Threading camels in haystacks
Iran, Libya, India, Colombia, and AI.
Hello,
Here are the five things you need to know today:
IRAN. Trump’s kvetching on Hormuz will only keep it shut.
LIBYA. The shadow civil war risks reigniting.
INDIA. When you see one protest, there are probably more.
COLOMBIA. Espriella is greeted with multiple emergencies.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Price maintenance gets more circular.
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IRAN. Looking for loopholes
Trump's kvetching on Hormuz will only keep it shut.
Oil futures rose 5% after Donald Trump dismissed Iran’s demand for reparations, demanding the US be compensated instead “for the damage they’ve done over a 50-year period”. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell to 298.7 million barrels.
INTELLIGENCE. Trump undoubtedly wants to exit the war, but his dealmaking keeps getting in the way of this objective. Still, by threatening to seek, rather than cause, damages, he shows an unwillingness to materially escalate. Iran would also like to exit, but by promoting hardliners and declaring it will wait out Trump until 20 January 2029 (per Jimmy Carter), it suggests it’s in no hurry, despite Scott Bessent’s claim that it’s “suffocating” from US sanctions.
FOR BUSINESS. Trump has already run out of munitions. The question is whether he runs out of oil too before using up his remaining time in office. Estimates of the SPR’s minimum range from 70 to 300 million barrels. Sizing studies from the 1970s suggest 250 million as the floor. China has meanwhile signalled its own inventories are getting low by granting its private “teapot” refiners licenses to begin restocking from sanctioned Iranian and Russian suppliers.
LIBYA. Stranger than friction
The shadow civil war risks reigniting.
The National Oil Corporation said it may declare force majeure after reporting the third drone attack on its Zawiya refinery. Central bank governor Naji Issa resigned. The Libyan National Army’s intelligence chief was killed by a car bomb.
INTELLIGENCE. In his letter to Libya's rival parliaments – the House of