4 The Ceasefire

What was agreed by Iran on 7 April is not a ceasefire per se, but rather a brief cessation in military actions in order to provide the space in which to test whether meaningful political discussion with the US is possible or not. The US however, has accepted Iran’s National Security Council’s 10-point framework as the agreed ‘anchor’ to possible discussions, in Islamabad on Friday. The 10-points, in effect, represent Iran’s pre-conditions to any move to a more substantive ceasefire. Furthermore, the key counter-party to this tenuous framework — Israel — claims it was not consulted, and is furious at the US acquiescence to holding discussions based around the Iranian framework that it views as a strategic defeat for the US, and therefore for Israel too. The 10th point in Iran’s Framework calls for the halting of military action on all fronts — including Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Yet Netanyahu that he will not observe this on the Lebanon front (where the war continued today with across Beirut and south Lebanon). Iran has already announced that it is preparing to launch “deterrent operations against Israeli military sites in the occupied territories” in wake of today’s attacks by Israel on Hezbollah. Iran submitted a 10-point peace proposal through Pakistani mediators but rejected a temporary cease-fire, while Iranian officials publicly claimed victory and threatened further retaliation.

More on Iran’s 10-Point Response to US Ceasefire Plan Iran has delivered its highly anticipated “10-point” response to the US’ “15-point peace plan.” Iran’s 10-point plan includes, according to a 

• 1. Guarantee that Iran will not be attacked again
• 2. Permanent end to the war, not just a ceasefire
• 3. End to Israeli strikes in Lebanon
• 4. Lifting of all US sanctions on Iran
• 5. End to all regional fighting against Iranian allies
• 6. In return, Iran would open the Strait of Hormuz
• 7. Iran would impose a Hormuz fee of $2 million per ship
• 8. Iran would split these fees with Oman
• 9. Iran to provide rules for safe passage through Hormuz
• 10. Iran to use Hormuz fees for reconstruction instead of reparations

Importantly, Tehran has dropped its demand for full war reconstruction reparations to be paid directly by the United States, providing a potential window to reach actual compromise with Washington. If you think the war is over, think again. Iran has not agreed to a ceasefire. They have agreed to stop retaliating as long as Israel and the US stop their attacks. Iran will continue to allow ships to pass on a case-by-case basis after paying the toll fees. And, Iran may split these fees with Oman. Iran and the Resistance have largely destroyed the US military infrastructure in the region, inflicted heavy losses, and delivered severe blows to enemy forces, infrastructure and assets in Israel and regionally. The pressure became so intense that none of the enemy’s primary objectives were achieved, and within 10 days, it realized it could not win. It then began seeking contact with Iran through various channels to request a ceasefire. Iranian officials state that for over a month, the enemy has been requesting a halt to hostilities, but these requests were rejected as the war was intended to continue until key goals were met, including weakening the enemy and removing long-term threats. Iran also rejected multiple ultimatums from the U.S., emphasizing it does not recognize such deadlines. Authorities now claim that most war objectives have been achieved and that the enemy has been pushed into a historic defeat. Iran’s stated position is to continue the conflict as long as necessary to consolidate these gains and establish new regional security and political realities based on its power and influence. In this context, it was decided—given Iran’s position on the battlefield and the enemy’s inability to enforce its threats—to proceed with negotiations in Islamabad to finalize details within a maximum of 15 days. Iran rejected all opposing proposals and instead presented its own 10-point plan via Pakistan. According to Iranian officials, Pakistan has conveyed that the U.S. has accepted these principles as a basis for negotiations despite its public posture. Based on this, Iran agreed to a two-week negotiation period in Islamabad. It is emphasized that this does not mean the war has ended, and Iran will only accept a full end to the conflict once all terms of its proposal are finalized. It was the US, not Iran, that has pleaded for the last four weeks to restart negotiations. Unlike the previous two times, Iran harbors no illusions about the capacity of the US to engage in treachery and trickery. Iran is not going to soften its demands.

The Zionists are going crazy over this and Netanyahu and his government are in a state of panic. If JD Vance succeeds in securing a deal with Iran, it will likely mean no more support for Israel’s war machine. If Israel launches any new attacks on Iran in the coming two weeks, Iran will immediately retaliate. The wild card in this is Hezbollah. If Israel continues to attack Lebanon and the Hezbollah positions in the south of Lebanon, Hezbollah will continue to wreak havoc on the Zionist forces. Pakistan has informed Iran that the U.S., despite its apparent threats, has accepted these principles as the basis of negotiations and submitted to the will of the Iranian nation. If the enemy’s surrender on the battlefield turns into a decisive political gain in negotiations, we will celebrate this historic victory together; otherwise, we will continue fighting shoulder-to-shoulder until all demands of the Iranian nation are achieved. Our hands are on the trigger, and at the slightest mistake from the enemy, we will respond with full force. It is interesting that Trump in his message admits he has received Iran’s 10-point peace plan and that is can serve as a workable basis for negotiations. That is shocking because Iran’s published 10-point plan is extremely maximalist in nature and would serve as an unprecedented defeat of the United States if implemented even in part. One small correction to the above: Iran has specified that for its demanded ‘reparations’ it is willing to accept the new transit fees from the Strait of Hormuz as sufficient toward that debt.

Of course, many of the other points are impossible to implement because they rely on Israel abiding by the agreements, which will never happen. In fact, as of this writing that Israel has already vowed to continue striking Iran and Lebanon. But quickly, and in weasel-like fashion, Bibi said the ceasefire does not including Lebanon. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine how any deal can possibly work with a hostile third party that will openly sabotage it at every turn. How can Iran keep Hormuz open and cease all attacks if Israel simply ignores the US and continues hitting Iranian infrastructure? Will Trump stew in his ‘impotent anger’ at Bibi again? It’s no different than the Ukraine war scenario, where Europe has no interest in allowing the US to ply a deal with Russia, and Russia therefore unable to make any concrete deals because no security guarantees can possibly exist when the Europeans are openly waging war on Russia through their Ukrainian proxy. But Iran seems to have wizened up, its remaining leadership going into a kind of elusive ghost mode, with no one in the West seemingly having a clue as to who’s even running the country. At first this was deemed a major ‘weaknesses of a ‘degraded’ Iran—but the West quickly realized this ‘mosaic-en-masse’ strategy has turned Iran into an incommensurable enigma. Western intel agencies are lost and no longer stodgy old guard, which typically sclerotizes a country’s leadership. The new younger and more cunning elites aren’t as eager to be martyred, and are willing to play cat-and-mouse with the clay-footed colossus at their doorstep.  Trump appears to be trying to pretend they forced Iran into negotiating when in reality Iran had already openly presented its 10-point plan long ago. It’s just as easy to see that the “deal” was reached a day after the US suffered its most disastrous losses in decades, not long after many of the US’s most significant regional bases were abandoned, its aircraft carriers disabled and sent running, with even the Marine-carrying Tripoli said to have faced missiles and sent scurrying yesterday as well. It’s clear that it was the US in the weak position and in desperate need of this ceasefire. The war has done the total opposite of its stated objective—rather than destroy the Iranian civilization, it supercharged it into superpower status. In recent years, the conventional geopolitical wisdom has been that the world order was moving toward three centers of power: the United States, China and Russia. That view assumed that power derived primarily from economic scale and military capability. That assumption no longer holds. A fourth center of global power is quickly emerging — Iran — that does not rival those three nations economically or militarily. Instead, its newfound power derives from its control over the most important energy choke point in the global economy, the Strait of Hormuz.

To conclude, talk of the ceasefire is likely a moot point because there is no way the contradictions between the two sides can hold. It is nothing more than political theater for now meant to give Trump a much-needed PR boost, with Iran obliging for the time being because it has nothing to gain from continuing the conflict it itself did not even start, particularly when global perception has already declared Iran as the unanimous victor. That said, it leaves the question of what will happen after the deadline passes, or when Israel inevitably violates the truce. We know to a large extent Trump’s threats of “total destruction” of Iran were bluffs for two reasons: The US doesn’t have the capability to even remotely “destroy” Iran at the scale Trump imagines, at least not without nukes. Iran is too large a country, its industries too vast in scale, and US has too few munitions. Even the major factories that have already been hit have only been slightly damaged and will be repaired in days to weeks. The repercussions and blowback from any such strikes would harm the US indirectly more than it harms Iran, given that Iran will redouble the pain back onto Gulf countries twice over, and this will not only critically harm US interests but cripple the US as an empire for all time. Thus, Trump knows his weak bluffs have to be papered over with continual ‘deadline extensions’ in order to find some off-ramp from the disastrous miscalculation of his own making. Over the past few days, the US has flown multiple planes carrying military supplies and equipment to Israel. This means that these talks are meant to buy time, until the next round. We went from “no deal except unconditional surrender” to a truce based on Iran’s maximalist demands. Reality bites hard

5 Statement of the Supreme Leader of the National Security Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran :

In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. It is hereby announced to the noble, great, and heroic nation of Iran: The enemy has suffered an undeniable, historic, and crushing defeat in its dishonorable, illegal, and criminal war against the Iranian nation.  On the scene from the very first days of the war, Iran has achieved a great victory and forced criminal America to accept its 10-point plan, in which America has principally committed to:  Islamic Iran, together with the brave mujahideen of the Resistance in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and occupied Palestine, has dealt blows to the enemy over the past 40 days that the historical memory of the world will never forget. Iran and the Axis of Resistance, as representatives of honor and humanity against the most savage enemies of mankind, have, after a historic battle, taught them an unforgettable lesson and have so thoroughly shattered their forces, capabilities, infrastructure, and all their political, economic, technological, and military capital that the enemy has now fallen into disintegration and desperation and sees no path before it other than surrender to the will of the great Iranian nation and the noble Axis of Resistance.

On the first day the criminal enemies of Iran launched this unjust war, they imagined they would achieve complete military dominance over Iran in a short time and would force Iran to submit by creating political and social instability. They thought Iran’s missile and drone fire would be quickly extinguished and did not believe Iran could respond so powerfully beyond its borders and across the entire region. The malicious global Zionism had convinced the foolish American president that this war would finish Iran off and that, by eliminating this last bastion of humanity, they could henceforth commit any crime against anyone they wished with ease. They dreamed of partitioning beloved Iran and plundering its oil and wealth, and ultimately leaving Iranians adrift in chaos, instability, and insecurity for years to come. The brave warriors of Islam and their courageous allies in the Axis of Resistance resolved once and for all to teach these enemies a historic lesson, to exact revenge for all previous crimes, and to create conditions so that the enemy would forever abandon any thought of aggression against beloved Iran and taste the full bitterness of humiliation and disgrace before the great Iranian nation. With this strategy, and relying on the unprecedented political and social unity that had been established in the country, Iran and the Resistance launched one of the heaviest hybrid battles in history against America and the Zionist regime, and during this period achieved every objective they had designed for this battle.  Iran and the Resistance nearly completely destroyed America’s military machine in the region, dealt crushing and deep blows to the vast infrastructure and assets the enemy had established and stationed around the region over years in preparation for this war against Iran, inflicted massive regional casualties on the criminal American army, struck devastating and crushing blows against the enemy’s forces, infrastructure, assets, and properties within the occupied territories, and so tightened the noose on the enemy on all fronts that not only were none of the enemy’s primary objectives realized, but the enemy understood approximately 10 days after the start of the war that it would have absolutely no ability to win this war — and for this reason began efforts to establish contact with Iran and request a ceasefire through various channels and methods. 

6 Hormuz

The last several days have seen a limited number of foreign vessels successfully and safely cross the Strait of Hormuz for the first time, amid the ongoing de facto military blockage by Iran. Several vessels, namely French, Japanese, and Oman-linked ships were reported to have crossed the strait at the end of last week. This week saw even more tankers and container ships exit Hormuz. The IRGC is now charging tolls starting at $1 per barrel of oil, payable in Chinese Yuan or stable coins.  This could amount to up to $2 million for each ship seeking passage. Iranian authorities have developed a system for managing shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and ensuring passage for vessels from different countries depending on the level of their relations with Tehran, Qatar’s Al Jazeera reported. According to the TV channel, under Iran’s scheme, all states are divided into three categories: “hostile,” “neutral,” and “friendly.” Countries in the first group will be prohibited from using the Strait of Hormuz, ships from “neutral” states will be subject to high fees, and “friendly” states will be granted the right of free passage through the strait. Tehran has not provided a complete list of the three categories; however, virtually all Arab countries in the Persian Gulf are classified as “neutral” or “hostile” states. Under Iran’s plan, these states will either have to pay “substantial fees” or be barred from exiting Hormuz. Now that US security guarantees are not worth the paper it is signed, many US allies are ditching the US and making a beeline for Iran. Meeting with the IRGC, signing new deals and accepting Iran’s terms and conditions. Japa, Spain, Vietnam, Malaysia and many other nations are following. Japan signed. Iran accepted. Then 22 Japanese tankers are on the way to Iran to fill up.

75 Gulf Energy Assets Damaged in U.S.-Iran War as Supply Shock Intensifies

the Gulf energy shock is more severe than those of 1973, 1979, and 2022 combined because it is affecting oil, gas, food, fertilizers, petrochemicals, helium, and global trade all at once. More than 75 energy sites across the Gulf region have been attacked, with about a third severely damaged, suggesting tens of billions of dollars in repairs and a prolonged disruption of some energy flows, further tightening global supplies and compounding the disruption at the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint. Repairs will take a long time.  It will take a long time for the Middle East—previously a reliable energy hub—to recover.

Energy Shocks Spreads

For weeks, we mapped out for readers how the Gulf energy shock dominoes would fall, spreading outward from the Middle East and striking Asia first through tightened energy-product flows that risk destabilizing the global economy. That transmission of tightening energy flows is now becoming alarmingly visible on factory floors across Asia. Goldman analysts, led by Georgina Fraser, warned clients on Monday that the petrochemical shock is worsening across Asia, with textile and packaging plants emerging as the first major downstream casualties. “The supply shock is transmitting faster and at a greater magnitude than we had anticipated,” Fraser emphasized in the note. She said the supply shock is moving beyond higher energy prices into production cuts, margin compression, and early demand destruction.” In March, the world lost 840 million barrels of oil due to the closure of Hormuz. Add April total, expect another shortfall of some 14 million barrels a day. That takes the total to some 420 million for April. Combine these 2 months, and we get a total of some 1, 260 million barrels short supplied to the world. Add to this the continued attacks on Russian energy infrastructure by Ukraine. This has taken roughly around 1.5 million barrels per day offline. In 2 months, this is another 90 million barrels.  These attacks on Russian energy are being directed by both Washington and London. These attacks intensified since the beginning of March. The Western economies and societies will be in the ICU rooms sometime in May. Even the US is not spared. The US consumes some 20 million BPD, but produces 13 million BPD. That leaves a shortfall of some 7 million, which it hopes to get from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela , Guyana and offshore Africa and Brazil.

7 Trump just lost Saudi Arabia

MBS is not joining the war on Iran. But Saudi Arabia has multiple joint ventures with the oil companies of the two families. Iran is specifically targeting these joint ventures. It is Aramco as the major shareholder, and junior shareholders are Rockefeller entities such as Exxon, Cheron, ENI, Occidental, etc. While the Rothschild entities are BP, Shell and Total. The bulk of these joint ventures are done with Rockefeller oil companies. Saudi Arabia’s SATORP refinery, jointly owned by Aramco and Total Energies, was shut down after one of two refining units was damaged by incidents. Total Energies said the French group, which owns 37.5% in the refinery. Saudi state oil giant Aramco holds the other 62.5% of the refinery, whose total processing capacity is 450,000 bpd. SATORP is located in the city of Jubail in eastern Saudi Arabia. The attacks included one at the pumping stations on the East-West Pipeline, leading to a loss of approximately 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) in throughput. The pipeline has been Saudi Arabia’s lifeline since the Strait of Hormuz was effectively blocked to traffic at the beginning of the war. The attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure have also extended to major refining facilities, including SATORP in Jubail, the Ras Tanura refinery, the SAMREF refinery in Yanbu, and Riyadh refinery, directly affecting exports of refined products to global markets. The hits to energy facilities in Saudi Arabia are reducing the potential to export crude and fuels even if the Strait of Hormuz re-opens to some semblance of normal traffic.

Trump told the man who controls 12% of the world’s oil to kiss his ass. That man just restructured Middle Eastern security with Ukraine, telling Trump, “It’s over”. On March 27, 2026, Donald Trump stood at a podium in Miami — at a conference bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, in front of 1,500 of the kingdom’s investors and partners — and announced to the room that Mohammed bin Salman was “kissing my ass.” On the same day, Zelenskyy was in Jeddah signing a comprehensive 10-year military pact with MBS, which REALLY pissed off the Trump Regime. While Trump was performing his humiliation routine in Miami, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defense was signing a landmark defense memorandum with Ukraine — an integrated air defense pact covering drone warfare, electronic jamming, anti-aircraft systems, and AI-driven aerial threat detection. Not just a supply deal. A full security architecture partnership. Built by the country that’s been fighting off Iranian-designed drones for 4 years. For 70 years — since FDR met King Abdulaziz on the USS Quincy in 1945 — the Gulf’s security architecture has run through Washington. Oil flows. America protects. That’s the deal. That’s been the organizing principle of Middle Eastern geopolitics since before most of us were born. It’s not just an alliance. It’s the foundational compact of the modern world order. And Trump publicly called the man holding that compact a subordinate ass-kisser. On his own turf. In front of his own investors. With cameras rolling. Here’s what Washington apparently missed:  The kingdom is under active fire in a war it didn’t start and didn’t formally join. It needed partners. Real ones. So, MBS found them – in Kyiv. Ukraine sent over 200 drone warfare specialists to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. Thirty more deployed to Jordan and Kuwait. These are battle-hardened technicians. And Zelenskyy walked out of Jeddah with 10-year defense partnerships signed with three Gulf states. Three – in one week.

The strategic logic is devastating in its simplicity. Ukraine gains access to Gulf missile stockpiles — the advanced air-defense interceptors Kyiv desperately needs against Russian ballistic missiles. Saudi Arabia gets the world’s most battle-tested drone warfare expertise, bypassing the American defense industrial complex entirely. Europe gets an energy security corridor now running through a Ukrainian-Gulf partnership that Washington didn’t broker, didn’t initiate, and apparently didn’t see coming. But the political dependency just cracked wide open. Think about the sequence of events. MBS poured $1 trillion in investment commitments into Washington. He showed up at the White House in November 2025 and got designated a Major Non-NATO Ally — the first time Saudi Arabia ever received that status. He delivered every signal of alignment a partner could deliver. Trump’s response was to announce MBS was kissing his ass. At a Saudi-funded event. To Saudi investors.  MBS said nothing publicly. Privately, he said , “we will stop buying US weapons”. The implicit deal behind all those trillion-dollar investment pledges was simple: do not set the Middle East on fire. That deal is broken. And the kingdom is now building relationships that don’t require tolerating public humiliation from a president who treats allied leaders like tabloid props.

Canada. Europe. Now the Gulf. One by one, the relationships that constituted the American-led world order are being stress-tested and found wanting. Not because America is weak — because Washington is making itself untrustworthy. Unpredictable. Humiliating to stand next to in public. The death of the US-Saudi relationship won’t happen in a single dramatic moment. There’s no formal break, no press conference, no withdrawal of ambassadors. It’ll happen the way all strategic relationships die — quietly, incrementally, through a thousand small decisions made by leaders who’ve concluded they need options Washington won’t give them. This is Trump’s isolationism in its purest form — where Washington makes itself impossible to rely on. Canada alienated. Europe told to fend for itself. NATO called a paper tiger. And now the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia publicly mocked at his own investment forum on the same day he signed a defense pact with a country America was calling a pariah two years ago. The countries watching this aren’t waiting for America to fail. They’re just buying insurance policies. They’re doing it rationally, methodically, and with increasing speed. Trump thought he was performing dominance at FII Miami. He was performing the end of seventy years of American strategic primacy in the Gulf. The man who controls 12% of the world’s oil supply just opened a new door. He didn’t knock first. He won’t be knocking next time either. Zelensky’s Gulf tour Is not wartime diplomacy. It Is wartime commerce. This initiative came from the Rothschilds.

Now let us talk about the Iran-Ukraine-Russia triangle that nobody in Western media wants to discuss clearly. Iran supplied Russia with the Shahed drones that have been raining down on Ukrainian cities for years. Russia modified them and called them Geran-2. Iran then used the same drone technology, refined and battle-tested in Ukraine, to attack Gulf states in retaliation for the US-Israeli war. Ukraine has been on the receiving end of Iran’s drones via Russia for years and has genuinely developed some of the most effective counter-drone systems in the world. That expertise is real. The technology transfer is real. The 200 specialists on the ground are real. But here is what is also real. The Gulf states are not stupid. They are taking the deal because they need the expertise right now and because Ukraine’s counter-drone technology is genuinely effective. A practical transaction in a desperate situation is still a practical transaction. In return for this, the Arabs are going to help Ukraine with energy deals. The story continues in Part 3 – – –