Speaker 1: Geopolitics, Daily Global News Briefing. I'm Jamie Caule. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining me today. Horn Mood escalation threatens global oil supply again.
Speaker 1: Only thirteen ships passed through the Strait of hor Moos
Speaker 1: on Wednesday before this escalation began. That number was closer
Speaker 1: to one hundred and thirty. That's not a disruption. That's
Speaker 1: a near total shutdown of one of the world's most
Speaker 1: critical energy choke points. And it's getting worse. Here's where
Speaker 1: things stand. The US and Iran are now five days
Speaker 1: into renewed strikes after the ISLMAD ceasefire signed just over
Speaker 1: a month ago, collapsed completely. The US military conducted a
Speaker 1: second strike wave this week, targeting Iran's coastal defense systems.
Speaker 1: Trump has publicly threatened to destroy bridges and power plants
Speaker 1: next week unless Iran returns to the negotiating table. Iran's
Speaker 1: response was to name the Strait of hor Moo's an
Speaker 1: unbreakable red line. Its military is threatened to destroy regional
Speaker 1: energy infrastructure if those strikes happen. That's not rhetorical posturing.
Speaker 1: It's a direct threat to Golf State oil facilities, and
Speaker 1: the Golf States know it. The key implication here is timing.
Speaker 1: Strategic oil reserves were already drawn down heavily between March
Speaker 1: and May, roughly three hundred and sixty million barrels pulled
Speaker 1: from stockpiles. The IEAS warned those buffers are largely depleted.
Speaker 1: If the blockade holds for another two to three weeks,
Speaker 1: there's very little cushion left before prices move sharply. The
Speaker 1: first tanker was disabled under the reimposed blockade this week.
Speaker 1: That's the signal the threat has become operational. Fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: Indian sailors are currently stranded west of the Strait after
Speaker 1: two were killed in recent drone attacks. India has now
Speaker 1: ordered shipowners to stop deploying Indian crew on any vessel
Speaker 1: transiting Homus. The human cost is already landing in Mumbai,
Speaker 1: Chennai and New Delhi. What makes this escalation structurally different
Speaker 1: from previous US around confrontations is the absence of any
Speaker 1: visible offering. Five days of strikes, escalating threats, no actor
Speaker 1: diplomatic channel. The ceasefire collapsed after one month without either
Speaker 1: side locking in a durable framework. Trump's threat to target
Speaker 1: power plants in bridges next week raises the stakes considerably
Speaker 1: and the RAN's counter threat to hit Gulf infrastructure raises
Speaker 1: them further. The signal here is that both sides are
Speaker 1: communicating through military action, not through negotiation. That's a pattern
Speaker 1: that tends to compound itself. Dere's the thing separate but connected.
Speaker 1: The Ukraine Military aid coalition cracked publicly this week. Bulgaria
Speaker 1: refused a NATA demand for continued military support, Slovakia rejected
Speaker 1: a seventy billion euro annual military package. The US also
Speaker 1: pulled its own commitment from the same framework. This isn't
Speaker 1: a quiet disagreement. Multiple governments have now publicly broken with
Speaker 1: the coalition, citing domestic budget pressure. The important distinction is
Speaker 1: between disagreement and fracture. Disagreements inside alliances are normal. What
Speaker 1: happened this week looks more like fracture because it's several
Speaker 1: countries simultaneously publicly on a formal commitment. If others read
Speaker 1: that as permission to step back, the Domino risk is real.
Speaker 1: One more story that deserves serious attention. Satellite imagery has
Speaker 1: confirmed that China built full scale replicas of US naval vessels,
Speaker 1: American military bases, and Taipei government buildings inside the Takhlimarkan Desert.
Speaker 1: They're connected by a twenty three mile rail track designed
Speaker 1: to simulate moving naval targets. This is purpose built combat
Speaker 1: training infrastructure for a Taiwan conflict scenario, and the scale
Speaker 1: of it suggests this isn't preparation for a distant hypothetical.
Speaker 1: The EU bann gold imports from Sudan this week, covering
Speaker 1: roughly sixty percent of Sudan's exports. The stated reason is
Speaker 1: that gold revenues financing both sides of a civil war
Speaker 1: that has now killed more than one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand people. The EU move matters, but critics point out
Speaker 1: that the country's most directly enabling the warring factions, the UAE,
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, remain unsanctioned by either the US
Speaker 1: or Europe. Consider this. Meanwhile, the Trump administration vetoed UN
Speaker 1: funding for the African Union's peacekeeping mission in Somalia, citing
Speaker 1: Somalia's internal governance failures. The risk is straightforward. Without that mission,
Speaker 1: Al Shabab's resurgence becomes considerably more likely. The next seventy
Speaker 1: two hours around Hormuz are the most consequential near term
Speaker 1: watchpoint Trump's threatened infrastructure strikes are timed for next week.
Speaker 1: Iran's counter threat is already on the table. If either
Speaker 1: side follows through the Strait's partial shot down becomes something
Speaker 1: much harder to reverse. Watch the iia's next reserve assessment,
Speaker 1: the movement of tankers through the Strait, and whether any
Speaker 1: back channel is quietly opened before those strikes happen. Those
Speaker 1: are the real signals worth tracking right now. Thanks for listening.
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