Thank you, President Trump! Love OPEC!

🤔

Iran pissed everyone off blocking that strait.

Have they actually done it yet, do you know, or are they just still debating it? I haven't seen any latest update.

It would be a big move. The catch is it would also impact China and possibly the whole world (possibly even more than the US), as well as themselves, I guess, which could backfire a bit on Iran. But then again they've been under sanctions for years anyway.

Iran's parliament has approved a motion to close the strait, and they did the prep work to actually do it. They gotta a bloody nose for their efforts.

Remove a threat and people will prosper.

Hey, because the picture is AI, can you post something true?

Robophobia is not cool, dude. AI has rights too, you know. 🤖 😤

Also how else are you supposed to get a pic of Trump riding a pink unicycle in his underpants? Photographers are slacking so we have to resort to other measures.

500,000 barrels a day is the truth sorry AI prevents you from that understanding! LOL!!

Btw that 500K barrels thing is not related to the Iran bombings. It was already agreed a while back as part of a phased plan around the end of 2022. The plan was to cut production by 2.2 million bpd to keep prices from dropping too much from oversupply (possibly partly related to reduced demand post Covid but I'm not 100%). Then in June 2024 they decided to postpone these cuts well into 2025, which they're still doing.

They're not suddenly increasing production and adding extra. It's more the opposite. They're just not cutting.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/opec-seen-prolonging-cuts-2024-into-2025-two-sources-say-2024-06-02/

If anything, bombing Iran is likely to cause disruption in oil markets. And markets react to uncertainty. Equals prices typically go up. Especially if Iran actually does close Hormuz. It certainly hasn't increased oil production. Trump bombed nuclear facilities, which are not involved in oil production.

So TL;DR: your gas is actually likely to get more expensive, not less. It's old news. It is nothing to do with Trump achieving some awesome new deal. It's certainly not because he bombed Iran. And if Iran does actually close Hormuz then prices will almost certainly go up, and then you really will have Trump to thank for that.

Doesn't bother me anyway as I use public transport lol. But maybe now is a good time to invest in one of Musk's magic X-mobiles. Or convert your diesel car to run on fryer oil (if that's still even a thing).

PS After Trump got trigger-happy and bombed the hell out of Iran, naturally they had to retaliate to save face. So they bombed that US military base in Qatar to make a statement. And the Saudis weren't impressed with that, I can tell you. I imagine Iranian missiles landing right on their doorstep is not something they're too keen on.

14 missiles all shot down, I bet the Saudi's were impressed with that!! Not 1 soldier got a scratch! Iran even looked weaker after that!!

Yes, but I think that was the whole point. Iran doesn't want to get nuked by a superpower they know could completely destroy them (despite the whole Western world being terrified of them doing the nuking) and while they may have an authoritarian theocratic oppressive regime I don't think their leaders are quite as suicidal as some may think. I mean, some people seem to think the entire goal in life of the Ayatollahs is to get the Bomb, nuke Israel (and also vaporize millions of Palestinians and fellow Muslims given how tiny the land is? 🤔), and then get turned to glass and die as martyrs or something when Israel/the US retaliates. I can't technically *prove* that's an unlikely scenario, I admit. But I think it's pretty far-fetched. They might be crazy and oppressive. But are they really THAT crazy? North Korea has Nukes. And we all know their leader is a lunatic. Even they haven't pushed that button.

Yes, Iran possessing nukes is arguably a danger to global peace. No one really wants a theocratic dictatorship to become a military-armed power. But on the other hand, no one has actually ever used nukes in combat or against civilians since... the US in Japan in WW2. (Still the only country in human history that's actually used nuclear weapons on a civilian population... )

The whole point of nukes is as a deterrent. Even the most unhinged dictator nutjob knows you can't actually ever use them, or you get blown to bits. Nukes are like the million-pound note in that famous movie. You can't ever actually use it. The whole point is: I have a weapon that can kill us both, and so do you. So you can't touch me.

It's like some Bugs Bunny cartoon where you're holding a detonator that will kill the Martian but also kill you.

And the nukes we have now are so much more powerful than the original ones that the Hiroshima bomb looks like a pixel compared to the power of current H-bombs. (And let's not even get started on that ridiculous Tsar Bomba. A bomb so absurd that it can never actually even be deployed except by a drone or sth. Although the Russians did actually test it on some island. Poor wildlife.)

Iran even warned the US beforehand so they could evacuate the base. They didn't have to. And US air defence took out most of the missiles, so basically it did nothing meaningful.

I think it was more a political statement than anything. But hey, I don't have a doctorate in International Relations. I'm just some guy on the internet.

Looks like a political bribe.