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“It’s Too Hard To Ignore $100 Oil”: Financial Markets Start To Shake As The Reality Of The Global Energy Crisis Weighs Heavily On Investors

July 23, 2026July 23, 2026 by Michael

Everyone is starting to figure out that there isn’t going to be enough oil. The Iranians have closed the Strait of Hormuz, the Houthis are targeting Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, and the Ukrainians are relentlessly attacking Russian energy infrastructure. The reality of what we are facing is finally starting to set in on Wall Street. As I write this article, the price of Brent crude has crossed the $100 threshold, the Dow has dropped more than 500 points, the Nasdaq has dropped more than 600 points, and U.S. Treasury yields have been flying all over the place. For a long time investors tried really hard to ignore what was happening on the other side of the globe, but now things have gotten so bad that they simply cannot do that any longer.

Thanks to multiple wars that the U.S. is currently involved in, global oil markets have been thrown into a state of chaos…

The second wave of the US-Iran conflict shows no signs of letting up. Attacks by the Houthi militia have threatened to curtail shipping through the Red Sea. Russia’s refineries are buckling under the weight of bombardment by the Ukrainian military.

For global oil markets, already in a precarious situation, critical logistical nodes just keep getting thwarted. Things keep going wrong.

There has been so much focus on what has been taking place in the Middle East, and I will have quite a bit to say about that in a moment.

But it is also important to recognize that the rapidly escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine is also driving up the price of oil.

In fact, it is being reported that Ukraine has “attacked more than 150 tankers in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov this month”…

The Ukraine-Russia war is also putting pressure on global oil markets, Croft said. Kyiv has attacked more than 150 tankers in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov this month, she said. The tanker attacks have forced the Caspian Pipeline Consortium to stop loading crude at its Black Sea terminal.

About 80% of Kazakhstan’s crude is exported through that pipeline, Croft said.

“The duration of closure remains uncertain, but alternate routes for Kazakhstan are limited (and unlikely to fully offset CPC), meaning production (1.7 mb/d in June) could face shut-ins,” the analyst said.

This is a really big deal, and hardly anyone is talking about it.

Meanwhile, the crisis in the Middle East just escalated to another new level.

Less than 24 hours ago, the Houthis in Yemen successfully targeted two Saudi oil tankers that were attempting to slip past their blockade…

The Iran-backed Houthis struck two Saudi oil tankers on Thursday that they accused of violating a naval blockade imposed by the group, signaling a potential new front in the US-Iran conflict, as the US military struck Iran for the 12th successive night.

The attack came after the Houthis said on Monday that they were imposing a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia, a move that could significantly widen the war and strain the US military.

Yemen’s Houthis said they targeted two Saudi oil tankers, identified as Encelia and Laylia, saying the vessels violated their naval blockade.

Investors didn’t like this at all, and it is the primary reason why we are talking about $100 oil again.

In addition, the Houthis are claiming that their blockade forced 10 other commercial vessels to turn around before getting to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait…

The Houthis claimed they had also forced “10 ships to retreat and return.” That claim could not be independently verified, The Times said, but at least six vessels reversed course in the Red Sea on Monday and Tuesday after the Houthis warned shipping companies to avoid Saudi ports, according to Kpler, a maritime data company. It was not clear if those ships were part of the Houthis’ claims.

Everyone knows that the Iranians asked the Houthis to do this.

And now we have learned that Iran actually flew “military advisers and missile- and drone-related equipment into Yemen this month”…

Iran flew Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, military advisers and missile- and drone-related equipment into Yemen this month, according to four sources, in a move that suggests Tehran is seeking to strengthen the ability of its Houthi allies to threaten Red Sea shipping.

Four sources familiar with the matter, including two Iranian sources, Yemen’s information minister and a regional security analyst, said Iran transferred the IRGC personnel and military-related equipment on a flight from Tehran to Yemen on July 13, a development that has not been previously reported.

The two Iranian sources told Reuters that between 10 and 21 IRGC personnel, including senior commanders, were on the Mahan Air flight.

The Iranians think that they are really going to put the squeeze on us by having the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait closed simultaneously.

President Trump is very angry about this, and he has told the entire world that the U.S. will hold Iran responsible for whatever the Houthis do…

Threats aren’t going to cause the Iranians and the Houthis to back down.

And there is no end in sight for the war between Russia and Ukraine.

A lot more fighting is ahead, and that means that the global energy crisis is going to continue to intensify.

For months, Wall Street tried to ignore what has happening.

But now one Wall Street strategist is telling us that it is simply “too hard to ignore $100 oil”…

“These problems became too big to ignore,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, about the move in stocks on Thursday. “It’s too hard to ignore $100 oil. It’s too hard to ignore 10-year rates that are above 4.70%. It’s too hard for the stock market to ignore 30-year rates that are solidly above 5%.”

I think that we have finally reached a major tipping point.

Global oil inventories are rapidly disappearing, and that means that a whole lot of pain is on the horizon…

Even so, Kpler analysts wrote, “buffers are eroding fast.” After the first phase of the war drew down global oil inventories throughout both governmental strategic reserves and the commercial sector’s own stores, the global oil market is now effectively functioning like a savings account for someone who just lost their job, Rabobank’s DeLaura said.

The market is effectively treating the situation as manageable because global inventories haven’t reached zero, he said. Yet with no solution in sight, that picture grows ever more perilous.

“We’re pinning everything on these just absolutely lottery ticket kind of ideas that something will happen,” DeLaura said. “The reality is, we’re just going to continue to grind out our inventories and savings.”

That last paragraph is so true.

Investors have just been assuming that everything would magically work out just fine somehow.

But relying on “lottery ticket kind of ideas that something will happen” is not a strategy.

Global events really are starting to spiral out of control, and I expect the wars that we are witnessing to escalate significantly.

There isn’t going to be enough oil coming out of the Middle East.

There isn’t going to be enough natural gas, fertilizer, sulfur or helium coming out of the Middle East either.

We have never faced anything like this, and Wall Street is finally starting to get the message.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The AI Bubble Is Going To Burst, And When It Does You Can Say Goodbye To High Stock Prices

July 22, 2026July 22, 2026 by Michael

Somehow we have convinced ourselves that AI companies that are bleeding billions upon billions of dollars are great investments because there is a possibility that someday they will eventually become profitable. But the losses just keep getting even bigger every year. Meanwhile, we are spending trillions of dollars to build even more AI infrastructure. There is no way that the AI industry is ever going to generate the sort of revenue that will justify that level of investment. What we are witnessing is a capital misallocation of absolutely epic proportions, and it is inevitable that this entire bubble is going to come crashing down. When that finally happens, it will be unlike anything we have ever seen before.

Stanford University says that “total global corporate investment in AI reached $1.6 trillion” from 2013 to 2024…

According to the 2025 AI Index Report by Stanford University, between 2013 and 2024, total global corporate investment in AI reached $1.6 trillion. This substantial expenditure dwarfs even the largest scientific and infrastructure projects of the 20th and 21st centuries.

That number is so high that it is difficult to believe.

But last year we took things to an entirely new level.

We are being told that total worldwide spending on AI in 2025 was 2.5 trillion dollars…

According to Gartner, a United States-based business and technology insights company, worldwide spending on AI is forecast to total $2.5 trillion in 2026, a 44 percent increase over 2025.

We are building a tremendous amount of AI infrastructure, but is it worth it?

For a long time, investors have been completely sold on the idea.

In fact, over the last three years the “value of AI-linked firms has climbed $27 trillion”…

The American stock market is booming, thanks to artificial intelligence. Tech giants are borrowing billions to acquire AI talent, purchase chips and hardware, and construct data centers. And market watchers are starting to get worried. They see financiers bulldozing giant piles of money to private AI start-ups with no realistic path to profitability, tech companies reliant on other tech companies for revenue growth, and non-tech businesses without a lot to show for their AI investments. The value of AI-linked firms has climbed $27 trillion in the past three years—an astonishing amount, equivalent to 36 percent of the value of the entire U.S. stock market today.

AI mania has reached a fever pitch.

But are these firms really worth that much money?

Of course not.

In fact, most of them are bleeding colossal amounts of cash.

A perfect example is OpenAI. Ed Zitron is warning that when OpenAI inevitably fails it could take the entire stock market down with it…

The AI bubble is simple, Ed Zitron says, because it’s really a bubble in a single company: OpenAI.

As the ChatGPT maker heads toward a momentous IPO, the vocal AI critic says that OpenAI is the only reason anyone cares about AI at all—and it’s failure would spark a collapse similar to the one set off by Lehman Brothers when the bank fell apart in 2008.

OpenAI is supposedly worth more than 800 billion dollars.

But the financial numbers that it reported for 2025 were absolutely nightmarish…

Revenue: $13.07 billion
Cost of Revenue: $7.5 billion
Research and Development: $19.18 billion
Sales and Marketing: $5.73 billion
General and Administrative: $1.57 Billion
Total Costs and Expenses: $34 billion
Loss from Operations: $20.92 billion

For the entire year, OpenAI reported a total net loss of 38.5 billion dollars…

Please note that 2025 was the year that OpenAI converted from a non-profit to a for-profit entity, leading to a $41.55 billion loss due to changes in fair value of convertible interests and warrant liability.

Taking into account other minor factors like interest income and interest expense, OpenAI is left with a net loss of $60.35 billion, which it lowered to $38.53 billion by removing $17.87 billion in costs via that “net loss attributable to noncontrolling members capital” and another $3.95 billion via a “net loss attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interests.”

Ultimately, the net loss attributable to OpenAI in 2025 was $38.5 billion.

If I hired thousands of people and we all started flushing dollar bills down the toilet as fast as we possibly could, there is no way that we could ever lose that much money in an entire year.

Open AI is a financial black hole.

Sam Altman promised us that OpenAI would soon be making $100 billion a year in ad revenue alone, but that isn’t the way that things have worked out.

Sadly, Open AI is currently on pace “to undershoot its own five-year ad revenue projections by a whopping 90 percent”…

Even as the AI bubble becomes a mainstream talking point on Wall Street, tech companies continue to peddle the fantasy that AI is poised to become an almost magical money-maker. Case in point, OpenAI wants you to believe that by 2030, it’ll be raking in $100 billion a year just from ads alone — even though it’s currently struggling to reach just $1 billion.

That massive gulf was observed in a new analysis from marketing consulting firm Emarketer, first flagged by AdWeek, which found OpenAI is on pace to undershoot its own five-year ad revenue projections by a whopping 90 percent. In fact, Emarketer’s take is even more devastating than that: it estimates the entire addressable market for chatbot advertising — the maximum amount of money up for grabs overall — at $5.4 billion.

This is an unmitigated disaster.

Other AI companies are producing similar results.

Meanwhile, a lot of companies are now ditching expensive AI models that were created in the United States for much cheaper AI models that were created in China…

As corporate AI bills spiral out of control, many companies are beginning to ask themselves a simple question: why pay a pretty penny for the US’s leading AI models when Chinese ones are far cheaper?

Major companies like DoorDash, Airbnb, and Siemens are adopting Chinese AI tools, the Financial Times reports, attracted not only by their lower costs but their “open-weight” approach that allows them to be molded to each company’s particular needs.

According to data from OpenRouter, a platform that provides all-in-one access to major AI models and tracks their usage, leading Chinese models from DeepSeek and Z.ai have overtaken US equivalents like Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Cost-cutting, it seems, trumps all geopolitical rivalries.

Chinese models are “the elephant in the room,” Eugene Cheah, CEO of the AI platform Featherless AI, told the FT. “Enterprises are starting to realize, ‘Hey, we don’t need the best model, we can use the faster, cheaper models.’”

It has become very clear that AI companies will never be the money trees that they were touted to be by their most fervent proponents.

In fact, the biggest money losers will end up being some of the most dramatic financial flops of all time.

So what does that mean for the stock market?

From a long-term point of view, stock prices are insanely high…

The S&P 500 Shiller CAPE ratio’s long-term average is around 17, and it’s been steadily creeping higher over the last decade or so.

Right now, the ratio is nearing 42 — the highest it’s been since the dot-com bubble, when it peaked at around 44.

The Shiller CAPE Ratio has stayed above 40 since May, which is only the second time in history that it’s remained this high. The first time was in January 1999, when it stayed above 40 until September 2000.

What goes up must eventually come down.

When the public hears that the AI bubble has burst, there will be a frenzied race for the exits, and the financial devastation that we will witness will be off the charts.

It is just a matter of time.

But for the moment, the race to create new AI models continues, and there is a very real possibility that this technology could escape our control.

For example, OpenAI has revealed that it created a model that “went rogue”, escaped into the Internet and hacked into the computer system of another company…

ChatGPT creator OpenAI has revealed one of its advanced Artificial Intelligence models went rogue during a security test and hacked into a start-up company.

Bosses said the autonomous agent, which is an AI system that operates alone following human instruction, was being tested in a controlled environment.

But it found vulnerabilities and managed to escape containment before reaching the internet and breaking into Hugging Face, a major hub for sharing AI models.

That is scary.

As AI technology continues to develop at an exponential rate, what else will it eventually be able to do?

Our world has become such a strange place.

Ray Kurzweil believes that a decade from now we will be so integrated with AI that we won’t even know if our thoughts are truly our own or if they are being fed to us from highly advanced AI models.

Personally, I would never allow anyone to put a chip into my head or connect my brain directly to the Internet.

But a lot of people out there would eagerly welcome such technology.

Science fiction is rapidly becoming science reality, and things are only going to get weirder from here.

Goldman Sachs Warns That Oil Could Soon Hit $120 As The “Crack Spread” Soars To New All-Time Highs

July 21, 2026July 21, 2026 by Michael

Unless we witness some sort of a crazy diplomatic miracle, the price of gasoline will soon rise into unprecedented territory. The Iranians have closed the Strait of Hormuz, the Houthis are blocking Saudi tankers from getting through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and with a big helping hand from the United States the Ukrainians are relentlessly attacking Russian oil refineries. Meanwhile, the oil inventory buffers that existed before the war with Iran are rapidly being depleted. Nations around the world are doing whatever they can to adjust to this crisis, but time is running out.

According to analysts at Goldman Sachs, the price of oil could soon hit $120 a barrel if a diplomatic solution to the conflict in the Middle East is not found…

Oil prices could reach upward of $120 a barrel if tensions between the U.S. and Iran don’t start to ease soon.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs, led by Daan Struyven, wrote in a note published on Monday night that Brent crude may surpass $120 a barrel by next quarter and average $100 a barrel the following year if the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted throughout 2027. In this scenario, output from the Persian Gulf doesn’t recover until December next year, with the support of oil-pipeline extensions.

If the price of oil reaches that level and stays there for an extended period of time, a major global economic downturn is essentially guaranteed.

The good news is that the price of oil is not anywhere near that level yet.

But on Tuesday the price of Brent crude did exceed the $90 barrier for the first time since June 11th…

After 10 consecutive days of U.S. strikes on Iran, Brent crude oil futures settled above the key threshold of $90 a barrel Tuesday.

Brent futures ended the day at $91.01, up 2.1%. The last time they settled above $90 a barrel was on June 11, less than a week before the U.S. and Iran signed a memo of understanding aimed at ending hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz while a longer-term peace deal was negotiated. But that 60-day truce ended less than a month after it was signed.

The trend is not our friend at this stage.

Of course the price of crude oil is not the only number that we need to be watching.

The “crack spread” has been soaring, and that should deeply alarm all of us.

If you are not familiar with the “crack spread”, the following is a pretty good explanation…

The process works like this: Refiners take in raw crude oil (the price mostly referred to in headlines) and “crack” it into usable petroleum products. But just like crude is its own commodity, gasoline and diesel have their own trading prices as well. The profit that oil refineries make from converting crude into usable fuels is the “crack spread.”

Prior to the war, the “crack spread” was usually about 10 to 15 dollars a barrel.

This week, it reached a whopping 70 dollars a barrel…

But while everyone has been watching crude oil, a different oil measure — the one that arguably matters more for the price at the gas pump — has never stopped climbing. That measure, called the “crack spread,” is at all-time highs.

The crack spread is the gap between what a refinery pays for crude and what it earns selling the gasoline and diesel it makes from it. For most of the past decade that gap fluctuated between $10 and $15 a barrel. This week it hit $70, the widest spread ever recorded.

The margin for refining a barrel of oil is now more than what an entire barrel of crude cost the day this war began. And here is the tell: It kept climbing while crude collapsed, and it is still climbing now that crude is rising. It does not care which way the headline price moves.

The crack spread is the market telling you, in dollars, that the right crude is not reaching the right refineries. The price of oil can do whatever it likes. The machines that turn it into fuel are screaming either way.

The conflicts in the Middle East and in Ukraine are the primary reason why the “crack spread” has been steadily widening.

Many refineries in the Persian Gulf region are currently not operating due to the war with Iran, and we keep helping Ukraine damage refineries all over Russia…

The current conflict between Russia and Ukraine that started in February 2022 has significantly damaged global refining capacity, with Russian crude runs falling to a 22-year low of 3.8 million barrels per day in June, according to a Truist report.

It also resulted in a Russian ban on diesel exports, limiting how much crude oil can actually be turned into fuel and reach the global market.

“When 1 in 9 barrels of diesel is produced in Russia, and suddenly they’re banning exports, it’s problematic,” De Haan said.

The U.S.-Iran war has made matters even worse. Despite previous talks to de-escalate the conflict, the International Energy Agency said in its July oil-market report that Middle East export refineries have yet to restart.

We desperately need peace.

But there isn’t going to be peace.

Instead, there were some dramatic escalations last week, and there have been more dramatic escalations this week.

On Monday, the Houthis announced that Saudi commercial vessels would no longer be allowed to travel through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait…

A successful effort by Yemen’s Houthis to shut the Bab el-Mandeb Strait would strike at one of the world’s most important oil shipping routes, potentially triggering a fresh surge in crude prices, disrupting fuel supplies and adding to strains on the global economy.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis on Monday declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia, its military spokesperson said. A closure of the Red Sea’s southern gateway would remove a critical alternative route for the kingdom to the Strait of Hormuz and intensify fears of shortages.

This blockade seems to be working, because at least 8 oil tankers have already been forced to turn around…

One analyst is warning that the impact that this move will have on global markets will be “massive”…

A full closure would have the biggest immediate impact on Saudi crude exports from the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Matt Smith, commodity research director at Kpler, said Asian refiners receiving those barrels could face delays of around a month as tankers are forced to sail around the Cape of Good Hope.

“The impact is going to be massive in the first month,” Smith said. “The biggest impact is going to be on Saudi flows.”

The bottom line is that everyone in the world will soon be paying much more for gasoline unless a miracle happens.

And once all of our buffers are totally gone, shortages and rationing will begin to manifest in various parts of the globe.

I expect Asia to feel the pain first, and Europe will quickly follow.

There is still time for peace to prevail, but that window is getting narrower each day.

For a long time I have been warning my readers that crazier times were on the way, and what we are experiencing now is just the beginning.

43 Days And Counting: Apathetic Americans Are About To Be Blindsided By A Major League Wake Up Call

July 20, 2026July 20, 2026 by Michael

I really don’t understand the tremendous apathy that I am witnessing right now. Everyone can see that commercial oil inventories are rapidly being depleted. As I discussed yesterday, the global oil market had about 400 million barrels of excess inventory before the war, and now we have “close to nothing”. But at least we still have the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, right? Yes, that is true, but that is being rapidly depleted as well. In fact, when you add the dwindling commercial oil inventors in the U.S. to the oil that is left in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we only have 43 days of supply remaining…

This doesn’t meant that 43 days from now we will be totally out of oil.

What it does mean is that our buffer is almost entirely gone.

Once it is entirely gone, as a society we will be forced to use less oil than we normally do.

Gasoline prices will likely rise until we see enough “demand destruction” to bring overall demand into balance with existing supply levels.

And that will likely start happening some time around the beginning of September.

Of course it is entirely possible that this could occur even sooner than 43 days from now.

Thanks to the negligence of the Biden administration, one of the four major underground storage sites for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is apparently “inoperable” at this point…

The extreme incompetence that we have been witnessing in recent years absolutely horrifies me.

Let us hope that there is enough oil that we can actually access in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to get us through this crisis.

But I don’t think that there will be.

The war in the Middle East just continues to intensify, and now the Houthis have announced that they will be blocking Saudi vessels from traveling through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait…

Houthi militants in Yemen on Monday declared a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia effective immediately, threatening to exacerbate the oil supply disruption triggered by Iran’s attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.

The Houthis have repeatedly threatened to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait during the U.S.-Iran war. The strait is a choke point for commercial ship traffic that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and global markets.

This is a major bombshell.

Much of the oil that the Saudis used to send through the Strait of Hormuz had been going through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait instead…

The Saudis have diverted million of barrels of oil per day through a pipeline to an export terminal on the Red Sea. Those exports have acted as a crucial relief valve for global oil markets during the U.S.-Iran war.

A closure of Bab el-Mandeb would block in those barrels, exacerbating the disruption triggered by Iran’s attacks on tankers in Hormuz.

So what is Saudi Arabia going to do now?

We have never seen the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait closed simultaneously, and this could send the price of oil into the stratosphere…

Virtually nothing has been moving through the Strait of Hormuz since late last week, and now the Iranians are really cracking down.

Just a little while ago, the Iranians attacked a Saudi vessel that was attempting to sneak through the Strait…

Prior to that, two Greek-owned tankers were “hit by projectiles” that came from Iran…

One of two Greek-owned tankers hit by projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz has been abandoned by its crew after fire was reported on the vessel.

The crew was rescued by a tugboat after abandoning the Maltese-flagged Kavomaleas owned by Greece’s Dynacom Tankers.

The only way to stop Iran from attacking commercial ships with missiles and drones would be to send in ground troops.

And that is not going to happen any time soon.

So the global oil crisis is only going to get worse.

Already, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States is back above four dollars…

With the resumption of the war with Iran, gas has returned to a national average of $4 a gallon this week. Gas prices had started coming down after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a peace deal, which brought stability to the market. Then, as everyone with an IQ over 70 expected, that all fell apart as Iran continued to violate the agreement. Nevertheless, we did have a few weeks of gas prices coming down.

“The price is a national average, meaning drivers in some states have been paying well over $4 a gallon for a while now, while others pay less. Prices vary between states due to factors ranging from nearby supply to differing tax rates,” reports the far-left Associated Press. “People around the world are also dealing with high gas prices as a result of the war.”

Of course this is just the beginning.

Gasoline prices will go much higher than this.

Meanwhile, electricity rates have risen 18 percent in just 18 months…

From Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 to April 2026, the most recent month for which government data are available, residential electricity rates have risen by an eye-watering 18 percent.

Sadly, it appears that electricity prices are poised to accelerate even more…

Nationally, utilities in the second quarter of 2026 “asked state regulators to approve $9.2 billion in rate hikes, up 26% from the $7.3 billion in rate increase proposals filed in the same period last year,” reports Utility Dive.

Virtually every form of economic activity requires energy.

So when energy becomes more expensive, the cost of living goes up for everyone.

Our entire way of life depends on cheap energy.

That era is over.

In the short-term, rising prices will put an enormous amount of stress on American families.

And the outlook beyond the short-term is extremely bleak.

We really have reached a major turning point in human history.

The apocalyptic war that is unfolding in the Middle East is going to radically change all of our lives.

Most Americans are still very apathetic for the moment, but a major league wake up call is coming, and it is going to be very painful.

We Are Being Warned That Global Oil Inventories Are “Close To Nothing” As We Plunge Into The Most Severe Oil Crisis In History

July 19, 2026July 19, 2026 by Michael

The only way that we were going to avoid a historic oil crisis was if a diplomatic solution could be found to end the war in the Middle East. Obviously that did not happen. The “Memorandum of Understanding” has completely failed and the U.S. and Iran are hitting one another really hard. The Strait of Hormuz is going to be closed for the foreseeable future, and now it appears that the Bab el-Mandeb Strait will soon be closed as well. Global oil inventories have been falling for months, and now we have reached a stage where we are going to experience some really severe pain.

Iran has attacked at least 9 commercial vessels over the past couple of weeks, and as a result “nobody is willing to move” through the Strait of Hormuz right now…

The security situation in the Strait of Hormuz has returned to a “worse-case scenario” for oil tankers as Iran has repeatedly attacked ships over the past week, the CEO of a maritime risk services firm said.

“We see the reduction of the volume of transits through the Strait of Hormuz and right now crews of vessels are even more concerned than they were before,” said Dimitris Maniatis, CEO of Athens-headquartered Marisks, at a Lloyd’s List Intelligence briefing this week.

“Nobody is willing to move,” Maniatis said.

This is really bad.

We are truly going to see how dependent the world really is on oil from the Middle East.

Up to this point, we have been okay because there were large commercial oil stockpiles that we could deplete.

But now we are being told that we have “burned through all of the buffers we had”…

Financial Times spoke with energy traders at the end of the week who warned that slowing tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz could trigger a more severe supply crunch than the first round of the US-Iran war because emergency reserves and stockpiles around the world that cushioned the earlier disruption have been mostly depleted.

“We’ve burned through all of the buffers we had. Everything,” said one trader. “All of that’s now gone.

Perhaps some numbers will help people understand the situation that we are facing.

Before the war, we had approximately 400 million barrels of oil in commercial inventories.

At this point, “we have close to nothing”…

Amrita Sen, founder of Energy Aspects, pointed out that heading into the US-Iran war, the global oil market had around 400 million barrels of excess inventories, not including strategic reserves controlled by governments.

“Now we have close to nothing … and market complacency around Hormuz flows is being severely tested,” Sen warned.

In other words, we are right around the corner from shortages and rationing in some parts of the globe.

Asia will probably be first, and then Europe will follow.

And the outlook for the U.S. is becoming quite dire as well.

In fact, crude oil inventories at Cushing have been hovering around “tank bottoms” recently…

Crude oil inventories at the Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub have fallen below 20 million barrels in recent weeks, prompting the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) to explain how “tank bottoms” can affect storage operations and market pricing.

According to EIA, storage tanks require a minimum volume of crude oil to remain operational. Known as tank bottoms, this inventory allows pumps and related infrastructure to function properly. Once inventories approach these minimum operating levels, not all stored crude is readily accessible, even though tanks are not technically empty.

The good news is that we still have some oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but it is falling fast.

According to the Wall Street Journal, it is currently at the lowest level that we have seen since 1983…

Oil shocks from the war with Iran and the Russia-Ukraine conflict have left the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve at its lowest level since 1983.

The world has been running an “oil deficit” for months.

Now the Strait of Hormuz is closed again, and the Houthis could soon shut the Bab al-Mandab Strait…

Iran has reportedly instructed Yemen’s Houthi terrorists to prepare to close a critical Red Sea gateway if the United States attacks Iranian power infrastructure, Reuters reported, a threat experts warn could sharply disrupt global shipping even if the group cannot completely seal the waterway.

“This threat should be taken seriously,” Nadwa Al-Dawsari of the Middle East Institute told Fox News Digital. “With recent escalation and U.S. strikes on Iran, Tehran has already signaled that the Bab al-Mandab could become part of its response.”

Three sources told Reuters on Thursday that Iran’s leadership had discussed using the Houthis to shut the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and recently conveyed the request to the group. A source close to the Houthis said missiles and drones had been deployed near the waterway and that the group was awaiting an order to begin attacking shipping.

The Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab Strait have never been shut at the same time.

If that actually happens, energy prices will go absolutely nuts.

Meanwhile, relentless strikes on Russian refineries have caused an insane gasoline shortage in Russia.

Many drivers are waiting multiple hours in line for gasoline, and security forces have been deployed to keep order at gas stations…

Authorities in 13 Russian regions have deployed security forces, including police officers and Rosgvardia personnel, to patrol gas stations as the country faces an escalating domestic fuel crisis following Ukrainian long-range strikes.

The crisis has caused a 35% drop in daily gasoline production to 75,000–80,000 metric tons, far below the typical summer demand of 115,000–120,000 metric tons, leaving half of Russia’s oil refining capacity idle, as reported by The Moscow Times on July 17.

In response to the shortage, local administrations have set strict fuel sales limits ranging from 20 to 40 liters of gasoline per vehicle, leading to long lines where drivers face wait times of at least 2.5 hours.

The Ukrainians are going to continue sending drones to strike Russia’s refineries, and the Russian people are extremely frustrated.

Some of the lines stretch for miles, and in two cases elderly people actually dropped dead while they were waiting…

For months, the queues at petrol stations across Russia have grown longer.

Some people have slept in cars. Others have pitched tents. A few have ended up brawling over pumps.

Now, two people have died.

An 80-year-old man suffered heart failure while waiting to fill his tank at a petrol station in the town of Lysva in Perm Krai, while a 75-year-old man died while waiting to refuel in Petrozavodsk.

The Russians are normally one of the largest oil exporters in the world.

But now they have been forced to beg India for gasoline…

Moscow has approached Indian refineries for more gasoline imports amid an acute fuel shortage, according to industry sources cited by Reuters.

Russia, the world’s third-largest oil producer, has reportedly requested gasoline imports from India and Kazakhstan in June amid a sprawling fuel crisis spurred by Ukrainian strikes, with nationwide fuel rationing reported.

Reuters, in its Thursday report, said Russian oil giants Rosneft, Gazprom Neft and Lukoil have approached their Indian counterparts to raise imports, with the outlet’s source adding that deliveries are likely to be routed through traders.

This is another reason why this oil crisis is going to be so severe.

The worst gasoline shortages in the world at this moment are in one of the largest oil producers in the world.

Meanwhile, the war in the Middle East just continues to escalate.

We had a very large cushion to work with at the beginning of the war, but now it has been almost entirely depleted.

This is where things get very “interesting”, and the vast majority of the population has no idea what is coming.

A 28 Item Grocery Order From Target That Cost $64.50 In 2020 Is Now $158.30 In 2026

July 16, 2026July 16, 2026 by Michael

The cost of living has become absolutely suffocating for millions of Americans. For years, the bureaucrats in Washington have been feeding us numbers that show that the rate of inflation is low, but it is obvious to everyone that what they are telling us is simply not true. Many of the items that I regularly purchase at the grocery store have more than doubled in price over the past decade. Some have more than tripled in price. When I get to the register to check out, I feel like asking the cashier which organ I should donate to pay for my groceries.

We have reached a stage where grocery prices are causing extreme financial stress for families all over America. One man recently caused quite a stir on social media when he revealed that a grocery order from Target that cost $64.50 in 2020 is now $158.30 in 2026…

This post has already been viewed a million times.

The reason why it is so popular is because it instantly resonates with people.

Everyone knows that grocery prices have risen to absurd levels, and yet the statisticians in Washington keep assuring us that everything is fine.

I don’t believe them.

Do you?

The Washington Post just conducted a poll that found that 66 percent of Americans consider the cost of groceries to be unaffordable.

That figure has risen by 21 percent just since February…

Americans are feeling worse about the price of groceries than they were before the war with Iran began, a Washington Post-Ipsos poll finds.

About two-thirds, or 66 percent, of Americans say they would describe the cost of groceries as unaffordable, up sharply from the 45 percent who said the same thing in February before the conflict started.

Partisanship continues to play a big role in perceptions, with half of Republicans saying groceries are affordable in the latest poll, compared with about one-quarter of independents and Democrats.

Housing is even worse.

The median price of an existing home in the United States has now surpassed the $440,000 mark…

With a landmark housing affordability bill in political limbo, U.S. home prices have hit an all-time high.

The median price of existing homes in June was $440,660, up 1.8% from $432,700 a year ago, according to new data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Home prices have risen for 36 straight months.

“Housing affordability remains low under slowing wage growth and stronger home price growth,” Ershang Liang, an economist with PNC Economics Research, said in a report.

Who can afford to pay that much for a house?

Rental prices have also gone through the roof.

If you can believe it, the average rent on a one bedroom apartment in Manhattan is now a whopping $5,408 a month…

The city’s housing crisis has hit “DefCon 1” — with average rents for a one-bedroom in Manhattan hitting an all-time high of nearly $5,500 last month, and Brooklyn following suit, according to new data and critics.

“We need bold action. This is a crisis,’’ New York City Comptroller Mark Levine posted on X over the weekend, along with a link to the latest figures from the inhabit blog by real-estate giant Corcoran Group.

The dismal June stats reveal that renters paid an average of $5,408 for a one-bedroom in Manhattan, with studio prices not far behind at $4,014.

It isn’t a mystery why most Americans are struggling in this sort of an environment.

Many are turning to debt in a desperate attempt to make ends meet…

Many American families are struggling to make ends meet on their incomes alone and have resorted to credit cards, payday loans, and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) options for groceries, according to nonprofit research center Urban Institute.

The findings are based on a survey of 18-to 64-year-old working-age adults conducted in December 2025. About 8.7 percent of adults said they used a credit card for groceries and were unable to make the minimum payment, up from 7.1 percent in 2023, the Urban Institute said in a July 13 report. This suggests “worsening financial distress” among families.

Almost one in 10 used BNPL to pay for groceries, out of which more than a third missed a timely repayment last year.

Unfortunately, when you keep piling up debt a day of reckoning eventually arrives.

Coming into this year, alarmingly large numbers of Americans were getting behind on their credit cards…

And the number of foreclosures in the U.S. is way above the highly elevated pace that we witnessed last year…

Foreclosures across the U.S. ballooned in the first half of the year, a sign of the increasing financial strain facing the nation’s homeowners.

Foreclosure filings reached nearly 228,000 from January to June, up 21% from a year ago and 28% from two years ago, according to data released Thursday from real estate data company ATTOM.

Rising foreclosure rates indicate that more homeowners are in financial distress, Rob Barber, CEO of ATTOM, said in a statement. Homes go into foreclosure when the owner falls behind on mortgage payments, often due to extenuating life circumstances such as a job loss. ATTOM defines foreclosures as default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions.

This reminds me so much of the conditions that we experienced just before the financial crisis of 2008.

Unfortunately, the cost of living is only going to go higher.

The cost of energy directly affects the cost of everything else, and it appears that the Strait of Hormuz is going to be closed for an extended period of time.

The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. has nearly reached four dollars again, and the average price of a gallon of diesel has already risen above the five dollar mark…

US gas prices have rocketed higher during the on-again, off-again war with Iran.

After a brief respite, the average price for gas has surged 15 cents in a week to $3.94 a gallon and appears headed north of $4 again. Diesel, which shows up in customers’ shipping costs, topped $5 a gallon again Thursday for the first time in 3 weeks, according to AAA.

It serves as a painful reminder of how the military conflict in the Persian Gulf has a direct effect on your wallet.

Of even greater importance is what the closure of the Strait of Hormuz means for the global fertilizer market.

As Mike Adams has pointed out, without sufficient quantities of nitrogen fertilizer we won’t even come close to producing enough food for everyone…

Admittedly, I have failed to explain the stakes clearly enough. For months, I have written about fertilizer supply chains, the Haber-Bosch process, and the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz. But the gravity of this crisis has not sunk in for most people. Let me put it as plainly as I can: The global population of more than 8 billion people depends on a fragile web of natural gas, oil, and downstream chemistry that took 60+ years to build on this planet. If we lose 25 percent of these critical substances, we lose 25 percent of the population. That is 2 billion people. Here is why that math is inescapable.

As I documented in my article “The Haber-Bosch House of Cards,” the single chemical reaction that fixes nitrogen from the air into fertilizer is responsible for feeding roughly half of humanity ^[1]. That process requires vast quantities of natural gas. The Persian Gulf region, especially Qatar and Iran, supplies much of that gas. When the Trump administration launched its war on Iran in February 2026 and the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed, the global fertilizer supply chain began to collapse. This is not a prediction of future famine. The famine is already baked in. But it could still get a whole lot worse depending on how things go from here.

We could be facing multiple years when global food production is at depressed levels.

That means that food prices will go even higher in wealthy countries, and in poor countries there will be shortages.

Famine is one of the major trends that I am tracking, and what we are already witnessing in some parts of Africa is absolutely heartbreaking.

There is no magic button that we can press that is going to make these problems go away.

A crisis of historic proportions is now upon us, and we are still only in the very early stages of it.

The Battle For The Strait Of Hormuz Will Show Whether The World Can Survive Without Oil From The Persian Gulf Or Not

July 14, 2026 by Michael

Now we are going to get to see what really happens to the global economy when the Strait of Hormuz is completely closed for an extended period of time. Before the war, approximately 45 percent of all Asian oil imports traveled through the Strait of Hormuz. The Chinese normally get more oil from the Middle East than anyone else, and the amount of crude oil that they have been importing has collapsed. That is not sustainable for the Chinese, and they are getting very angry. At the same time, relentless drone attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure have forced the Russians to buy gasoline from India. If the Strait of Hormuz remains completely closed for months, global energy supplies will get extremely tight and the price of oil will go into unprecedented territory.

On Monday, the world was shocked when two oil tankers from the United Arab Emirates were struck by Iranian cruise missiles…

Iranian cruise missiles hit two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, killing one crew member and injuring eight, the United Arab Emirates’ Ministry of Defense said Monday.

The attacks took place when the tankers — Mombasa and Al Bahiyah — were sailing through the strait’s southern shipping lane, which hugs the coast of Oman, the defense ministry said. Iran has insisted that commercial ships use a separate lane near the Iranian coastline and seek permission from Iranian authorities. Iran has not publicly commented on the apparent attacks.

The deceased crew member and six injured crew members were Indian nationals, and two of those injured were from Ukraine, according to the United Arab Emirates.

The Iranians have warned that any commercial vessels that attempt to travel through the Strait of Hormuz without their permission are subject to attack, and they were not bluffing.

On Tuesday, three Liberian-flagged oil tankers were also attacked by the Iranians…

Oman’s Maritime Security Center said Tuesday that three Liberian-flagged oil tankers were targeted in separate incidents off the Omani coast.

The center said the Al Bahyah, owned by Al Bahyah Inc. and based in the United Arab Emirates, was targeted about 9.6 nautical miles off the coast of Musandam Governorate.

A Royal Navy of Oman vessel is monitoring the situation, and 18 crew members were evacuated by nearby maritime vessels, while three crew members remain missing, officials said.

These attacks have brought traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to a standstill.

And that isn’t going to change any time soon, because the IRGC just announced that “as long as the US evil stays in the region, not a drop of oil and gas will be exported from the region”…

Amid ongoing cross-Gulf attacks today between Iranian and US forces, the IRGC says they targeted enemy weapons and parts storages in Bahrain and Kuwait. This after the US appeared to attack some critical Iranian infrastructure on coastal islands.

The IRGC has issued a fresh statement via state media on Tuesday, saying that “as long as the US evil stays in the region, not a drop of oil and gas will be exported from the region.”

Wow.

That is quite a strong statement.

Meanwhile, President Trump has decided to impose a “full blockade” on all ship traffic coming to and from Iran…

This is really happening.

Even before these latest moves, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz had fallen to the lowest level in five weeks…

Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dipped on Sunday to the lowest number in five weeks as the latest U.S.-Iran escalation reignited concerns among ship operators about safety at the key oil and LNG chokepoint.

Now that the Iranians have shown that they are quite serious about enforcing the closure of the Strait, it is highly unlikely that shipping companies will dare to test them.

Even the smallest oil tankers cost millions of dollars, and so if you own one you don’t want it getting sent to the bottom of the ocean by a cruise missile.

And the U.S. Navy is going to make sure that no Iranian oil gets shipped out of the region.

The U.S. blockade of Iran is really going to upset the Chinese, because they depend on that oil.

On Tuesday, they demanded the resumption of “normal and safe passage” through the Strait…

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson demanded “normal and safe passage” be restored in the Strait of Hormuz Tuesday before the United States reinstated a naval blockade targeting Iranian ports.

Lin Jian made the remark when asked by Iranian state media about the renewed U.S. military blockade and if Beijing is “prepared to take any concrete steps to mitigate the impact of these measures against Iran and deepen its economic and military cooperation with Iran.” President Donald Trump said Monday he was reinstating the blockade because Iran broke the recent ceasefire deal by launching missile attacks on commercial tankers and by trying to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

“China is deeply concerned over resumed military conflict in the Gulf region. China calls on relevant parties to heed the strong call for peace and stability from the region and beyond, remain calm and exercise restraint, safeguard the hard-won ceasefire, avoid the return of war and more importantly, prevent the fighting from spreading and hurting more innocent people,” Lin Jian said Tuesday.

The good news for the Chinese is that they have larger oil reserves than anyone else.

But the bad news is that China’s crude oil imports have fallen to exceedingly low levels…

China’s crude oil imports crashed to a decade-low in June as the reduced flows through the Strait of Hormuz hiked oil prices and reduced refiners’ appetite for costly crude.

Overall Chinese imports of crude oil plunged by 41.3% in June from a year earlier, to just 29.27 million tons, or 7.12 million barrels per day (bpd), according to official Chinese customs data released on Tuesday.

If this crisis goes on for long enough, China will be forced to do something to restore the flow of oil.

But unless one side chooses to back down, there is no chance that this crisis will end any time soon.

As a former Pentagon official named Jason H. Campbell has pointed out, bombing Iran from the air will not be enough to win the battle for the Strait of Hormuz…

“It’s very difficult to envision any scenario where you could satisfactorily secure the Strait of Hormuz absent ground forces,” Campbell said.

Doing so would require tens of thousand of troops, Campbell said, not only to take out Iran’s hidden munitions but to secure hundreds of miles of coastline and large swaths of inland territory. The U.S. troops would likely face insurgent attacks.

Standing up that kind of force would take a few months and include “very high costs,” Campbell said.

This is what I have been saying all along.

Hitting Iran from the air is not going to get the job done, but sending ground forces in is unthinkable.

So where do we go from here?

For now, the bombing of Iran continues.

On Tuesday the Iranians hit Bahrain with cluster munitions, and the U.S. response has already begun…

We are also being told that the U.S. is attacking Qeshm Island once again…

Projectiles hit Iran’s Gulf island of Qeshm near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, Iran’s state broadcaster reported, citing local officials who blamed the U.S.

“At 19:00, a location on Qeshm Island was struck by projectiles from the American enemy,” Hormozgan governor’s office said, according to IRIB.

This is it.

Iran War 3 is here.

The IDF is not an active participant yet, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is telling the Iranians that they will get hit really hard if Israel is attacked…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Iran Tuesday that Israel would hit back if attacked.

“Do not count on things remaining quiet if you attack us,” Netanyahu said at a conference in Dimona, in Israel’s southeast, in a video released by his office. “The days are over when someone strikes us and we don’t hit back with a decisive blow.”

I think that it is just a matter of time before Iranian missiles are flying toward Israel once again.

And then things will get really crazy.

Speaking of crazy, the Houthis just bombarded an airport in Saudi Arabia after one of their own airports got bombed by the Saudis…

Meanwhile, the threat of Iranian-backed Houthis being dragged into the war was raised when Saudi Arabia said the militant group fired ballistic missiles and drones at a civilian airport in the kingdom’s southwestern city of Abha.

The attacks were the first major fighting since a 2022 truce that ended a seven-year conflict between northern Yemen’s Tehran-aligned rulers and several Arab countries.

The militant group had accused the Saudis of bombing its airport in the capital Sanaa to prevent the landing of a plane returning the Houthi delegation from the funeral of Iran’s slain leader, Ali Khamenei.

A full-blown war between the Houthis and the Saudis could erupt at any time.

And that could drag in Pakistan, because the Pakistanis recently signed a mutual defense pact with the Saudis…

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Tuesday in a post on X that Pakistan “strongly condemns” the Houthi ballistic missile attacks targeting southern Saudi Arabia, calling them a violation of the kingdom’s sovereignty and reaffirming Islamabad’s “unwavering support” for its security.

The time for talk is over.

I am convinced that we will soon witness some absolutely shocking escalations, and the Strait of Hormuz will be closed for an extended period of time.

This will be a real test of the resilience of the global economy.

Oil stockpiles are being steadily depleted, and once they get low enough there will be a tremendous amount of panic.

There Is Going To Be An All-Out Fight For Control Of The Strait Of Hormuz, And The Implications Are Staggering

July 13, 2026July 13, 2026 by Michael

There will be no negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz. There will only be fighting. The U.S. and Iran will now engage in an all-out war for control of the Strait of Hormuz, and the consequences will be felt by every man, woman and child on the entire planet. Traffic through the Strait will be paralyzed for the foreseeable future, and there will be a severe worldwide energy supply crunch as a result. Since neither side intends to surrender, the only way that the crisis ends is for one side to achieve military victory. The U.S. military cannot take out the Iranian missiles and drones that are threatening commercial traffic through the Strait from the air. If that was possible, it would have been done already. To fully eliminate the threat of Iranian missiles and drones, it would require either boots on the ground or nuclear war, and both of those options are unthinkable. So unless a negotiated solution somehow materializes out of thin air, we have got a giant mess on our hands that has no easy solution.

On Friday, President Trump gave the Iranians a 24 hour ultimatum.

The Iranians were told that they must declare the Strait of Hormuz to be completely open and they must stop attacking commercial ships.

In response, the Iranians rejected that ultimatum, they severely damaged a commercial vessel, and now they have declared the Strait of Hormuz to be closed…

“Due to recent hostile actions by the US forces, passage through the Strait of Hormuz is currently unfeasible,” Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority declared in a social media post Monday.

“As soon as stability and calm are restored, all applications will be reviewed in accordance with the scheduled timeline, and the permitting process will resume,” the PGSA added, reminding vessels that in Iran’s view, “the sole means of obtaining a passage permit” to transit the strait is through its website.

The PGSA was created by Iran during the war and Tehran insists that all commercial vessels wishing to transit the waterway seek permission via the agency and then use a northern route, close to Iran’s coast.

Once the Iranians rejected Trump’s ultimatum, it will inevitable that there would be military action, and over the weekend U.S. Central Command hit Iran really hard…

US forces decimated Iran’s drone and missile sites in their latest efforts to keep the Strait of Hormuz secure for transiting cargo ships.

US Central Command announced late Sunday night that American troops completed a new wave of ‘offensive strikes,’ hitting dozens of targets ‘to degrade Iran’s ability to continue attacking international shipping flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.’

‘The Strait of Hormuz is a vital maritime corridor for global trade,’ Central Command said. ‘Iran does not control it.’

Iran responded by launching retaliatory strikes and insisting, ‘The Strait of Hormuz is our territory.’

We are being told that U.S. Central Command struck approximately 140 targets inside Iran.

Of course the Iranians were going to strike back, and it is being reported that they targeted U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan and Oman…

US Central Command revealed US forces unleashed air-delivered munitions on dozens of Iranian air-defense systems, coastal radar systems, missile launch sites, and drone capabilities, bringing the weekend total to about 140 targets. This move aimed to degrade the IRGC’s ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Hormuz chokepoint, which it has done over the past week.

Iran responded with attacks on US-linked facilities in Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, and Oman, while also claiming it intercepted two vessels using what it called an “illegal route” through Hormuz.

A large pillar of smoke was seen rising from the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain.

There is no turning back now, and Trump just escalated matters by reinstating the naval blockade on all Iranian ports…

“We are reinstating the THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE, so named because it is only stopping Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving. All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform.

But that wasn’t all that Trump said.

In an absolutely shocking post on his Truth Social Account, Trump also announced that everyone else will be charged a rate of 20 percent on all cargo shipped to pass through the Strait of Hormuz…

We have never seen anything even remotely close to this before.

Trump told Fox News that the U.S. will get paid “a lot of money” for guarding the Strait…

President Trump said Monday, speaking with Fox News, that the U.S. would not only take control of the Strait of Hormuz, but that other countries – which he did not name but he implied were the Persian Gulf energy producers – would pay the U.S. for securing it.

“We’ll become the guardian of the strait. Maybe we’ll call it ‘the Guardian Angel of the Strait,’ and we should be reimbursed for that. When we do that, we’re going to be reimbursed, because the other nations are very wealthy; they’re on our side, and we can’t be expected to do that for nothing,” Mr. Trump said in the phone interview.

He claimed the U.S. had “guarded the strait for 50 years, more, and we never got paid for it,” saying other nations “made all the money … We guarded it for nothing, and now we’re going to guard it. We’re going to get paid for guarding it, a lot of money.”

To guard commercial traffic going through the Strait, the U.S. will have to take out the underground missile cities where Iran is hiding their missiles and drones from our airstrikes.

That would take boots on the ground, and supposedly that was an option that was not even being considered.

Until the threat of Iranian missiles and drones is eliminated, very little traffic will be getting through the Strait of Hormuz.

On Sunday, just 14 commercial vessels passed through the Strait…

Ship traffic has fallen steeply in the Strait of Hormuz over the last week, after Iranian attacks on commercial vessels sparked renewed fighting between Washington and Tehran.

Fourteen ships transited Hormuz on Sunday, four of which were crude oil tankers, a decline of about 60% compared to the 37 vessels that crossed the same day last week, according to data from the trade intelligence firm Kpler.

Before the war, approximately 120 to 130 commercial vessels would pass through the Strait each day.

The flow of oil, natural gas, fertilizer and other essential commodities will be seriously interrupted until this crisis is over.

And that could be a while, because the fighting with Iran threatens to spark a major regional conflict.

In fact, it appears that Saudi Arabia just bombed Sanaa International Airport in Yemen…

The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen accuse Saudi Arabia of carrying out airstrikes at Sanaa Airport in the capital.

“In a blatant and unjust aggression, the criminal Saudi enemy carried out a number of airstrikes targeting Sanaa International Airport, thereby ending the period of de-escalation and bearing responsibility for the consequences of its aggression,” Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree says in a statement.

“We affirm that this aggression will not go unanswered or unpunished,” he adds.

The Houthis have pledged to retaliate, and that could potentially include strikes on Saudi oil facilities…

The Houthis are also threatening to completely shut down the Bab al-Mandab Strait…

We could potentially be just hours away from all-out war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

That would certainly begin another frightening new chapter in the crisis in the Middle East.

I kept warning my readers that there wasn’t going to be peace in the Middle East, and now that is becoming obvious to everyone.

Meanwhile, the U.S. political establishment is dealing with the sudden death of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham.

Apparently he was planning to seek medical attention shortly before he died…

A person who spoke with Graham shortly afterward said the senator complained that he was feeling unwell. When the person urged him to seek medical attention immediately, Graham said he would do so Sunday morning after his scheduled appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Graham then joked: “I can’t die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out and do Israeli-Saudi normalization.”
He passed away several hours later.

There is a lot of speculation that a foreign power may have been involved in Graham’s death.

If that could be proven, it would change everything.

For now, we are being told that his heart was the cause of his death…

US Senator Lindsey Graham’s preliminary cause of death has been divulged following an investigation by the DC Medical Examiner.

Per a statement issued by Graham’s office just before 5:00pm EST on Sunday, ‘Aortic Dissection due to Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease,’ was the cause of his ‘sudden’ passing.

‘The death certificate will be PENDING until all the toxicological and microscopic testing are finalized, and at that point the death certificate will be updated to reflect the cause of death and appropriately classify the manner of death,’ Graham’s spokesperson added in the statement.

We live at a time when absolutely crazy things are happening nearly every day.

For a long time, most people in the western world were able to ignore global events because they weren’t being directly affected by them.

But now we have reached a stage where everyone is going to be deeply affected by the stunning events that are occurring on the other side of the globe.

The pace of change is about to go into overdrive, and so I would encourage you to hold on tight as we plunge into an abyss of uncertainty.

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