Third of global gas and quarter of global oil passes through narrow waterway
The Iranian parliament has voted overwhelmingly to close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most strategically important bottlenecks in the global oil and gas trade, in response to US attempts to destroy Iran’s civil nuclear facilities. The decision is waiting only for the formal approval of Ayatollah Khamenei before it is put into action.
Iran’s ability to close off the Strait and only allow the passage of ships it approves, at least for weeks or months, is generally accepted. It controls the northern coastline and the US attacks could be seen to validate such action by Iran under international law – the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provides that a state can block its coastal waters if it faces the “threat or actual use of force against the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence of the coastal state”.
Shamefully, the Iranian decision has prompted Saudi Arabia to put its armed forces on full alert and Bahrain and Qatar have declared a state of emergency – moves they did not make in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its invasion of Syria or its attacks and abortive invasion of Lebanon.
Yemen will now enter the war — keep your ships away from our territorial waters.
Yemeni commander Yahya Saree
A third of global gas and a quarter of the world’s oil consumption currently passes through the Strait. The main alternative route would be the Red Sea, but Yemen has announced that it will resume its attacks on US and US-linked shipping through that area in solidarity with Iran and against what it considers a US war on all Muslims. The blockade of Israel-linked shipping by the defacto Yemeni government of Ansar Allah quickly led to the bankruptcy of Eilat, one of Israel’s main ports. A successful blockade of both shipping lanes would be likely to trigger a massive global economic meltdown. Trump and Netanyahu, abetted by the Starmer government in the UK, have brought the world to the brink of economic disaster as well as possible wider war.
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A worrying development?😟
“A senior Russian figure has alleged that several governments are willing to supply Iran with nuclear arms, following US air raids on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear infrastructure.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, made the explosive claim on Telegram on Sunday, writing: “A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their nuclear weapons.”
His remarks were issued shortly after US President Donald Trump confirmed that American warplanes had carried out strikes against Iran’s uranium enrichment sites in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan—facilities long scrutinized for their potential dual-use in nuclear weapons development.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/russias-medvedev-countries-ready-to-give-iran-nuclear-weapons/
There was a huge fanfare in the alt-media earlier this year over the Iranian-Russia security deal, which even at the time implied a lot more than what the deal contained.
Turns out from recent RF statements that it was Iran that was reluctant to go all in with a deal equivalent to that between the RF and N. Korea because the liberals in Iran did not want to totally sever their hopes of mending fences with the forked tongue ones.
Regardless of the reluctance of the Iranians, the RF is assisting them in terms of their existing nuclear facilities at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which is the only place in Iran protected by a Russian-supplied S-400 air Defence System. A facility you never here the crony politicians and media hacks in the West talking about.
Moreover, Russia also is building two additional nuclear power plants in Iran, neither of them has been touched or mentioned either.
The farce over the weekend is looking more and more like an off-ramp operation……
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/shayrat-redux-trumps-invisible-fleet
….with even media outlets openly signalling that the Israeli’s could be ready to withdraw with their tails between their legs.
As journalist Richard Medhurst demonstrated in the video link I posted the other day the WMD (Iraq Redux) was always total bollocks again from the Western political and media classes. Now that the very obvious regime change operation and attempt to break up the BRICS has gone totally tits up in the first stage, the boot is on the other foot.
The Empire of Kaos is left guessing whether the Iranians will be supplied with a nuclear weapon by a third party (Russia? China? North Korea? Pakistan? India?) or not.
As they are left guessing whether the Iranians will totally close off the Straits of Hormuz; the Houti’s will close off the Red Sea; or whether Hezbollah will mobilise.
The hopes and approach of the liberal’s in Iran to seek some kind of better relationship with the West have been totally blown away by the double-dealing surrounding June 13th – which the Yanks and the Western media are crowing about – in which the West pretended to hold off their proxy (Israel) to continue negotiations and then proceeded, among other actions, to murder members of the Iranian negotiating team they were supposed to be dealing with.
Worse, every single human being on the planet and every single country outside the minority of the Collective West no longer have any doubts that it is a complete waste of time sitting down with the West. That the West is totally agreement incapable, and that will only change following complete regime change across the West.
More and more of the cards are now in the hands of the Iranians and the Global Majority and the non-zero sum approach of the Global alternative to the bullshit TINA doctrine.
Much more of this and the popcorn will be running out.
Strong retaliatory position. Respect. Everybody knows that this is entirely down to the posturing and boasting of Donald Trump and his total support for an apartheid-enforcing rogue state.
Analysts and bankers will be praying to high-heaven that Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and Supreme Leader decide not to exercise the option their parliament has allotted them.
Latest: Trump begging China to try to stop
Iran closing The Straits of Hormuz!
You couldn’t make it up.
The Straits of Hormuz (Iran) and the Red Sea (Houti’s) represent just two areas of leverage that the Iran, on behalf of the BRICS and the Global Majority, will be utilising to effect concessions now that the dumb monkey’s running the dystopia that is the Collective West have given them their casus belli.*
Doubtless, top of the list will be the lifting of sanctions – alongside Israel withdrawing and licking its wounds and maybe even reparations from the zealots of cult Zionism. One cannot but help conjecture that somewhere in whatever negotiations take place – following a short squeezing of the bollocks hiatus via a closure of those choke points to unfriendly Western Regimes and their proxies to get their attention – will be an end to the Gaza Genocide and maybe even a one-state solution encompassing Palestinians and Jews but no criminal Zionists?
——————————————————-
* Courtesy of Larry Johnson’s SONAR21 site…..
https://sonar21.com/china-and-russia-reaffirm-support-for-iran-as-iran-weighs-response-options/
“The UN Security Council (UNSC) met today (Sunday) in response to an emergency request from Iran. China and Russia made it clear that they reject the trumped-up US excuse for attacking Iran.
Here’s a summary of what China’s UN Ambassador Fu Cong said during today’s UN Security Council session (June 22, 2025):
He warned that “Peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved by the use of force”, urging all parties—especially Israel—to immediately cease fire and prevent further escalation or regional spillover.
Fu stressed diplomatic channels remain open, saying “diplomatic means … haven’t been exhausted,” and urging deeper negotiations to resolve nuclear-related tensions.
He strongly condemned recent US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, stating the actions have “damaged America’s credibility” and cautioning that the situation “may go out of control” if unchecked.
Fu branded the strikes as not only in breach of the UN Charter, but also as a catalyst for inflaming “regional animosities,” emphasizing Beijing’s concerns about external military interference worsening the conflict
Here’s the gist of what Russia’s UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said during today’s Security Council session addressing the US strike on Iran’s nuclear sites:
“We’re being asked to believe the US fairy tales, to once again inflict suffering on millions of people living in the Middle East.” He drew a direct comparison to Colin Powell’s 2003 Iraq justification, accusing the US of repeating a historically condemned pattern of misinformation.
“The US has opened a Pandora’s box…No one knows what catastrophe or suffering will follow.”
He warned that these strikes risked regional escalation and undermining international stability.”
Meanwhile, here’s former diplomat Alistair Crook with details which look suspiciously like we may have just witnessed the first AI generated conflict:
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/06/23/key-nuclear-allegation-that-started-war-was-coaxed-from-palantir-counter-intelligence-algorithm/
“The sudden claim of Iran being very close to a bomb (that seemingly jumped out of ‘nowhere’ to leave Americans puzzling how could it happen that – in the blink of eye, we are going to war – was subsequently refuted by IAEA Chief Grossi to CNN on 17 June (but only after the abrupt attack on Iran already had taken place):…..
…..Behind the scenes:
The underpinnings to the 12 June 2025 IAEA Resolution – giving pretext for Israel to strike Iran (and crafted to sway President Trump to dismiss his own Director of National Intelligence’s warnings that there was no evidence of Iran moving towards weaponisation) – reportedly were drawn not from Mossad or other western intelligence services, but from IAEA software. As DD Geo-politics outlines, since 2015, the IAEA has relied on Palantir’s Mosaic platform, a $50-million AI system that sifts through millions of data points – satellite imagery, social media, personnel logs – to predict nuclear threats:
“Iran’s stockpile [of enriched uranium] had been growing steadily for months—yet the narrative of an imminent breakthrough surged only after the IAEA’s censure on June 6, 2025. That resolution, adopted 19–3, provided Israel the diplomatic cover it needed. Palantir’s Mosaic platform played a critical role in this pivot. Its data shaped the May 31 report, flagging anomalies at Fordow and Lavisan-Shian, and recycling prior allegations from Turquzabad—despite years-old Iranian denials and sabotage … Mosaic was conceived originally to identify insurgent activity in Iraq and Afghanistan”.
Its algorithm looks to identify and infer ‘hostile intent’ from indirect indicators – metadata, behavioral patterns, signal traffic – not from confirmed evidence. In other words, it postulates what suspects may be thinking, or planning. On 12 June, Iran leaked documents, which it claimed showed IAEA chief Rafael Grossi sharing Mosaic outputs with Israel. By 2018, Mosaic had processed more than 400 million discrete data objects and had helped impute suspicion to over 60 Iranian sites such as to justify unannounced IAEA inspections of those sites, under the JCPOA. These outputs, though dependent largely on the algorithmic equations, were incorporated into formal IAEA safeguard reports and were widely accepted by UN member states and non-proliferation regimes as credible, evidence-based assessments. Mosaic however is not a passive system. It is trained to infer from its algorithm hostile intent, but when repurposed for nuclear oversight, its equations risk translating simple correlation into malicious intent.”
This is the company whose CEO thinks “competition is for losers” (unquote) and who, along with his senior staff, is gung ho about Palantir being used to destroy anyone who stands up to the USA. The company that the UK establishment Uni-party has got into bed with to manage the data of organisations like the NHS.
Crooke providing more details in the past hours on the judging freedom platform: