Beyond the point of choking
Iran, Yemen, Libya, the US, China, and Taiwan.
Hello,
Here are the five things you need to know today:
IRAN. Strikes on energy sites move the war beyond Hormuz.
YEMEN. Riyadh must tread carefully to avoid a new front.
LIBYA. North Africa’s top oil producer is having a moment.
UNITED STATES. Trump underestimates his nation’s intelligence.
CHINA. TAIWAN. Beijing tries carrot in a world of stick.
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IRAN. I break it, you own it
Strikes on energy sites move the war beyond Hormuz.
Donald Trump said he would “massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field” if Iran further attacked Qatar following a strike on a major LNG facility north of Doha and an earlier Israeli strike on Iranian energy infrastructure.
INTELLIGENCE. Trump denies US involvement, but it’s unlikely he (or Saudi Arabia, over whose airspace Israeli jets flew), would not have known. Axios claims there was coordination. Either way, the strikes, counterstrikes and threats of counter-counterstrikes, have taken the war to a dangerous new level, reflected in today’s energy prices, with ramifications that will last long after Hormuz is eventually reopened. The key question now is whose assets are next.
FOR BUSINESS. Qatar’s Ras Laffan is the world’s biggest LNG facility. South Pars, which abuts Qatar’s North Dome, is the world’s biggest field. Trump earlier wrote, “I wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called ‘Strait?’” Alongside his remarks on South Pars, this will be analysed by markets as closely as any estimate of gas likely lost to global markets.
YEMEN. Houthis in plain sight
Riyadh must tread carefully to avoid a new front.
Oil loadings at the Red Sea port of Yanbu were set to reach a record 3.8 million barrels per day, Reuters said, as transfers via the East‑West pipeline closed in on the 7 million per day maximum. Saudi Arabia said it had the right to strike Iran.
INTELLIGENCE. Tehran already sees Riyadh as complicit in a war it regards as