Tom

🍻ipa drinker 🐕dog rescuer market enthusiast startup investor opinions my own all about the reps Not investment or trading advice

[Tom @Tom_IPA]

Who is trump going to fire now ?

[Tom @Tom_IPA]

That was quick

[OSINTdefender @sentdefender]

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGC-N) has once again closed the Strait of Hormuz, warning all vessels to not attempt to cross, following Israel’s refusal to withdraw from and strikes this morning on Southern Lebanon, with the following message being broadcast on maritime frequencies near the Strait by the IRGC:

“Since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, the complete lifting of the naval blockade, and the withdrawal of American terrorist forces from the Persian Gulf and the region are among the main conditions of the agreement between Iran and the United States. The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until these conditions are met. All ships are requested, for the sake of their security and safety, not to approach the Strait of Hormuz. Any vessel that defies this directive will be targeted.”

[Tom @Tom_IPA]

@DiveBomb321 Not many (any?) sellers left

[Tom @Tom_IPA]

#wti bottom in

[The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter]

BREAKING: Iran warns of cancelling all upcoming negotiations, re-imposing the full Hormuz blockade and responding with missiles over the direct violation of the US-Iran MOU's first clause, with Israel continuing military aggressions in southern Lebanon, including last night, despite explicit commitment from the first clause to end the war and guarantee Lebanese sovereignty, per Tasnim.

Iran explicitly rejects any "theater from Trump" about Netanyahu being rogue, and now Friday's Geneva meeting to launch the first round of 30-day technical talks between Vance and Ghalibaf is on hold over the violation, as no trip has been confirmed or scheduled just 24 hours after the MOU was electronically signed.

[Jack Prandelli @jackprandelli]

PetroChina couldn't find a tanker.

Neither could Indian Oil.

Here's what actually happened this week:

PetroChina tried to hire a Very Large Crude Carrier a ship that holds 2 million barrels to load Iraqi crude between June 25-30.

Got 6 offers.
All at freight rates nearly triple pre war levels.
Still couldn't close a deal.

Why?
In PetroChina's own words:
"There are tankers available, but the problem is it's too expensive and there is no guarantee you can exit the strait."

Indian Oil ran a tender for the same period.
Received zero offers.

Sinochem is still hunting.

PetroChina, Indian Oil, and Sinochem are 3 of the largest state oil companies on earth.

If they can't get tankers through Hormuz at any reasonable price, nobody can.

This is the gap between the headline and the reality.

Financial markets priced the peace deal.
Shipping markets priced the risk.

Freight rates 3x pre-war.
Insurance clauses requiring special Hormuz guarantees. No assurance a loaded 2-million-barrel ship can exit safely.

[Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian]

8D Chess

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

Ukraine has cards.

[Tom @Tom_IPA]

@CRUDEOIL231 Excellent wins … well done

[Rushi @rushicrypto]

Greenland is now asking Trump to invade, hoping to secure a deal similar to the one Iran got.

[Tom @Tom_IPA]

@rleewilson21 Drill baby drill

[Kpler @Kpler]

No uptick in activity yet

The Strait of Hormuz continues to operate below normal commercial levels, despite signals of diplomatic progress. As of 15 June, only five confirmed crossings were recorded, largely consisting of low risk movements, moderate shadow fleet activity and three commercial voyages laden with DPP and steel cargo. While public reports indicate the US and Iran have reached an initial agreement to extend the ceasefire and reopen the waterway, key operational questions remain unresolved, including transit security, navigation fees and safe passage arrangements. With no new vessel attacks reported since 10 June, risk conditions appear more stabilised, but low transit activity suggests market participants are still waiting for clear evidence of safety for a sustained operational normalisation.

Stay ahead of the market with #Kpler Insight: https://t.co/exPdxwhOMm

[Tom @Tom_IPA]

@rleewilson21 Next day Waha trading +.95 last
+.65 wtd avg

[Karel Mercx @KarelMercx]

The longer the war lasts, the more short positions build up in Brent futures.

If the talks between Iran and the United States fail, those contracts will have to be bought back.

I find it remarkable how much risk these speculators are taking.

[Disclose.tv @disclosetv]

JUST IN - Iranian media says the U.S. agreed to present reconstruction plans for Iran amounting to at least 300 billion dollars.

[The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter]

BREAKING: Iran is now moving large amounts of missile launch platforms across the country, in preparation for imminent launches at Israel, with flights in western Iran canceled until further notice, per Iranian media.

The response to Israel's strikes on Beirut will also be "multi-fronted."

[Alex @AlexanderKim120]

Looking at the interview, it seems yesterday's piece needs some revision.

Yesterday I wrote about the venue of the prospective agreement, the mechanism meant to enforce it, and the actors who will not sign it. Then I came across an SNN interview in which Mahmoud Nabavian, deputy chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security Commission, read out the original text directly and launched a frontal attack on the negotiating team.

Nabavian is a hardliner opposed to the negotiations themselves, so his testimony carries its own bias. But on the strength of the fact that he was quoting the wording — and on the basis of the critique now coming from the hardline camp — yesterday's piece needs correcting.

First, the parts where my earlier analysis pointed in a similar direction.

What Held Up

1. The diagnosis of "a document that seals the disputes inside a 60-day window"

The starting point of my analysis was that this MOU is not a document that resolved the core disputes — nuclear, control, money — but one that repackaged them, deferred to "negotiations 60 days later," so that only the signing becomes possible. Nabavian's central objection takes aim at exactly this structure. He criticized the fact that all the major benefits accruing to Iran — $300 billion in reconstruction, an end to sanctions, resolution of the nuclear issue, US troop withdrawal — are bound up in a "final agreement" whose date is unclear and indefinitely extendable.

2. Hormuz — the "rebranding of control"

I had argued that what Iran gave up at Hormuz was only the word "toll," while the economic substance (service fees) and the operational substance (control) remained alive — and I forecast that "a reappraisal will come once the details of an Iranian-managed reopening are made public." This part turned out more dramatic than I expected. According to Nabavian's reading, from the hardline vantage point that control itself has evaporated from the text. He revealed that the earlier version's explicit name "Strait of Hormuz" had been generalized to "commercial ships from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman," and that the US had later inserted the word "unlimited." His claim: "arrangements" means not Iranian management but merely preparation for reopening, and nowhere in the text is Iranian control of the strait preserved. In other words, my initial read — "the claim to control is alive" — exists from the negotiating team's standpoint, but on the wording of the text itself it is exposed to the hardliners' rebuttal.

3. UNSC endorsement is not a guarantee

In the earlier piece I concluded with "the lesson of Resolution 2231 — institutionalization only raises the cost of exit; it does not prevent exit." Nabavian's critique of Clause 14 says the same thing in an insider's language: "A binding UNSC resolution is not a real guarantee. We already lived through this with the JCPOA and 2231 — the US withdrew, yet Iran alone was left trapped in international obligations, and only snapback became possible." He goes a step further: "Once the agreement goes to the Security Council, Iran does not control the text, and the US and other members slip in additional restrictions — missiles, arms, inspections (precisely the 2231 case)." Strong corroboration that my initial inference is being raised, identically, inside the Iranian parliament.

4. The US domestic bottleneck — Congress, OFAC, banks

Near the end of the piece I added the asymmetry that "Congress cannot guarantee non-aggression, but it can block sanctions relief." Nabavian confirms it outright: "The US cannot by itself cancel UNSC or IAEA resolutions, and many sanctions are congressional statutes that Trump cannot remove on his own." The three-layer bottleneck logic — OFAC, Congress, bank compliance — was being read the same way in Tehran.

5. The inversion of the money sequence

I had flagged the sequence inversion as central: "2013 was performance first, money later; this time it is a demand for upfront payment." Nabavian confirms the structure with more precise figures.

6. The documentation of Lebanon

My earlier piece read the shift from April's "end of war" carve-out to this round's "ceasefire across all fronts, Lebanon included" as deliberate engineering. Nabavian, too, concedes that Clause 1 at least was "improved in Iran's favor compared to the earlier version" — "end of war" was strengthened to "immediate and permanent end of military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon," closing the room for the US to declare the war over while continuing 'defensive' operations.

Where My Initial Read Was Wrong

1. The "lifting is easy" dichotomy — I missed the re-sanctions axis

I split the new Security Council resolution into two parts: lifting the legacy sanctions (easy) and the new enforcement device (hard). That dichotomy dropped one crucial axis. As Nabavian points out — "the text does not prevent the US from imposing new sanctions the very next day, so the sanctions remain 100% effectively in place." Even if a nominal lifting occurs, if re-designation under a different name is possible, the lifting is hollow. What Iran really wants is not "lifting" but a "guarantee against re-sanctioning," and a lifting without that is meaningless to Iran. My earlier analysis, boxed into "lifting vs. enforcement," failed to see the third axis of re-sanctioning. This asymmetry interlocks with the nuclear section, too — Iran repeatedly provides written guarantees that it "will not produce or acquire nuclear weapons," while the US provides no equivalent guarantee on future sanctions.

2. The money figure — "half of $24 billion" was imprecise

Following the Mehr report, I wrote "half of $24 billion paid upfront." Nabavian's text is more precise. Iran's earlier proposal was "$12 billion immediately after signing, the rest within 30 days," and after the US rejected it, the current version weakened to the vague phrase "assets to be made available based on progress in negotiations" — with no definition of "progress" and no figure. In other words, the clear guarantee of "$12 billion immediately" has disappeared. My sequence-inversion thesis held, but the figure, and the direction of the retreat (toward terms even less favorable to Iran), need correcting. And this shows that the "$24 billion" headline making the rounds is not a settled condition but one version within the negotiating process.

3. Nuclear dilution — "domestic blend-down = an Iranian win" was an oversimplification

I framed the gap between "what Trump sold Netanyahu (removal)" and "what the document says (domestic blend-down)" as a US–Israel rift. The frame itself holds, but treating "domestic blend-down" as if it were an Iranian victory was an oversimplification. The actual wording Nabavian read out is "the dilution of all nuclear material on site, at minimum under IAEA supervision and under American considerations." It is domestic dilution — but dilution under American control. Hardliners see even this as "an American demand packaged in Iran's language." My earlier frame is not weakened by this (the US–Israel gap stands), but the nuance that "Iran fended off removal, so it amounts to a win" needs correcting.

4. The "clever Iranian design" frame — it tilted to one side

This is the part needing the largest correction. Taking the documentation of Lebanon as my starting point, I loaded the MOU rather heavily with Iranian strategic agency (deterrence + exit + raising the cost of erosion through multilateralization). Nabavian's whole testimony paints the opposite picture. He reads Hormuz, the nuclear file, the money, the withdrawal — nearly every item — as "American demands presented in Iran's language," i.e., the result of Iran retreating with each successive version. "Every time we submitted it and it changed, we retreated" is his summary.

The truth lies between two biases. I lean toward Iranian agency; Nabavian (as a hardliner) leans toward Iranian capitulation. Netting them out, the MOU is neither "Iran's clever trap" nor "Iran's total surrender," but something closer to a US-led asymmetric bargain in which Iran won one square — Lebanon — and gave ground on Hormuz, the nuclear file, and the money. Lebanon is nearly the only square Iran actively secured; on the rest, it was largely on the defensive. The center of gravity of my earlier piece has, in effect, collapsed.

What I Did Not Address Before, but Must Add After This Interview

1. The paradox of Iran freezing its own leverage

This is the strongest point, absent from my earlier analysis. According to Nabavian, during the waiting period Iran freezes — and proposed to freeze, itself — three things: its current nuclear status (no enrichment), the non-reconstruction of the damaged facilities, and the endurance of US sanctions. On top of that it accepts the continued presence of US forces in the region. In other words, if the final agreement is extended indefinitely, Iran freezes its own cards during the wait while the US keeps its sanctions and its troops in place. His rhetorical question — "Is this really America's proposal, or ours?" — is the crux.

This deepens my reading of the 60-day window by one level. I had seen the window only as "a time bomb where the nuclear and control disputes reignite." But before that, the window is a period in which Iran voluntarily ties down its supply and nuclear leverage. In the short term this is downward pressure on oil (Iran restrains its incentive to provoke), but it is simultaneously a stretch in which domestic hardliner discontent accumulates. The vagueness of the withdrawal clause ("US forces leave the area 'surrounding Iran' 30 days after the final agreement" — timing undefined, "surrounding" distance undefined) amplifies it. Lifting the blockade is nearly the only US-side implementation item with a fixed date; the rest of the US implementation is all linked to the variable "final agreement."

2. A "third generation" of guarantee discourse — the hardliners' automatic-retaliation trigger

I had organized Iran's guarantee model as first generation (congressional ratification) → second generation (multilateral institutions, the UNSC, economic lock-in). Nabavian rejects even that second generation and demands a third: instead of a UNSC resolution, write into the document automatic consequences — that if the US violates the deal, Iran exits the NPT, fully closes the Strait of Hormuz, and resumes enrichment at unlimited levels. In other words, inside Iran the guarantee discourse is reverting from "institution" to "consequence," and the negotiating team's second-generation line is being squeezed by hardliners who call it "a trap, too." Whether this comes to pass, however, remains uncertain.

3. The Iranian domestic bottleneck — symmetry with the Washington bottleneck

My earlier piece dealt only with the US-side bottleneck (Congress, OFAC, banks). Nabavian's public revolt itself shows that even if the negotiating team reaches a signature, friction can arise at Iran's domestic ratification and implementation stage. Because the Hormuz "control" wording and the nuclear "American considerations" wording are the focal targets of the hardliners, an interpretive struggle over these two clauses will erupt inside Iran after signing. A symmetric structure in which both sides' domestic politics gnaw at the agreement simultaneously — this was missing from the earlier analysis.

4. The instability of the text's very authenticity — a meta-level caveat

The most important meta-lesson. Even Nabavian conceded that he is "told that what I have seen is not the final version." An Iranian deputy committee chairman has, in effect, admitted that the reported text I relied on when writing the earlier piece may not be the final one. At the same time, his own reading may be a hardliner's selective citation. No single version should be believed as is.

Yet paradoxically, the very "differences" between those versions may be the most honest signal. Which word was added ("unlimited") and which words were dropped ("Strait of Hormuz," "compensation/reparations," "$12 billion immediately") reveal where the center of gravity of the negotiation is shifting.

It was only because yesterday and today happen to be holidays for me that I could attempt this at all. This exercise has given me no certainty whatsoever. The one thing I was able to confirm is the symbolic weight the MOU carries. Reading the posts that surfaced across various X accounts today, and Nabavian's interview, it is clear that — unlike what gets digested in the headlines — the two sides are negotiating under a thick layer of complexity around a particular documentary form: the wording, the nuance, and even the framework that follows. The US will have its own internal backlash, and Iran will have the same. This is precisely why I bought the Z26 calls: I wanted to step outside the optimism and the pessimism about the negotiations, and to place a bet closer to physics and mathematics — one with the higher probability. My efforts yesterday and today may, in truth, have been an absurd waste of time. Have a good weekend.

[Mossad Commentary @MOSSADil]

REMINDER: DEAL IS NOT A DEAL.

Officials are planning for a virtual signing of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) as a precursor to negotiations.
Meeting in person presented logistical challenges and more potential for the process to get derailed.

The MOU would kick off a new 60-day period of negotiations on how to implement the framework and resolve remaining sticking points, a US official said Friday.

[Codziennik z Mordoru @mordownik4u]

Reprezentacja Haiti na oficjalnych koszulkach w których zagra na Mistrzostwach Świata umieściła POLSKĄ FLAGĘ!

To nie błąd projektanta ani przypadek – to wyjątkowy gest pełen szacunku, który porusza serce każdego Polaka. W 1802 roku Napoleon wysłał kilka tysięcy żołnierzy z Polskich Legionów na San Domingo (obecne Haiti), żeby zdławić tamtejsze powstanie niewolników. Polacy jednak wybrali inną drogę. Zamiast walczyć przeciwko walczącym o wolność, wielu z nich przeszło na stronę powstańców i stanęło do walki ramię w ramię z Haitańczykami przeciwko wojskom francuskim. Po zwycięstwie rewolucji i ogłoszeniu niepodległości w 1804 roku, pierwszy przywódca Haiti – Jean-Jacques Dessalines – oddał Polakom wielki hołd. Przyznał im pełne obywatelstwo, a w konstytucji nazwał ich „Białymi Murzynami Europy”. Były to słowa najwyższego uznania i braterstwa w tamtych czasach. Część polskich żołnierzy (ok. 400–500) została na wyspie na stałe, głównie w regionie Cazale, gdzie ich potomkowie mieszkają do dzisiaj. Dziś, ponad dwieście lat później, pamięć o polskiej odwadze i solidarności wciąż żyje na Haiti. Kiedy ich piłkarze wychodzą na murawę, niosą na piersi symbol naszej wspólnej historii – historii walki o wolność, która nie zna granic ani koloru skóry.

[Bloomberg @business]

El Niño has formed across the equatorial Pacific, setting the stage for months of droughts, floods and temperature fluctuations that will threaten communities worldwide along with agriculture and energy https://t.co/VsOaWINjFo

[Tom @Tom_IPA]

@SSAMAB9 @DrSeanOMara Mining for engagement 🪏

[Lukas Ekwueme @ekwufinance]

Supply chains are starting to break down

- motor oil, diesel oil, and specialty fluids categories to drop by 40%
- 70% of the dollar value of goods shipped in the US are transported by truck

Less motor oil and specialty fluids mean supply chains are becoming more fragile and more expensive.

Critical maintenance products become scarce, transportation costs rise, equipment downtime increases, and bottlenecks start to appear throughout the economy.

Meanwhile markets are at all time highs