as you may have realized by now i am fully opposed to the empire's attempts to own the world. iran is a particular sticking point as we've been mucking about in their business way beyond any defendable level since 1905 when winston churchill decided that his navy would use their oil instead of coal to power his fleet. ops, their oil. i meant our oil cause as you know once we see it, in the empire's name, its ours. and since then there have been waves of dead persians who somehow seemed to get in the way all the time; 

 

For years, Washington proclaimed that sanctions would shut down Iranian oil exports. They never did. Iran adapted because markets ALWAYS adapt. Tehran assembled a shadow fleet, tankers switched off transponders, cargoes changed identities, oil moved ship to ship, and payments bypassed Western banking channels while China continued buying the crude. Even during Trump’s maximum-pressure campaign in 2019 and 2020, Iranian oil continued passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Washington could sanction the paperwork, banks, insurance companies, and ships, but somebody still wanted the oil. The blockade has changed everything because you cannot hide geography.

Reuters reports that Iran went roughly seven weeks without meaningful crude exports passing through Hormuz. Iranian crude and condensate loadings collapsed from roughly 2 MILLION barrels per day in March to 740,000 in July and merely 220,000 to 255,000 barrels per day in August. This is the fundamental difference between sanctions and a blockade. Sanctions tell someone they cannot conduct a transaction, so markets find another currency, bank, company, flag, or jurisdiction. A blockade says the tanker cannot leave. You can rename the vessel twelve times and create twenty shell corporations, but eventually that ship still has to sail through the water.