1.0 | Iran has already lost Hormuz. 13M barrels of oil leaving daily. USA “6th Generation” tech avoided ground war.

Posted on September 29, 2026 | Leave a comment

This is part 1.0 of a series on the US-Iran war and the present US global energy offensive. Hormuz developments are altering some elements of the one, “Global Barrel” market-centered collective energy-security model that dates to 1973, and which I named this blog after 15 years ago (after I had apparently coined that name).

I will have No. 2.0 of this Iran series soon. Here is 1.0, my brief BBC interview of last night, with some comments below here.

This was my fourth interview with BBC Persian Service, London in recent months. It feels important to get things clear when I have the opportunity to speak directly to Iranians or to Ukrainians.

Comments:

The larger USA global oil-sector offensive involves Russia, Iran, Venezuela, India, and other countries. I’ve seen these each as USA “shaping operations” aimed at preparing the energy landscape favorably to the US and its allies before any future armed conflict with China might begin – or to prevent one.

As I explained earlier (e.g., Jerusalem Post interview), a problem for the Islamic Republic of Iran, in deciding to take control of Hormuz, is that its control can only degrade over time under US pressure.

In the past few weeks, as it’s grip was loosened by the US military, it needed to find a further lever. In the past few weeks Tehran tried two things to reverse its weakening Hormuz position:

i) Pushing its Houthi allies in Yemen to try to close the Bab al-Mandab Straight. The aim here was to hem in some 5 million barrels per day of Saudi oil that avoids Hormuz by flowing via the East-West Pipeline to reache the Red Sea, and from there goes doutj, out to the global market via the Bab al-Mandeb. However, the Houries are not such Iran-dependent proxies as other Regional proxy groups, such as in Iraq or Lebanon. The Houthies also have their own strong national interests to taking control of Yemen. So, Trump did not honor a Saudi plea for US military help against the Houthis, with the result that conflict has thus been, to some extent, successfully bracketed as a Saudi-Houthi affair. Also,

ii) Tehran activated pro-Iranian shiia militia, its proxies, in southern Iran to fire missiles and/or drones that temporarily disrupted two of the eleven pumping stations on the aforementioned Saudi East-West pipeline. However, it is now back online as of yesterday. (I should add that, as both Russia and Ukraine have learned, it is not so easy to really knock out a pipeline long term.)

Furrher undermining the success of Iran’s latter effors, the Iraqi Shia proxy forces are meanwhile under tremendous pressure from both the USA and the Iraqi central government to disarm by a deadline now set to October 30, and ro enter the Iraqi national army (without its particularly dangerous leaders). Twice Trump cut off Iraq’s oil income this year to force the Iraqi government to advance this agenda. This will be a complex process, but it is a new, positive situation for Washington’s war against Tehran, demonstrating a certain new strength of the Iraqi state.

This is all happening in parallel to the big, new investments being pursued by USA multinational oil firms to expand old fields or to develop new Iraqi oil fields in the southern tier of Iraq, where a US=backed pipeline avoiding Hormuz, to dlow instead to the Mediterranean, is being built.

And lastly, the last remaining US troops are to pull out of Iraq on 30 September..So, Washington is essentially trusting all these goals to the Iraqi government

But, neither of these two factors above that were tried by Tehran ,to reverse their failing capacity to control Hormuz, succeeded. The big story here then should be that the USA has achieved the near-opening of Hormuz, wresting it from IRGC control, and Iran’s new counter measures were largely absorbed and the US projector to reopen Hormuz simply moved ahead strongly

Primarily, this has been achieved, militarily, via what is sometimes called “6th Generation Warfare” techniques. This involves a unit of the 82nd Airbourne that established an E-Dome over Hormuz and surrounding territory. This new warfare technique, including electronic methods, AI and data-intensive methods, as opposed to traditional on-the-ground and stealth tech, is what seems to have defeated Iran’s vast missile and drones forces, mini-subs and such. More on this anon in future posts.

As this first installation, here (above) is my brief interview with the BBC’s Persian Service, London. I spoke from Berlin.

I would love to speak to your industry conference, civil society group, university, business association, ministry or other organization about all this. Contact me at twod-at-umich.edu .

Here are some earlier GlobalBarrel.com posts and interviews that analyzed Iran war issues:

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