Image is of the first nuclear icebreaker ever built, the Lenin, which entered service in 1957 in the USSR and decommissioned in 1989. It is now a museum ship in Murmansk. I just think it’s neat.

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My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preamble

The last week has had a lot of Trump admin dipshittery that isn’t important enough to be worth remarking on, so I’m just going to skip right past all that. The sanctions campaign against Iran appears to have stalled before it even left the starting line, with China saying that, nope, they aren’t going to cut off their ally for the sake of their enemy. From what I’ve gathered from Naked Capitalism’s (albeit limited) reporting on the state of Iran’s economy, the impression I get is that while inflation is running kinda wild, everything else, including state revenues, are doing sufficiently well that there isn’t going to be an economic collapse this year nor probably next year if we assume a continued no-deal situation over Hormuz.

The underlying geopolitical situation has had some interesting little developments. Iran and Oman appears to have worked out their plan for joint control over Hormuz. Ansarallah is continuing their explosive campaign against the Saudis, who are now begging the US for help. Additionally, the ever-barking never-biting Türkiye is showing some signs that they might soon, finally, after three years of witnessing outright genocide, do 1 (one) (the first numerical digit) action that isn’t to the Zionist’s direct benefit, by putting up a modicum of resistance in defence of their puppet in Syria; but, quite frankly, I’m not holding my breath on anything truly substantial happening while Erdogan’s in charge.

The state of oil flows in and around Hormuz are very hotly debated right now. Many of the oil flow numbers can be dismissed out of hand because they aren’t reflective of the reality of Iranian control and vision of the strait. Due to the narrowness of the strait, full visual coverage of the ships travelling through the channel can be achieved with technology no more advanced than a dozen people with binoculars and a not-especially-tall mountain. However, figures that are around 3-5 million barrels per day (compared to the pre-war 20 million per day) seems plausible when including Iran allowing some allied vessels out (notably Iraqi and Chinese vessels, among others). This, plus China’s rather odd actions in the oil market over the last six months, have resulted in the US’s SPR now draining at “only” 4-6 million barrels per week, compared to 8-9 earlier in the war. However, the war’s impact on fertilizer and diesel stockpiles and prices are now unignorable even to those with their heads in the sand, with anxiety steadily building in the mainstream media about food crises next year.

Meanwhile, Trump has decided to pick fights with Canada due to their strange unwillingness to graciously hand over their sovereignty to the US, with the two countries now in a tariff war. That being said, oil seems to be one product that neither side wants to fight over: the US needs a producer, and Canada needs a customer. The only other country in the vicinity with major oil reserves is Venezuela, who has been in the news a lot lately for precisely this reason, but they simply don’t have the production to do much of anything to alleviate the US’s stockpile issues and likely still won’t by the time Trump has left office, and so they can be safely dismissed as a significant player in this ongoing global energy conflict.

On the subject of naval trade routes, a fascinating development is that Russia has finally unveiled the Northern Sea Route as a regular maritime passage, with a small fleet of eight Chinese vessels taking the route as a test run in mid-August. From Shanghai to Hamburg, the route is a little over 7000 nautical miles and goes through no chokepoints (though I suppose the Bering Strait could hypothetically become one), compared to the Suez route which is nearly 11,000 nautical miles and goes through three chokepoints (Malacca, Bab el-Mandab, Suez). Russia has the world’s only nuclear icebreaker fleet, and the increased power from those reactors is necessary to provide the sheer force to break up the ice along the route, making them even more uniquely situated to benefit from the route. Many countries, China foremost among them, have identified the advantage of not being subject to chokepoints and hostile waters as the US navy continues its rapid transition to outright piracy, so it’ll be interesting to see to what extent the route is adopted in the coming years.

No, but you see, the smol bean Kurds NEED to work with Israel to destabilize the most significant anti-imperialist project on the region! Stop calling them zionist and imperialist puppets! Kurdistan will be a socialist anti-imperialist state that will free the Palestinians when it’s created, trust us! Stupid Tankies calling for the genocide of Kurds by pointing out how they’ve never once hurt imperialist interests in the last 25 years!

On a more serious note, I do think skepticism is warranted on this claim, it does come from Israel after all. Personally I do not think that the US and Israel stopped the Kurdish invasion force purely due to the lack of a coup. I think many Kurdish political factions in Iraq and Iran actively refused to start a war with Iran, at least to a scale that made any invasion logistically impossible.

I say this because of statements from early on in the war made by the different Kurdish factions essentially saying they didn’t want anything to do with the war. Was thus Kurds finally wising up to their imperialist puppetry, or was it simply the undeniable reality if Iranian military dominance allowing for a sober diagnostic of their position, I can’t say for sure. However, I do want to say that I think it would be incorrect to state that the majority of Kurdish factions didn’t actively choose to avoid attacking Iran.

Basically, although I wouldn’t go so far as to give them “credit” for not falling on the sword again. I would say that the Kurdish leadership here showed a level of autonomy against imperialists interests that they really haven’t before in my opinion.

Which honestly kind of makes them look worse in retrospect, as it proves they are capable of making these kinds of decisions and evaluating their situation properly, yet choose to fall in line with imperialists out of vulgar self interest.

It makes me think that any socialist asthetics that this leadership dresses themselves is covering for a project entirely hollowed out of historical socialist principles. It’s the fate of the MEK, the vestiges of Marxism have all but left leaving only a tool for western domination and opportunist enrichment.

The number of visible commodity vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz fell to just five per day over the weekend, shipping data showed on Monday, as operators remain cautious amid ongoing attacks on vessels.

The actual traffic could be higher, however, as some ships have turned off their automatic identification systems to reduce the risk of being targeted.

Weekend traffic consisted mainly of smaller vessels, according to data from commodities firm Kpler. Two liquefied petroleum gas carriers were among those recorded, with one leaving through the Iranian side of the strait and the other sailing out under cover of darkness and heading toward India.

By comparison, 14 vessels crossed the strait on Friday, including a very large crude carrier carrying 2 million barrels of Qatari oil that departed with its transponder switched off.