Iran has continued to fire at tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz under U.S. Navy escort, and apparently the U.S. can't afford to do anything about it.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which is an alternative route used by the Saudis, is being closed by the Houthis. The Houthis are a close partner of Iran.

And the East-West pipeline, which was another alternative route owned by the Saudis, was blown up. They went for the pumping stations, so repairing it will take at least a month, and there is no way to repair it without it possibly being hit again anyway.

The oil infrastructure attacks by Ukraine are mainly targeting refineries, which would normally lower oil prices, since crude oil is an input to these refineries. These attacks are increasing diesel prices, though.

Iran is trying to break the world economy so the US packs up and leaves. Israel wants to keep the US there because the US is fighting one of their strongest enemies. Because Israel "is the US's greatest ally" (as many politicians have proclaimed over the years), they have a lot of sway as to what the US does. Not to mention, they seem to do whatever they can to derail any peace process.

Iran knows this, and therefore wants to make sure the US experiences enough pain to never come back and try to fight them again.

So, until the US is willing to stop, which rests heavily on when Israel is willing to stop, oil prices will remain high. (Or Iran folds, which they aren't going to do, they've been preparing for years and have seen how the US treated Venezuela - they stole all their oil, and left the regime intact)

Also, we've seen nothing yet, as the soft storage (the amount of oil that's normally floating through rhe global network) and the SPR's are all running dry. I would guess $150 oil in about a month.

> and there is no way to repair it without it possibly being hit again anyway.

What if they deploy hordes of those cheap Ukrainian anti-drone interceptors, near each station?

This is the might our 20 trillion dollars spent on military has bought us.

A month or two ago they sent out an email asking common military members for ideas to deal with Iran. We've paid think tanks millions of dollars for plans like that. Guess they weren't worth anything in practice though.

All that money spent on plans and equipment and it sustains--what?--like 3 weeks of bombing Iranian children? (I mean, we did bomb a children's school on the first day, and nobody has been held accountable, so I'm still bitter about that. Let's be better please.)

Nice summary.