By Spencer Jakab, The Wall Street Journal, 6/13/25
… [snip history of previous oil price shocks]…
Oil is still important, but this isn’t 1973. Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy points out that back then, one barrel of oil was responsible for $1,000 of gross domestic product. Today it is less than half that.
And technological change has made the market more resilient. The faster capital and production cycle of oil from shale formations, the main source of production in the U.S., now the top global producer, means production can respond within months, not years. The U.S. also has become the world’s top natural-gas exporter in recent years… [end quote]
Iran’s nuclear program is an existential threat to Israel. Israel acted surgically and decisively to mitigate this threat in self-defense. This also benefits the U.S. which Iran calls “The Great Satan.”
Not necessarily “expecting”, but “possible”, like insurance companies declaring Iran a “war zone”, and jacking insurance rates on tankers to prohibitive levels.
We heard that about Iraq, in 2002. Turned out to be pure hokum. The fact the UN is agreeing Iran was pushing the envelope, does add more weight to the case than SecState Powell showing the UN drawings of “mobile bio-weapons labs”. But “Bibi” saying Iran was only a couple weeks from having an arsenal of A-bombs? Not really sure about that.
Will we ever learn the truth? Probably not, because Iran is too big to straight up invade, occupy, and search in detail.
After a day of talks with regional and international leaders following Israeli strikes on Iranian military targets, notably its nuclear sites, Macron said Tehran was close to a “critical point” in acquiring a nuclear weapon.
The first big reversal came in 732 at the Battle of Tours in southern France
in 100 years the Muslims had conquered all of North Africa, large parts of the Iberian peninsula to the West and god knows much land and peoples to the northeast on Mecca
Multiple battles are recorded, the Sieges of Vienna, Lepanto (where Cervantes was wounded and became known as “El Manco de Lepanto,” The One-Armed Man of Lepanto), the Crusades, the 20th century wars in The Levant (sunrise).
