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. The Hormuz developments is 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, when I (apparently!) had coined that name.

I will have No. 2.0 of this Iran series soon. Here, in 1.0, I want to get this out this brief BBC interview from last night.

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, albeit briefly, directly to Iranians or to Ukrainians.

The larger USA global oil-sector offensive involves Russia, Iran, Venezuela, India, others countries. I’ve seen these 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. As it’s grip was loosened by the US military, it needed to find a further lever. In the past few weeks it tried two things to reverse its weakening position:

i) Pushing its Houthi allies in Yemen to try to close the Bab al=Mandeb, to hem in some 5 million barrels per day of Saudi oil avoiding Hormuz via the East-West Pipeline that reaches the Red Sea and goes was going out via the Bab al-Mandeb. However, the Houries are not so dependent proxies as other groups, say in Iraq or Lebanon, and they have their own strong national interests in taking control of Yemen. So, Trump did not honor the Saudi plea for US military help against the Houthis, and that conflict has thus been, to some extent, successfully bracketed as a Saudi-Houthi affair. Also,

ii) Pro-Iranian shiia militia, its proxies, in southern Iran fired missiles and/or drones that temporarily disrupted two of the eleven pumping stations on the 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.)

Mitigating the success of Iran’s effort here, this Iraqi Shia proxy force is meanwhile under tremendous pressure from both the USA and the Iraqi central government to disarm by a deadline now set to October 30 and enter the Iraqi national army (but, without its particularly dangerous leaders). Twice Trump cut off Iraq’s oil income to force the Iraqi government to advance this agenda, successfully. 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 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, where a US=backed pipeline avoiding Hormuz to the Mediterranean is being built.

But, neither of these two factors tried by Tehran to reverse their failing capacity to control Hormuz succeeded. The big story then here should be that the USA has achieved the near-opening of Hormuz, wresting it from IRGC control.

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-Done 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, as well as mini-subs and such. More on this anon in future posts.

For 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 these issues:

This entry was posted in Global Oil Market, Global Oil system, Hormuz, Houthis, Iran, Iran war, Oil Crisis, Oil prices, Oil supply, Trump, USA and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.