The Strait of Hormuz has settled into a rhythm: CENTCOM hits Iranian tankers, and Iran hits back at roughly twice the rate. Five tankers struck, ten targeted in return, plus two US vessels and a massive barrage on Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti air base. Peter argues the small number of missiles aimed at US warships is the whole story. These are call shots, not kill shots, and the message is that the Navy can be reached whenever Iran decides to reach it.

Meanwhile the defensive math is collapsing. Roughly a hundred Patriot interceptors went up in a single night over Jordan, something like $400 million and two months of production burned while cluster submunitions came down anyway. The Gulf bases are already mostly abandoned, assets have shifted west to Jordan and Israel, and Jordan is now under fire too. We talk through what happens if a US warship actually goes to the bottom, why Charlie thinks there will be no rally around the flag, and why both of us expect Trump to leave the region within months while claiming he destroyed a nuclear program his own agencies say never existed.

Then the economics. The oil cliff was delayed, not cancelled: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level since 1982 and below its statutory floor, diesel just passed its previous nominal record, and a third of the world's fertilizer moves through the Gulf with effects that land next spring. We finish on Ukraine, where The Spectator finally says out loud that Kyiv is losing, and on Europe, where the only plan left may be seizing $300 billion in Russian assets and shipping Ukrainian men of military age back home.