Iran: standoff over military defeat and rising oil in Hormuz

Iran, between military defeat and falling crude

Is Iran on the brink of collapse, or is that the self-interested narrative of those who need it to fall? The discussion opens with a blunt thesis: Europe's chancelleries are jumping on the winning bandwagon because they smell the regime's imminent fall. From there, the matter becomes a standoff between two narratives that don't even share the same data. One side maintains that Tehran has lost momentum disastrously, that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and that the markets are already pricing in its liquidation. The other responds with an uncomfortable question: if it is defeated, why is Washington negotiating the end of the conflict with it instead of putting a capitulation on the table?

Crude as a thermometer of the narrative

The price of oil is the battlefield where these two versions are fought out. Some claim that Brent trades at $107 and that physical crude in the Gulf reaches $150, a range that contradicts the thesis of imminent surrender. Against that, the opposite reading insists that crude is heading down and that the chart is drawing a triangle that could break in either direction. The most repeated irony: if anyone were certain that Iran is sinking, it would be enough to short crude, mortgage the house and wait for the win-win. Nobody does.

The historical comparison is also used as a weapon. The Yom Kippur War lasted two weeks, but its consequences for fuel supply and demand dragged on for a whole decade. The argument serves to recall that a short conflict does not guarantee a short energy shock, and that whoever looks only at today's price is mistaken about the time horizon.

Hormuz, the ghost fleet and the barrels that do get out

The Strait of Hormuz is the most repeated data point and the most misinterpreted. Part of the analysis maintains that the blockade is strangling the Gulf neighbours, but not Iran: a ghost fleet of tankers allows Tehran to keep its exports at volumes almost identical to those before the conflict. The calculations circulating speak of 12 million barrels exported during the war, equivalent to about six days of its previous exports, when it moved around two million barrels a day. Before hostilities began there were already millions of Iranian barrels stored offshore looking for a buyer.

The conclusion some draw is that closing the strait does not choke whoever closes it, but whoever depends on it. And that the Iranian economy, far from collapsing within weeks, continues to finance its war effort with the same crude as always.

The military front and the attrition that goes unseen

On the strictly military plane, the versions diverge even more. One sector claims that Israel suspended in-person classes because of its defence system, considered the best on the planet, while the other side denounces the use of civilian infrastructure for military purposes. The case is cited of a school turned into a military enclave where more than 120 minors used as human shields died, an episode whose authorship and circumstances are attributed in a self-interested way depending on who tells it.

The war of attrition has a human cost measured in replacements: only a million troops remain available to make up for losses, according to one of the estimates circulating. It is the kind of figure that does not appear in triumphalist headlines and that explains why some speak of victory and others of a sunken barracks.

Who negotiates with whom and why it matters

The most uncomfortable argument for the thesis of total defeat is diplomatic. If Iran were beaten, capitulation would be put on the table for it to sign. Instead, what is described is the opposite: Washington is negotiating the end of the conflict directly with Tehran, and the Israeli state would have been forced to negotiate with Lebanon and to respect a truce. That does not fit with a country lacking military capacity.

On the opposite side, economic pressure is presented as suffocating: the Iranian president would have panicked on finding that his delegation returned empty-handed from the negotiations in Sarracinabad, with no money to pay salaries and with a country on the brink of collapse within weeks. These are sources cited by Israeli media, which does not invalidate them, but does not turn them into revealed truth either.

The game of the powers and the price of petrol

The board is read in terms of hegemony. Some describe four centres of power disputing the world order: China, Russia, the West that integrates Anglo-Saxons, European Latins and Israel, and the fundamentalist Muslim countries. Spain, in that picture, counts for little within its alliance, although nothing obliges it to remain so.

The incongruity pointed out is economic: if China's resurgence worries the West so much, why was industry handed to it with decades of offshoring? Now wars are being fought for antiestéticar of the monster that was created, while the European citizen complains about paying a few euros more when filling the tank. That is the real cost that reaches the shopping basket, and the one that decides elections.

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In the end, the question remains unanswered: if Iran is finished, what is all this negotiation about? And if it is not, why isn't crude soaring? Someone is lying, or simply nobody knows how to read a triangle.