After Israel attacked gasfields and Iran retaliated. Iran didn't start any of this.
Don't discount that the US foisted Saddam Hussein and his chemical weapons on Iran's population. They lost some 20 to 30 thousand civilians to chemical weapons attacks. Yet never once counterattacked with chemical weapons.
The assassinated Khamenei even had a fatwa declaring weapons of mass destruction to be un-Islamic.
No one is innocent in this world, but I can certainly understand why Iran feels the way it does and I find it justified, in the sense had I been born there I probably would feel the same way.
Recall Iran was the only middle-eastern country that supported the UN resolution forming the state of Israel.
US interference left them with a bad taste in their mouth. No wonder they do not like the US and their partners in geopolitical resource grabs.
Citizens of the US and its vassal states are quick to ignore that. Most are too lazy to exercise critical thinking.
That timeline is incorrect. Iran attacked nearby countries oil and gas since the 2nd day of the war. So, from the get go. (Not to mention closing the Strait of Hormuz, and attacking random oil tankers).
Israel/US started the War, Iran was the first to use oil/gas as a weapon.
And don't bring Trump quotes when only convenient. You yourself don't believe his already existing statements. (Me too)
I have no way to know how far that is true, but I won't put that beyond crown prince.
I believe when lying doesn't help him. It doesn't matter if it is Qatar / Saudi if it still affects the US / Israel.
https://www.news18.com/world/weeks-away-by-next-spring-video...
From what I see, Iran absolutely needs one to be left alone.
As for terrorism you should be looking at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
India will not dare to overrun Pakistan nor does it want to. (Few crackpots from both those countries aside)
- storage facilities in the region are limited and in some cases almost full
- mature oil fields need constant water injections to pump out the remaining crude
How likely is it that stopping crude extraction (and therefore the water injections) will permanently damage the oil reservoirs?
And based on that is it possible that countries with this type of mature oil fields would consider simply dumping the excess crude that can't be stored anymore in the desert or in the Gulf of Persia?
is a resource I found helpful.
Given the ongoing campaign to assassinate Iranian diplomats who may be willing to negotiate peace whilst leaving hardliners alive, the only question is what kind of inducements will be necessary to get them to agree?
Basically the only reason Norway escaped this curse was they were next door to the USSR and the US knew fucking around there could easily land it in the USSR potentially also taking Sweden with it.
Fertilizer, which is kind of important right now since it's springtime and farmers are planting crops around the world.
Plastic, without which modern hospitals can't operate.
Aluminum.
The list goes on, this was the dumbest war in our lifetimes but it's the culmination of a lot of previous stupidity that made it all possible.
The people who started this war are authoritarians and, let's be honest, straight up criminals, who did it to entrench their grip on their own domestic politics.
no to plastic,
IDK about aluminum.
The liquid to make plastic is a natural byproduct of oil processing. That stuff is literally cheaper than water because everyone that processes oil needs to get rid of it. Even if it triples in price, there will still be plenty of it available on the global market.
"Dow CEO says up to 50% of polyethylene supply is offline, constrained or impacted amid Middle East disruptions - conf call" [1]
[1] https://www.marketscreener.com/news/dow-ceo-says-up-to-50-of...
Again, the stuff is cheaper than water. The 55 gallon drums carrying the stuff cost more than the contents.
This might only raise costs a few percent. Yet for some firms that were just barely keeping their heads above water with the tightened monetary policy, and the tariffs, and now spikes in energy prices, this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Oil, fertilizer, helium. These are the things I'm most worried about especially for their knock-on effects. Fertilizer is going to have a long tail. Like, don't expect a food spike this year, but expect prices on food to go wild next year. That alone is going to majorly effect everything worldwide.
While it is indeed foolish, it is worse than foolish, it is evil.
It has been a long time being kicked in the face by these jackals before finally somebody did something.
I approve even if gas is now $1/GAL more.
I hope we have teams in Yemen too taking advantage of the cut off of war supplies.
Wipe out the axis of evil for good. We cannot afford to be the worlds police.
So sad to see our military failed so badly. The plan seemed conceivable...
Yet outrageous. The distance to Tehran so far.
Sometimes you got to do something. Even if against all odds.
- The Middle East produces roughly 30% of the world's oil
- But about 20% of total global oil consumption flows through this strait (less than 30% because of of domestic consumption and some pipelines avoiding strait)
I would understand if prices increases e.g. 50% but like more than 100% seems like a panic or manipulation
We are energy independent? Big Oil is milking US.
U.S. prices are up, but international prices are up even more.
Versus the Colonial Pipeline that is prevalent on the Eastern Half of US.
Hard to tell whether that’s just background noise that is just getting more airtime play thanks to Iran or whether it’s the first sign of bigger trouble.
is a headline that reflects reality and doesn't finesse the details -- I should really become a headline writer, I'm clearly better than whoever is employed by The Guardian.
At the very least it should be "Oil and gas prices jump after Israel and then Iran attack gasfields"
Putting Iran first might lead some to believe this was Iran-initiated, which of course is probably the intention.
There'd be a shortage of buses at first, but I also suppose it'd relatively easy to adapt current North American car manufacturing plants to start manufacturing buses.
But that's just an uninformed guess. Am I too much off base in this?
Bus production would be an entire refactoring of an auto factory. Tons of equipment would need to move around, electrical conduit would need to be re-run to different places, much of the existing equipment would be too small. The equipment would need to be ordered from suppliers who already have the next couple months to years of business booked, new suppliers sourced and contracts signed, etc. On an American timeline, I can't imagine it being done in under a year if you threw money at every problem aggressively.
We did change some auto plants to manufacturing airplanes and airplane components for WWII, but there was a lot more human labor involved, manufacturing tolerances were more loose, and we had widespread support of the American public to do what we needed to make things happen. It'd be incredible to see the War Powers Act implemented to publicly fund bus transportation, but I cannot fathom that occurring with this administration.
Sentiments have hardened amongst Khaleejis [0] who previously were open to an off-ramp.
Edit: can't reply
> haven't hit any schools
They did in Azerbaijan [1]
> apartment buildings full of civilians.
Already did in Saudi [2] and similar incidents have happened in the UAE and Kuwait.
> I'm confused how Qatar is pro-Iran and hosting CENTCOM, which is running the war on Iran
Becuase countries are fine compartmentalizing relations. You see this in US-Turkiye-Iran, US-Qatar-Iran, Israel-India-Iran, US-Armenia-Iran, Turkiye-Azerbaijan-Israel, and other relationships.
In Qatar's case, Al Udeid only opened in 1996, but it was Iran that averted a coup d'état in Qatar in 1996 [3], collaborated with Qatar on supporting Hamas [4] and the Houthis [5], and Qatar became Iran's primary financial conduit abroad via agreements in 2017 [6][7] and 2023 [8].
By allowing the US to base in Al Udeid from 1996 and working with ExxonMobil on LNG exports, Qatar was able to incentivize the US to allow it's continued relationship with Iran.
The world isn't a game of Civ where you are either an ally or an enemy. The reality is countries compartmentalize relations, and when compartmentalization is broken, trust is broken as well.
For Gulf states like Qatar, they took a massive gamble doubling down on building a relationship with Iran - heck, Saudi Arabia-UAE-Egypt almost invaded Qatar due to these ties until Rex Tillerson stopped them [9] becuase the QatarEnergy-Exxon deal was his baby.
Now that Iran is striking Qatar, decades of risk taking was essentially all for naught, and Sheikh Tamim entire foreign policy and economic strategy is now in question internally because he staked his entire legacy on Iran-Qatar normalization in order to carve strategic autonomy from Saudi or the UAE.
The Gulf is very small - it's all the same people who went to the same colleges, worked for the same companies, and now work for the same ministries, so once reputations stick, they really stick and your only choice is to leave.
[0] - https://xcancel.com/MofaQatar_EN/status/2034517464940159428#...
[1] - https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/06/aliyev-vows-attacks-on-a...
[2] - https://tribune.com.pk/story/2596430/israel-launches-fresh-a...
[3] - https://www.danielpipes.org/6317/hamad-bin-jasim-bin-jabr-al...
[4] - https://www.dw.com/en/who-is-hamas/a-57537872
[5] - https://sites.bu.edu/pardeeatlas/research-and-policy/back2sc...
[6] - https://ifpnews.com/iran-qatar-boost-banking-relations/
[7] - https://www.arabnews.com/node/1331176/business-economy
[8] - https://en.irna.ir/amp/85241114/
[9] - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/8/1/rex-tillerson-stoppe...
I'm confused how Qatar is pro-Iran and hosting CENTCOM, which is running the war on Iran.
Pretty much. This is what happens when you alienate all your neighbors and don't take the off-ramps that were offered.
For now all they seem to want is to have a financially viable future as an independent country, not as anybody's vassal, not as a country for other superpowers to play games for geopolitical reasons. Essentially to control their own destiny.
That was scuttled in 1953. Their civilian aircraft was shot down without apology. Saddam Hussein was foisted against them. They pulled through 8 years of wars that saw attacks with chemical weapons to which they lost several tens of thousands lives.
If they do not like the people who have messed with them, I cannot say that their feelings are unjustified.
I am not even Iranian.
1) It is not clear that the people of Iran actually want to blow up refineries in general right now, but living in an autocracy they don't have much of a choice.
2) Because there is a pretty big ocean between them and most American civilians/infrastructure (this also enabled past colonial powers to wage war very pretty cost effectively and at their convenience). I'd like to argue that the prospect of retribution on home soil is important to stem aggressive wars, but at least for medieval Europe this apparently did not work that well either.
- things end in the next 2-3 weeks and then get back to normal
- this goes on past 6-8 weeks, and stockpiles run out
The first would argue for a modest price increase, the second a somewhat unpredictable, but very severe price increase with hard to understand second order impacts.
So, the price is some weighted version of these two, based on traders estimates of what is most likely. And of course, these estimates can change quickly as events unfold, which is why the price can move so fast, despite no immediate impact to supply "on the ground".