zero military background. Wonder if the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians staff so carelessly? In terms of sowing doubt, why worry about John when all the members of Trump's cabinet other than Hegdeath are distancing themselves from the war, claiming they were sceptics from the beginning but afraid to risk Trump's Epic Irrational Fury. Profiles in courage. In the end, Trump will probably put the blame on Hegdeath, because Roy Cohn taught him back in NYC never to admit blame.
I used to say I voted for all three of Trump's wins, but now realize it was six times if we include the primaries. He's not the same guy that ran in 2016.
What would two fictional characters in a book about the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars think about a US Blockade of Iran during the current period? Well, if they were in fact honest representatives of that time the first thing they would say is, “Wow! What wonderful capabilities!”. When asked about the Blockade they would answer, “What about it? Don’t you do that all the time? We did. We blockaded a number of Napoleon’s ports at various times. Pain in the butt, maintaining the Blockade, but it gives excellent results. But you gotta stick with it. Can’t quit.”
But… we do have to weigh reducing the capabilities of terrorist supportiveIranv versusv asking sailors to tolerate coffee machines that need repair - oh! and fresh produce.
The Royal Navy Sailors of the Napoleonic Wars would say, “Coffee machines? What are those?”
The U.S. blockade is porous and not sustainable.
So... let me get this straight: we're about to cause an energy crisis in other parts of the world, because of Israel? Because they dragged us into this war here?
Who's controlling who: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/stop-saying-its-the-jews-start-calling
Exactly Franklin as they Blackmailed and bribed Traitor Coward Trump!
Traitor and coward are inaccurate. Arrogant and mentally failing is more like it but remember, Trump has been on the "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" tune since the record dropped in the 1980s. He was primed and ready to go, totally in the dark about the paper tiger that is our military. I fully expect the next big scandal is finding out that the US doesn't have nearly the nuclear weapons capabilities it claims to have. Hell, maybe the reason they want Iran's uranium so badly is we don't have any ourselves...I wouldn't be surprised at anything at this point.
Traitor because he sold out America because Netanyahu has him Blackmailed which makes him a Coward. All the Awful things on him in the Epstein Files is coming out regardless to how much he cowers to Netanyahu!
Dual loyalty (US and Israhell) = Traitor
To give the devil his due, he is under threats that are very real.
I, for one, will always wonder if Ivana really fell down those stairs…
It's a chicken and egg situation to me. Would he have been so easily duped by Israel if he weren't addled? I don't think so. Netanyahu tried to get this done in 2016-2020 and Trump said no. Four years later there's suddenly blackmail material so powerful that it led to his support? That's a stretch.
And he has not betrayed America, aka been a traitor / committed treason. America has fought wars for Israel for 80 years. This is something the majority of Americans have supported strongly for that entire time. The world has changed and the delusional boomers will soon be gone and the world order will be very different. Israel will quite likely cease to be a nation given their current trajectory.
Neocons, of which Trump is now a part, only see power. Nothing else. We can't lose; we have the most power, the biggest dick.
However, they've never won a conflict since World War II, and it took Russia's help to conclude that war. Plus help from Hitler's stupidity.
Israel, or Netenyaho, wants the complete destruction of Iran.
Trump believed military action in Iran would be easy, like Venezuela. Kill or capture the leader. Netenyaho believes leveling Iran will be like Gaza.
Both are in for a big surprise.
100%. The pro-war boomercons and their paid sycophants on YT are getting wrecked right now. Reality has a way of course-correcting the delusional hehe
LoL, thats the definition of derangement syndrome, but good luck to you!
Then you wouldn't be surprised Then if the uranium was actually ours and given to Then by Hillary, Obama, et all? I suppose Then, that would be ok with you?
Yes, I want a nuclear Iran. It's the only way to bring peace to the ME. Otherwise, Americans are going to continue to get jerked off with this "2 weeks to a nuclear weapon" bullshit for the next 100 years. Iran could have easily had one decades ago if that's what they wanted. They soon will have one now, though, and there isn't anything anyone can do about it. Iran now knows it needs to follow the N. Korea model if it doesn't want to be bombed over and over again.
It's not just energy. What's worse is sulfur and fertilizer, both of which are used in the modern food industry.
This stupid, illegal war by Trump, one he stated many times he would avoid, will not end well.
A very accurate model I follow predicted several years ago that, at this time, Europe will enter a depression and the US will enter a recession. It gave data, not reasons. Now we can see why.
You can only see what you want to see. No use in trying to explain what is really happening, because you are the ultimate intelligence in your mind, right? Wait until, and you're not going to wait too long, what is really happening.
We can predict the future. Why? Because human nature never changes. What is happening today is the same pattern of the past.
Econ 101 will tell you why:
“Oil is fungible.”
Look it up.
A very basic law is covered in Econ 101: Oil is fungible.
This disruption affects the ENTIRE global economy.
Yes, and oil seeps into many other critical industries that underpin modern life. The list is endless.
The only good part of this illegal war is that it proves alternatives in energy are a farce.
How will our masters build their data centers without helium to make the chips? What will happen to Trump and Bondi's glorious DJIA? (Yeah, I know Bondi's gone).
How ever will the poor astrophysicists of the world get to their Copenhagen conference (paid by taxpayers) in July? There's always zoom but then they can't buy cases of wine......
Whenever I hear about any top brass military people the first thing that comes to mind is the testimony of Kay Griggs.
There is a lady named Susan Kokinda that theorizes that this entire show is a breaking of the Bank of England’s grip on monetary and political power. I know nothing but it appears to be opposite to the conventional believe your screens narrative.
Not familiar with Kokinda, but that sounds like more 38D chess. Trump's whole world has been financed by bankers, perhaps why he loves low interest rates and paying back loans in depreciated dollars. The new Fed head Warsh swears he'll be independent. Maybe of Trump, but not of the bankers who own the Fed. From Wikipedia's bio: "In January 2006, Bush nominated Warsh to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. He served as a lieutenant to the board's chairman, Ben Bernanke, particularly in responding to the 2008 financial crisis. As the Federal Reserve's central liaison to financial markets, Warsh was involved in the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and the bailout of American International Group." So Warsh was an understudy to Helicopter Ben Bernanke, dropping pallets of cash on the very bankers who caused all the problems. More money Warshing.
You think USN logistics can't feed sailors? What is your source?
IRGC is holding non-IRGC commerce hostage. Trump is now holding IRGC commerce hostage. The test of wills is b/t Iran economy collapse and worldwide impacts. Acuteness sitting squarely atop Iran, projection is that Iran craters first.
Not appropriate to characterize blockade as punishingly mundane. It may be mundane, but until you serve in a fleet, your diagnosis of the effects of fleet maneuvers is silly.
The IRGC is a proxie of the City of London. The uranium came from the US via Hillary and Obuma et al. All else is distraction. Full stop. Do your research.
Horse farts evergreen.
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Horse farts and Bulldust…
ANonnyMouse “evergreen” perseverates with its “how dare those Iranians interfere with commerce”…. As if the long history of the King of Sanctions (the US) didn’t exist. Sanctions = siege warfare. (500,000 dead Iraqi children…). How dare those Iranians resist the U.S./Zionist war of aggression with asymmetric warfare! PS: the U.S. and Israhell have lost this war. The DUAL LOYALTY of Trump and the Zionists in his administration is traitorous.
Jack Aubrey would, along with Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington, have rolled his eyes at having orders issued by men who got their positions of high office through the use of money and influence rather than military experience. It was ever thus.
(I have a painting by Geoff Hunt of HMS Suprise hanging in my living room - it's one of my favourite paintings!)
Military experience by saying yes sir and following orders?
I don't see how you could possibly have read the Master and Commander series and still make comments like the U.S. blockade "was probably the most effective in history" and compare the hardships currently being experienced by U.S. sailors with the hardships of British sailors blockading France. Good grief, it's like you never read the books at all. The Brits had to blockade a country bigger and more powerful than themselves with coastline in two different oceans! and they shut the French up so effectively that when they occasionally ventured out of port they were lacking in experience and basic sailing skills! AND the Brits had to do this in sailing ships during winter weather while eating food that was often rotten before they even left port and required banging on the table before eating to knock the bugs out! AND they did this for years at a time without any shore leave allowed whatsoever!
Great to hear from another Auibrey/Maturin fan! My favorites are Desolation Island and the Thirteen Gun Salute/Nutmeg of Consolation duo....
But the day of the Blue water Navy has passed...the ships are enormously expensive, as is the crewing of these complex machines, and they're vulnerable to cheap drones and missiles, especially hypersonic missiles...That's why China doesn't have huge aircraft carriers....
“…A civilian with no prior military experience…”
https://youtu.be/iZ-gfalEWI0?si=Ru7T5pblLnvOGlG7
Stick close to your desks and never go to sea
And you all maybe ruler of the King’s nayvee!
Taco Tuesday And Dead End Donald
DAVID STOCKMAN
APR 23
“Another Tuesday and another TACO night. But of course we are not complaining that the bombs aren’t falling. Thank heavens for the partial and tenuous respite from the BibiDon mayhem in the Persian Gulf.
What this latest Trumpian gambit tells you, however, is something far more ominous: To wit, the blithering fool domiciled in the Oval Office started a war thinking it would be snatch-and-grab Maduro 2.0 type operation, but now has no idea whatsoever about how to end it.
And we do mean none, as in nada, nichts, nugatory and NFC (no f*cking clue). The Donald is just tacking, improvising and sliding by the seat of his ample britches, hoping to find an exit he can call “victory” and then move on. We’d guess the latter will turn out to be the impending “liberation” of Cuba, which, at length, is not likely to happen, either.
In this context, his apparent current silver bullet on the Iranian War—-the blockade of all tankers and other ships coming and going from Iranian ports—may be the biggest thumb sucker yet. We explain why in detail below, but here’s the crucial nub of it: The Donald is going to be waiting for Godot if he thinks this will force the mullahs/IRGC to surrender on the theory that the blockade will dry-up Iran’s cash flow and also quickly force the shutdown of its oil fields due to the filling-up of its above ground storage tanks on Kharg Island.
To the contrary, Iran has upwards of $5 billion worth of oil on 45 ghost-fleet tankers that are out on the blue water heading for STS (ship-to-ship) transfers and eventual delivery to customers, mostly in East Asia. Likewise, the blockade by all accounts from the professional firms which track global vessel traffic, such as Kpler and Vortexa, is leaking like a sieve.
Current estimates indicate that this may amount to 1.2 million barrels per day of Iranian exports which have gotten through the blockade during the first nine days. At that rate, these leaking exports would generate a revenue intake of about three-quarters of a billion dollars per week!
As for the projected constipation of the storage tanks on Kharg Island—forget about it. Iran has potentially vast underground storage capacity in salt domes and its massive industrial caverns inside the mountain ranges that ring the Persian Gulf and the vast interior of the country.
So we don’t think the mullahs or IRGC will starve and throw in the towel on those kind of rations any time soon. But if the blockade lasts for weeks and weeks—with the Donald alternating between bellicose bluster on the weekends and TACO Tuesdays thereafter—there will be another even more crucial clock ticking.
That is, the global above ground storage tanks for oil and gas liquids are being depleted at a rate of upwards of 20 million BOE/day. As shown below, Grok 4 estimates that the normal pre-war flow in BOE (barrels of oil equivalent) was 22.5 million/day for hydrocarbons sourced inside the SOH (strait of Hormuz), including the derivative products like LNG, urea, sulfur and helium which come from oil and gas.
Needless to say, the current 92% shortfall from normal flows is fanning out accross the global economy in ways that the Sunday afternoon warriors around the Donald can’t begin to imagine, let alone track. For instance, one of the Persian Gulf’s big energy exports is actually the natural gas embodied in the huge aluminum exports from Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman.
As it happens, these exports of about of 14,300 tonnes of aluminum per day account for upwards of one-third of global aluminum trade and nearly 10% of global supply. And the reason that 250,000 BOE/day of natural gas ordinarily exits the SOH hiding in aluminum ingots and wrought light metal shapes is that smelters are god awful energy hogs, and the Gulf is the motherland of the cheapest energy around—-and relatively lax environmental controls, as well.
The same is true of industrial-scale helium. To move its massive reserves of natural gas from the giant North Field, Qatar built a huge natural gas liquefaction complex at Ras Laffan Industrial City.
As it happens, the North Field/South Pars (Iran’s side of the field) natural gas deposits—-by far the largest in the world—contain unusually rich helium content. So in the process of converting gas into cryogenic liquid form, there is a huge by-product off-take of helium, which remain in gaseous form owing to its ultra-low boiling point.
Accordingly, in becoming the world’s second largest LNG exporter Qatar also became the supplier ofone-third of global helium, which is the mother’s milk of semi-conductor factories the world around. Who knew?
Obviously, the Donald and his foreign policy frat boys—Hegseth, Rubio, Kushner—had no clue whatsoever. Nor did they know that the SOH is the gateway to 45% of the world’s seaborne sulfur trade.
Again, it pays to know something if you are going to start blowing up stuff. As it also happens, the prodigious crude oil and natural gas fields of the Gulf region are generally pretty sour, meaning that the local refineries and nat gas processing plants extract via desulfurization equipment a goodly amount of sulfur, amounting to upwards of 5 million tons per year.
And to put frosting on the cake, roughly 60% of global sulfur supply, in turn, goes into the production of phosphate fertilizers—the virtual lodestone of modern high yield farming. Accordingly, the Trumpian war party has scored a double whammy: By shutting down the Persian Gulf energy/industrial complexes it has also disrupted a huge 35% share of global trade in urea/ammonia/nitrogen fertilizer—along with the essential ingredient of the phosphate fertilizer supply. Alas, together nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers literally feed the planet.
So, can you say soaring food and grocery prices? As it were, they are already baked into the cake for the coming crop year because the fertilizer mother lode of the planet has been detoured into the Trumpian war zone.
Along with the multitude of refined petroleum product channels, all of the products listed in the table below flow into daily global commerce in material magnitudes relative to worldwide demand. And, now, the Donald has seen fit to gut every one of these arteries of commerce because Bibi told him Iran has a nuke. Which it doesn’t.
Taco Tuesday and Dead End Donald (continued)
In any event, Washington’s current blockade strategy is going to keep the Gulf shutdown until the Donald, not the mullahs, cry uncle. But even if some of the 20.75 million barrels per day shortfall shown in the table above is subject to work-arounds, such as the 2-3 mb/d of incremental Saudi crude oil being diverted through the East-West pipeline to Red Sea ports, the fact remains that global stocks are being drained at a rapid rate.
Thus, there are normally 1.3 billion barrels of oil on the blue water, which amounts to about 12 days of global petroleum liquids consumption. The fact that tankers have not been loading at anything even close to normal rates means that waterborne inventory has already been drastically depleted.
The context of this daily drain on stocks is as follows: At the end of 2025, just before the conflict intensified, independent tracking firms estimated the global “oil on water” inventory at the aforementioned 1.3 billion barrels. This figure included both normal in-transit volumes and elevated floating storage built up during the previous year’s supply surplus. Because Persian Gulf crude and refined products have historically accounted for a large share of long-haul tanker movements, any major disruption in loadings from the region disproportionately affects this floating inventory.
Over the 53 days from February 28 to April 22, 2026, the Persian Gulf experienced an average daily production and export cutback of roughly 10–14 million barrels per day. Using a conservative midpoint of 12 million barrels per day as the representative reduction, the cumulative shortfall in tanker loadings reaches approximately 635 million barrels.
Accordingly, dividing this missing volume by the pre-war blue-water inventory of 1.3 billion barrels yields a depletion rate of about 49% already as of April 22. Even at the lower end of the cutback range (10 million bpd), roughly 530 million barrels — or 41% — of the floating stocks would have been drawn down. At the higher end (14 million bpd), the depletion climbs to approximately 742 million barrels, or 57% of the original inventory.
Therefore, a realistic first-order estimate is that 45–55% of the global blue-water petroleum inventory has already been depleted as a direct result of the Persian Gulf loading shortfall. This cumulative depletion is particularly significant because the pre-war 1.3 billion barrel floating inventory was already weighted toward Middle Eastern barrels. Long-haul VLCCs carrying Iranian, Saudi, Iraqi, and UAE crude typically spend weeks at sea, making the Gulf’s contribution to global “oil on water” structurally large.
As these tankers on the blue water unload in China, India, and other Asian destinations without being replaced by new Gulf loadings, the buffer will shrink rapidly.This drawdown helps explain the volatility evident in oil markets during March and April. Although the U.S. blockade has proven porous — with Vortexa data showing at least 10.7 million barrels of confirmed Iranian crude slipping through in the first nine days after April 13 — the overall volume of new oil entering the blue-water system remains far below normal.
The shadow fleet provides Iran with some revenue and breathing room, but it does not come close to restoring the full pre-war export rhythm of the broader Persian Gulf. In practical terms, nearly half of the world’s floating oil stocks that existed at the start of the year have now been consumed.
In turn, this depletion also increases reliance on onshore commercial stocks and strategic reserves to bridge the gap — inventories that are themselves being drawn upon in Asia and elsewhere. As to the former, the level of commercial above ground stock across the total global storage, processing and distribution grid was about 4.4 billion barrels prior to Feb. 28th. But as the bow wave of seaborne stocks continues to shrink day by day, normal above ground commercial stocks are being drained in lieu of new waterborne tanker arrivals.
Needless to say, most of this 4.4 billion barrels of above ground commercial stocks is comprised of “working” inventory. That is, everything from crude oil and product tanks at refineries, to storage farms for distribution systems, to oil tankers on the rails and highways, to gasoline in the 290 million auto gas tanks on the roads of America alone. To be sure, you can drain these working inventories somewhat, but if it becomes too pronounced or visible—production and distribution processes breakdown and waves of hoarding by users up and down the supply chains render stocks unavailable for the next level of users.
Finally, there is also 2.5 billion barrels of so-called government-held strategic reserves. But the IEA (International Energy Agency) has already authorized a drawdown of 400 million barrels or 16%—a one-time expedient that has tamped down global oil prices slightly, but is no real solution to a prolonged closure of the Gulf.
Moreover, the story is no better with respect to Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent’s silly plan to constipate the Kharg Island storage tanks. Or as he pontificated this AM: Iran’s storage tanks will allegedly fill-up within days owing to the blockade, leaving it no choice but to shut in wells, which is an expensive, technically risky move that could permanently damage reservoirs.
“In a matter of DAYS, Kharg Island [oil] storage will be FULL…” “…and the fragile Iranian oil wells will be SHUT IN.”
No, not at all—even with the Trumpian ALL CAPS.
Barely a week into the blockade, independent tracking data revealed a far different reality: Namely, that the embargo is already leaking badly—even as it is also become clear that Iran possesses a powerful, underappreciated backup plan rooted in its unique geology and decades of underground engineering.
As to the blockade breach, the cargo-tracking firm, Vortexa, whose data was first highlighted in a Financial Times report and amplified across social media, documented the scale.
Between April 13 and April 22 — roughly nine days — at least 34 tankers with clear Iranian links evaded the U.S. Navy blockade. Of those, 19 sailed out of the Persian Gulf and 15 entered from the Arabian Sea. Six outbound vessels were positively identified as carrying Iranian crude, totaling nearly 11 million barrels.
At prevailing wartime discounts of roughly $10 below Brent (Brent itself trading near $100 per barrel), that single confirmed tranche generated approximately $910 million in revenue for Tehran. Averaged over the nine days, the documented flow alone equated to the aforementioned 1.2 million barrels per day — a figure that almost certainly understates the true leak, because many additional tankers are operating in “dark” mode or using spoofed signals.
The fact is, Iran’s shadow fleet has refined evasion into an art form owing to decades of sanctions. Tankers routinely disable Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders, repaint hulls, switch flags, and conduct ship-to-ship transfers in congested waters where the sheer volume of traffic overwhelms naval surveillance.
The Strait of Hormuz itself is one of the world’s busiest choke-points. Even with U.S. warships turning back dozens of vessels and boarding at least one (the Touska), the US Navy cannot physically intercept every tanker in such a narrow, high-volume waterway. The result is a blockade that is porous enough to keep meaningful volumes of oil moving — and revenue flowing—the US Navy to the contrary notwithstanding.
The leakage of this magnitude obviously eviscerates Secy Bessent’s timeline. Pre-blockade, Iran produced roughly 3.5 million barrels per day and refined about 2 million barrels for mainly domestic use. That left an excess of around 1.5 million barrels per day that normally needed to be exported or stored.
Public estimates of Iran’s surface storage capacity — focused on Kharg Island’s roughly 30 million barrels of tanks plus smaller terminals — suggested the country could absorb only 10–16 days of excess production before facing a genuine crisis. Bessent’s public statements framed this as animminent “storage cliff” that would force painful shut-ins.
Needless to say, if 1.2 million barrels per day continue to exit the SOH via the shadow fleet, Bessent’s storage clock will slow dramatically. The “days until shutdown” narrative assumes an airtight seal; the Vortexa data shows the seal is already seriously compromised.
What makes the situation even more resilient for Iran is a factor that rarely appears in Western commentary: Namely, its extraordinary underground storage potential. Iran sits atop some of the world’s most favorable geology for salt-cavern storage. The Zagros and Alborz mountain ranges contain extensive salt formations and domes ideal for solution mining — the same technique the United States has used for decades to create its own Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
We actually have some knowledge about the latter owing to our role as the champion of strategic oil storage rather than inefficient, government-subsidized energy autarky during the Reagan era. As it turned out, salt caverns came at de minimis cost versus the huge premiums for homegrown energy like coal liquefaction that were being pushed by the crony capitalist/ energy independence crowd.
The same economics lesson applies today. By pumping seawater underground, Iran can dissolve vast cavities in salt layers, creating bottle-shaped caverns hundreds of feet wide and thousands of feet deep. Salt’s self-sealing properties mean cracks heal naturally, making these structures exceptionally secure for long-term crude storage.
Taco Tuesday and Dead End Donald (continued)
They are also buried deep beneath mountains, rendering them nearly impervious to conventional airstrikes. Not surprisingly, Iran has been preparing for exactly this contingency for years. Academic studies and technical papers dating back to the mid-2010s, in fact, examined the feasibility of converting abandoned salt mines — such as the giant Sardareh complex near Garmsar—one of the largest in the Middle East—–into petroleum storage.
The economics are compelling: Underground caverns cost far less to build and maintain than surface tanks. Tehran has publicly discussed plans to store millions of barrels in hidden “caves” and has drawn explicit comparisons to international models used by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and China. While Iran’s underground gas-storage program is more advanced, the same salt-dome technology translates directly to crude oil.
Recent reporting confirms accelerated use of Persian Gulf seawater to carve new caverns near the Strait of Hormuz, precisely for strategic oil reserves that remain invisible to satellite monitoring. These would be virtually identical to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which stores its crude in dozens of individual caverns, which have been solution-mined inside Gulf Coast salt domes.
The largest of these US sites, Bryan Mound in Texas, alone holds up to 254 million barrels across roughly 20 caverns. As it happens, a facility that size could potentially hold six months of current Iranian exports, even if the blockade somehow became air tight.
Obviously, Iran does not need to match even a fraction of that scale overnight. But even modest additional underground capacity — tens of millions of barrels — would extend the “storage cliff” from days or weeks into months. So when added to the ongoing shadow-fleet exports, the pressure on Iran’s surface infrastructure would drop sharply. Contrary to the know-it-all Wall Streeter at the Treasury Department, the Iranian regime can continue producing at near-normal rates without risking permanent reservoir damage from well shut-ins for an extensive period of time.
In short, the combination of leaky maritime routes and hidden subterranean storage creates a strategic buffer that the Donald’s advisors appear to have badly underestimated. As usual.
Meanwhile, the salt-cavern program leverages Iran’s two great advantages: Formidable mountain terrain that has shielded its nuclear and missile programs for decades, and a deep institutional expertise in underground construction born of necessity under sanctions.
Critics of the blockade have long warned that maritime enforcement in the Strait of Hormuz is inherently difficult. The waterway is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest, yet it carries a staggering volume of tanker traffic even in normal times. High-volume “wave” tactics — sending multiple vessels simultaneously — saturate monitoring assets.
Add AIS manipulation, flag-hopping, and the willingness of Chinese and other Asian buyers to accept discounted Iranian crude via ship-to-ship (STS) transfers in the Indian Ocean, and the embargo’s practical effect shrinks dramatically.
The regime has also already banned many petrochemical and urea exports to prioritize domestic needs, signaling a “fortress economy” mindset. But the oil lifeline remains open enough to prevent immediate collapse.
Bessent’s optimistic timeline assumed surface storage was the only variable, but Iran’s geology and ingenuity add a subterranean dimension that dramatically changes the equation. So the simple narrative of an airtight embargo forcing rapid Iranian capitulation has already given way to a more complex reality.
At the end of the day, what we really have now is dueling blockades: The Iranian one has dried up non-Iranian exports through the SOH almost completely, while the US blockade of the Iranian ports—-positioned outside the SOH for fear of Iranian missiles and drones taking out multi-billion US warships—is leaking like a sieve.
What that means is the impending catastrophe for the global hydrocarbon supply system and world economy is likely to come sooner than the day when Iran actually runs out of cash and storage capacity.
Needless to say, that won’t be any kind of “win” that the Donald can peddle to even the shrinking echo chamber in MAGA LAND. To the contrary, the loud belligerent voice now emanating from the Oval Office is likely to soon be taking on a different tone—hopefully the final blatherings of Dead End Donald.”
Trump's entire shit show is a sinking ship. It's no surprise that rats only there to seek profiteering opportunities jump overboard at the first sign of failure. We now only receive a blizzard of lies from this administration and the so called "mistakes" are going to cost us trillions just like Trump's fake pandemic.
Did John Phelan, Ret. Sec. Navy, ever even own, and spend time on, a yacht ? Or for that matter, spend time sailing on a sailboat ? Those might be my first questions.
There is much to learn by reading Patick O'Brian's series of novels (see The Great Santini's comment below). Disciplined gunnery practice is key to many of Jack Aubrey's successful outcomes.
Persuasion by Jane Austen is also enjoyable and informative. In that book, Captain Wentworth states that he knew that he would be lucky, and that would be key to the outcomes of his naval adventures. Consider the importance of the luck from the great storm in the outcome of the Spanish Armada.
God bless and protect the sailors.