Let's get caught up on a few accurately predicted things that I was criticized for initially, but received zero apologies or affirmations for after the fact, when those predictions were indeed accuratly fortold. The reason is simply because they were not predictions, they were clearly discernible outcomes, based on facts, realities, and a little bit of research.

1. The US Navy is more than capable of controlling a contested area, in spite of adjacent hostile forces, be they land, sea, air, or any neotactical threats, such as air or underwater drones, electronic warfare, etc...

There are indeed risks. As hypersonic penetrator type kinetic missiles become accessible and plentiful, this alone will do more than render surface fleets nearly obsolete - they will also render nuclear arsenal obsolete. There is no need ro maintain such complex and dangerous Armageddon Wepons when there are literally unstoppable, precision-guided, cheaper, portable, and more stable alternatives.

More unqualified paranoia and dokmsaying was hurled at the F-18 and other US aircraft - but specifically the F-18 series aircraft capabilities and performance. These aircraft have performed as remarkably as I expected them to perform. They are an amazing platform aircraft - meaning they can (and are) configured for a variety of mission profiles and do them all well.

Do we have some modernization issues? YES! The military is constantly evolving in a threat-countermeasure-advancement lifecycle. We are always fighting today's threats with the last conflict's end-state capabilities because that has always been the lifecyle of warfare. Shocker, I know.

So now we have drones... Not really. We have ALWAYS had drones, but they were the expensive kind that only rich nations had... Now a rebel force can buy close range FPV remote control aircraft from Temu and arm them by the thousands with small payloads of primary explosives.

Remember the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies? That was NOT pagentry, it was a demonstration of cooperative military swarm technology. Anyone who missed that should look up the archives. Any analysts who were not aware of the small format FPV drone threat twenty years ago are not legitimate analysts - they are shit-talking current event hyperbole because they just fk'n noticed what was halpening in the past five years.

Now we're on to Iran. Facts: They trade most of their oil through UAE front companies. Dubai won't enforce sanctions, and China, et. al. does not care about abiding by those US/Western sanction pipe dreams. Iran needs the UAE. The UAE needs Iran... at least for now.

Since the gulf has been shut down, everyone who needs anything from any of the gulf states is pivoting elsewhere. Saudi, Kuwait, Iran, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar - and even Yemen to some degree - are losing long term market share to other oil producing and petroleum refining nations.

First, another prediction: Bahrain will be the next disaster in the Gulf. Somehow - insanely - they are both the fastest growing (monetarily) and the most in debt of all their neighbors!

Public Debt to GDP ratios:
(Thanks, @Grok :)

Iran: 36.8% (Dec/2024)
Saudi Arabia: 31.7% (Dec/2025)
Bahrain: 134% (Dec/2024)
Qatar: 40.8% (Dec/2024)
Kuwait: 3% (Dec/2024)
United Arab Emirates (UAE): 32.1% (Dec/2024)
Yemen: 70.9% (Dec/2024)
United States (USA): 123% (Dec/2025)

We already predicted that Iran would run into a gasoline shortage, because they would run out of petroleum byproduct storage - and amazingly weeks later this is a news story. Hmm...

The clogged well paranoia is the latest shit-posting gem to hit the influencer grift and sensationalist hyperbole circuit.

Somehow, after over fifty or sixty years of global-industrial oil industry experience, the petroleum engineers in these gulf states never heard of wax clogging and solvent packages/other maintenance, planning, remediation, and countermeasures? And nobody thought to pre-treat wells before they are idled/gracefully brought down? Or that they never thought to drill another well?

The capacity issues being played like an end-game of world energy constricted darkness are completely nade up bullshit.

What is real: The immediate, intermediate, and long-term financial damage to ALL the gulf states - but mainly Iran, Bahrain, and to some degree, the UAE. These issues are going to hit Iran the hardest however. They mostly traid with their geographical and close adjacent neighbors. They do not have the pipeline, rail, trucking, or other port capacity to get resources out of their very own gulf cage. IRAN HAS PLANNING ISSUES. They learned this lesson already. The reason they started modernizing their refining industry is to make their own gasoline. At one time they were imporing over 75-80% of their gasoline due to their modtly antiquated refining capabilities.They still import high-purity, "premium" gasoline - but anything in the automotive grade is within their capabilities. The storage capacity of gasoline refining byproducts is what I called out previously, and that is an obvious and predictable issue for them now: Their gasoline capacity is limited by their byproduct storage capacity. There are not enough tanks, trucks, containers, ships, pipeline egress, re-injection capability, or other capacity to store all of their raw oil, gas, and petroleum distillates. No storage room for byproducts equals gasoline shortages.

It is going to take months to clear their storage saturation problem. Then to stand-up their extraction and processing and export processes. They are going to face some extreme challenges over the coming three years. More immediately, in the next six to ten months. If the Strait opens tomorrow, it will take them four months to get their shipping terminals and production processes resequenced and operating - and a year to restore a full-capacity operating rhythm.

If they were smart they would use their gold reserves and a partnership with China to build pipeline and/or rail egress toward the East. We'll see, but I think that will happen.

What nobody is talking about (but will be) is how the other Gulf States are going to respond to this obvious Achilles Heel in their transportation/logistics plan. More pipelines to the West? That's a lot of pipe and rail. Maybe now is the time to invest in some companies that build such things? Hopefully not the companies responsible for California's high-speed rail.

I am looking forward to seeing the economic devastation of our Western Finance and Banking system. They will recover from this in the near term by shuffling debt. Eventually the system will collapse. That is the real story here. Not the danage to the relatively encapsulated Iranian Oil economy. Iran's global impact is pistachios, saffron, and Persian textiles. The world will survive a disruption in those products. India, China, Turkey, and a few other close neighbors constitute the meat and potatoes of their energy export industry. They will survive.

It is the other products that come out of Gulf State refining and chemical production that harm the Gulf States: Byproducts distillates... plastics, solvents, fertilizers, etc... All of those things can be made elsewhere. All of those things can be sourced elsewhere. Companies sign long term contracts and make long term purchase agreements for these products to assure supply and predictable costs.

Now that the Strait is blockaded, the clock starts to find and secure alternative suppliers. When this is over, those customers won't immediately return. That is the second order effect (or affect, on Iran) in terms of both financial and product surplus consequences.

The same issues will vex the other oil producing states.

If enough demand shifts from the Gulf States as a whole, it will trigger a chain reaction - a domino effect - where the refining nations (Bahrain, specifically), the ghost fleet transporting hubs (UAE), and the traditional global players (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia). Problems will abound when they realize nobody wants to ship raw crude oil out of the region for refinement elsewhere - when elsewhere already has the refined products they actually need.

If there was ever a weak spot in BRICS this is it. They need non-BRICS nations to counterbalance their production and consumption blind spots.

In the end, Iran will blink. They won't forget, but they will capitulate to get past this. They'll attack Israel later. Israel will attack them. We should have let that happen without intervention twenty years ago.

China needs Iran. Iran needs China. India needs Iran. The UAE needs Iran. Take away their ability to process or export oil and they'll suddenly become irrelevant. They know that. China knows that. India knows that. And America, with what now, two or three carrier battle groups and a fleet of tankers and F-35/F-18/B-52/tomahawk/armed global drones.... we know that also.

Iran has no moves left. They have to unburden themselves from their storage glut as soon as possible. There are not enough Pakistani tanker trucks and mothballed tankers to store the mess of surplus they have.

Since we stop even remotely caring about the environment in times of war, I would say the best way to really screw BRICS is to blow up all of Iran's refining, terminal-port, storage, and key oil extraction & infrastructure. Level it. Eradicate everything. Then leave the area. That will crush the oil cartels, intentional shadow fleet and Hawala transaction network; Western bankers... everyone connected to it. Destroy them all.

If not, Iran will suffer but recover. I don't have any problems with Iran being able to exist peacefully. I don't tbink they have nukes either. So if we are going to slay they great evil Persian menace: Let's do it. If not: Let's leave. And leave the whole area.

America's true threats are:
1. Debt usury
2. The Federal Reserve
3. Unmitigated immigration
4. H1B invasion
5. Our own lack of domestic production/manufacturing/raw materials refining/processing
6. Post Citizens United/Campaign Finance/Dark Money/usurping of our individual voting district's grassroots power to decide who runs and who is successful in local and national races.

Fix those six things and we would not be parked in the gulf right now.